Vegan YouTuber Ed Winters weighs in on Kurt Zouma's cat abuse

13 February 2022, 21:57

Prominent vegan Ed Winters Kurt Zouma cat-slap

Prominent vegan YouTuber Ed Winters tells Rachel Johnson that outrage at the cat abuse by footballer Kurt Zouma overlooks the "bigger picture" of animal abuse in the meat and dairy industry.

It comes amid growing controversy over a viral video showing 27-year-old Kurt Zouma kicking and slapping his pet cat.

Zouma has been fined two weeks' wages by West Ham and is the subject of an on-going joint investigation by the RSPCA and Essex Police.

Mr Winters told Rachel Johnson: "It's obviously very important that we are outraged about instances such as this one where Kurt's clearly gone out of his way to abuse his animal, for what seems like entertainment and fun on his part.

"And I think it is really important that we condemn that, but we should also definitely look at the bigger picture here which is, why is it wrong to slap a cat but not to put pigs in gas chambers for a bacon sandwich? Or to cut the throat of dairy cows because we want to have a glass of milk with our breakfast in the morning?

"So there is a bigger issue here at play which we sometimes overlook with outrage at instances such as this one."

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'I think we are in danger of cancelling Kurt Zouma for one misguided kick in his kitchen.'

Mr Winters continued: "We live in a very paradoxical situation where we give names to dogs and cats, but then we give numbers stapled through the ear to pigs and cows and the other animals that we farm, and we reduce them to objects.

"We find it morally permissible to do terrible things to these animals, which if Kurt had done to his cat, we'd be even more outraged.

"The truth is, for the animals in farms and slaughterhouses, they wish they were only being slapped."

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