A vegan activist who confronts McDonald's customers with pictures of factory farms and slaughterhouses has urged Brits to reconsider their food choices as 'we are a nation of animal lovers'.
Tarion Partridge, 25, has been vegan for more than five years – an activist for three of them – and said that because we live in “the easiest place to be vegan,” it makes it even “more unfair” not to be one yourself .
According to YouGov's tracking, despite the increasing commercialization and adaptation of vegan lifestyles, the share of the UK population has remained at around two to three percent since records began in 2019.
Speaking to MailOnline, Ms Partridge asked: 'How can you claim to love animals with the same mouth you use to chew their bodies?
'People are very ignorant about what's happening. They don't witness the carnage, they just see these wrapped bodies.'
Tarion Partridge (pictured) is a vegan activist who confronts fast food restaurant customers and staff with the meat industry and investigates the farms that supply the meat industry
Pictured: A KFC employee asks Ms Partridge to stop showing images of chickens from British farms to customers at the restaurant
The 25-year-old activist's social media platforms are flooded with videos of her debating with the public about the morality of eating meat
Mrs Partridge TikTok and other social media pages are flooded with clips of her and meat eaters clashing over the morality of eating animals.
Her posts range from confronting customers at fast food chains to discussing veganism on the street and even clashing with fast food restaurant employees who ask her not to show photos of animals in factory farms or slaughterhouses to their customers.
The reactions range from people quietly trying to shake her off; many seem sympathetic to her motivations but not her goal, and occasionally a few who really struggle with being challenged.
In a video from November 2023, Ms Partridge stops someone on their way to order a meal at McDonald's and asks if she likes animals.
The customer replies, “Yes, but I'm not going to stop eating it.”
She continued: 'I love meat, it's just nature.'
As the woman leaves, Mrs. Partridge tells her to order the chain's vegan burger: “If you care about animals, you should live with that and be vegan.”
Some meetings are more confrontational than that.
“Most of the reactions I've had have been pretty good,” she shared, “but I had a more severe reaction at KFC, where this lady was super unhappy one time and said, 'You know, people are getting killed in the world, and why should we care about chickens?”
“And I told her that I don't kill people or chickens, because that actually has no relevance whatsoever.”
The chain's staff then asked her to leave, but she resisted until they threatened to call the police.
But the more nerve-wracking interactions don't deter her, and she says that when she feels uncomfortable, “I just have to think about the animals.”
“You can't really spread a message without coming out and sometimes pushing the boundaries and doing something controversial,” she said.
'People want activists to remain silent. They don't want to feel guilty. But if you look through history, activists are never silent.
“Those who have the privilege to know have the obligation to act.”
She also discusses the meat industry with people on the street and says most of her feedback from those she speaks to is positive.
Ms Partridge added that as Britain is one of the easiest countries to be vegan in, it is 'more unfair' not to be.
Pictured: Mrs Partridge as a teenager with her dog Saxon, when she had an 'epiphany' while eating chicken and wondered what the real difference was between that animal and her beloved pet
The 25-year-old grew up in Lincolnshire as a meat eater, but had an 'epiphany' at the age of 15 when she ate chicken and wondered what the real difference was between that and her beloved dog, Saxon.
She immediately became a vegetarian and a few years later, when she realized that a large part of the dairy industry involves calves being taken from their mothers within hours of birth, she took the plunge to become vegan.
“I think I'm a compassionate person,” she said, “and I want to live in line with that.”
But it wasn't until January 2020, when Ms Partridge met her partner and vegan activist Joey Carbstrong, that she went even further by protesting and investigating the meat and dairy industries.
However, she pushes back on the common claim that vegans are “extreme” or “presumptuous.”
“I get called extreme and pushy and stuff like that all the time,” she admitted, “but I just think you have to go into that and think, what's more extreme, I'm showing people what they're paying for, or the fact that they pay for the torture of animals on farms and the violent execution in killing factories?
'If I saw images of dogs struggling in fear and being killed in a dog meat restaurant, I would be a hero.
'No one would say: 'that's extreme', but because I defend pigs, chickens and cows, I'm suddenly extreme?
'That underlines the speciesism in our society. People need to realize that there is no moral difference between a dog and the animals that people eat.'
One of Ms. Partridge's views that people may find extreme, or at least counterintuitive, stems from one of the answers she often receives from the public.
Animals eaten by consumers are bred specifically for that purpose – they wouldn't exist if they were never eaten – but she would rather live in a world without those billions of animals.
Animals eaten by consumers are bred specifically for that purpose – they wouldn't exist if they were never eaten – but Ms Partridge would rather live in a world without those billions of animals.
She said: 'I think if I were an animal I would rather not exist than to exist in a body where I suffer and where I will be sent to a killing factory'
While Ms Partridge insists that 'there will come a day when we look back with sheer shame and regret' on our meat consumption, meat-free businesses are struggling to stay afloat, with Heather Mills' VBites (pictured) the latest business to they ended up in. administration
“They shouldn't exist like this,” she claimed, “chickens are bred to grow at this accelerated rate, and so are turkeys.
“I think if I were an animal, I would rather not exist than to exist in a body where I suffer and where I will be sent to a killing factory.”
While Ms Partridge insists that 'there will come a day when we look back with sheer shame and regret' on our meat consumption, meat-free businesses are struggling to stay afloat.
The cost of living crisis has had a doubly bad effect on the sector, with consumers turning back to meat and dairy to save money, at a time when doing business would have been more expensive anyway.
Heather Mills' VBites is the latest plant-based brand to fall into administration, following declining sales of more than just meat and the closure of around half of the UK's Veggie Pret stores.
Sir Paul McCartney's ex-wife Mrs Mills blamed “nefarious practices” and a “litany of lies” from animal-related rivals for the collapse of her vegan food empire.