‘Good!!’ Vegan who forced out Waitrose editor celebrated 7 deaths at bull run
SHE was shocked when Waitrose Food editor William Sitwell joked about ‘killing vegans’ in a private email that swiftly led to his resignation. Yet food writer Selene Nelson showed she has an appetite for morbid humour when she celebrated the deaths of seven people at a bull-running festival.
In a tasteless tweet, Ms Nelson wrote ‘Good!!’ after the seven were gored to death by bulls running through city streets.
She added the hashtag ‘Animal Rights’ to the tweet after the tragedy in 2015, where victims included an 18year-old gored in the stomach.
Ms Nelson’s tweet after the festival deaths included anti-bullfighting images, even though the deaths were all outside of a bullring.
A year later, in July 2016, she made a joke about the death of bullfighter Victor Barrio, 29, at a ring in the Spanish province of Aragon, tweeting:
She has an appetite for morbid humour
‘So a bullfighter has been killed. Boo hoo. Live by the sword, die by the sword.’ Next to her name on Twitter is a ‘V’ in a circle, proudly denoting her vegan credentials.
Ms Nelson’s response to the bullrunning deaths is at odds with the shock she said she felt at Mr Sitwell’s reaction when she contacted him at the magazine, which is free at Waitrose supermarkets, with a pitch about vegan food.
The BBC MasterChef star jokingly suggested instead: ‘How about a series on killing vegans, one by one? Ways to trap them?’ He added: ‘Expose their hypocrisy? Forcefeed them meat? Make them eat steak and drink red wine?’
Amid howls of protest from offended vegans after Ms Nelson, 30, chose to make Mr Sitwell’s email public, the Old Etonian was forced to resign from his post, even though he had apologised to anyone ‘genuinely offended’ by what he called his ‘ill-judged’ comments. He insisted: ‘I love and respect people of all appetites be they vegan, vegetarian or meat eaters, which I show week in, week out through my writing, editing and broadcasting.’
But afterwards Ms Nelson wrote: ‘The response to my pitch shocked me.’ She added: ‘If this disappointing exchange exposes anything, it’s the belligerent attitude that, sadly, many vegans experience every day, simply for trying to make a positive lifestyle change.’
But many defended Mr Sitwell. Restaurant critic Giles Coren wrote: ‘It was a stupid email but should not be a career-ender. Vegans are not a race or a gender or a sexual orientation or a differently-abled group.’
Ms Nelson writes for a variety of publications, as well as maintaining her own blog where she covers vegan food and luxury resorts.
Last night, both Ms Nelson and Mr Sitwell declined to comment.