The Animal Agriculture Industry isn't Just Lying To Us, They're Gaslighting Us, Too
- The Young Vegan
- Dec 6, 2025
- 4 min read
The animal agriculture industry is now paying people to lie on their behalf, gaslighting people so that they can continue abusing animals, according to a user on Reddit.
It was in 2019 that veganism started to blow up. Suddenly, eating plants and visiting animal sanctuaries was THE thing to do. Posters for oat milk started popping up in the streets. Beyond Burger was everywhere, with people admiring its "meaty" taste and the way it "bled like real meat". Supermarkets were even carving out sections of their shops to sell vegan food, not just vegetarian or free-from, but 100% vegan. You didn't have to check the label.
A lot of this activity was driven by influencers online. They saw that more people were going vegan and were gaining a following. What they were doing looked good, so they jumped on it, and that was it, veganism was everywhere.
The Animal Agriculture Lie
Meat-free products were being advertised on billboards, online and in newspapers, and plant milks exploded in popularity. People were buying the products and loving them. The meat and dairy industry was seeing this and reacting. They started advertising that milk was necessary for your bones (it's not) and that meat was essential for protein and nutrients (it isn't). They also reinforced their story of happy animals living a full life on farms. It was all lies, farmers have said as much, as some of them had to stage situations for people to film and promote.
When this wasn't working, the meat and dairy industry started looking to social media. They saw an opportunity to tell the story that they wanted people to hear. They needed to start ,gaslighting us; so they started paying people to lie.
The Animal Agriculture Industry isn't Just Lying To Us, They're Gaslighting Us, Too
At the end of November 2025, an anonymous Reddit user posted an AMA, ask me anything, claiming:
"For a year I worked for a meat industry trade group. I won't say which one, but they are US based. My job was to go on sites like this and discredit veganism.
We'd make multiple accounts and pretend to be vegans who had bad health outcomes. Or we'd pretend to be vegans and we'd push the vegan subs to be more extreme, and therefore easier to discredit.
It was pretty gross. I knew it. I did it anyway. The pay wasn't worth it. I signed an NDA as well, so I will only be able to answer questions in general terms.
But I do warn you, don't believe that everyone is who they say they are online."
According to the poster, they earned $17 per hour to impersonate vegans, invent negative ex-vegan stories, and create anti-vegan hostility online.
The whistleblower claims that their duties included:
Inventing dramatic health problems and blaming veganism: They created multiple accounts, posing as long-term vegans complaining about health problems caused by veganism. These illnesses included hair loss and OCD. To prevent being questioned about the newness of the accounts, they would use lines like, “Posting from a new account so the vegan cult doesn’t come after me,”.
Crowding ex-vegan forums with fake testimonials: They used multiple fake accounts to have conversations, passing messages between them. This created an image of large numbers of people "escaping" veganism. Readers quickly noticed that the posters had little or no vegan history in these forums, making them suspicious of the authenticity of the posts.
Spreading anti-vegan talking points: The whistleblower says that they routinely used common anti-vegan tropes, such as nutrient deficiencies, in their posts. They would also exaggerate popular anti-vegan arguments, such as the number of insects killed in farming food for vegans.
Making vegans look extreme: With some of the accounts, they would pose as a militant vegan, posting intentionally radical or argumentative comments. This was to cause division within the movement and make vegans, as a whole, seem unreasonable and combative.
Cherry-picking environmental data: As with exaggerating the number of insects killed for vegan food, the whistleblower would share studies that claimed that certain forms of meat production were “sustainable”. They would present the information with no counterargument, making the findings of the studies appear indisputable.
They eventually left the job because they felt that they couldn't do it anymore:
“I didn’t realize I felt guilty when I quit. I hated the job. I now realize I was screwing with good people who are trying to make the world more humane.”
Is Any of This True?
As the whistleblower says, "don't believe that everyone is who they say they are online."
Does this mean we should believe that they did this? That they pretended to be vegan online, just to spread anti-vegan lies? Is it that they're lying about lying? We don't know. The truth could be somewhere in the middle; they were paid to spread anti-vegan propaganda, but the story they're telling now is an exaggerated version. It could even be that what they did was worse than this. The NDA and anonymity of this person make it impossible to verify any of this. The whistleblower says as much themselves:
“You don’t know if I’m telling the truth. That’s part of my point. Be skeptical of everything online and consider sources. Are they credible? You have every right to be skeptical of me. If you are skeptical of me, and others, then I have done my service in making people smarter and better protected from scams and frauds.”
One thing we do know is that the meat, dairy, egg, fish and seafood industries will happily lie if it means more profit for them. There is no humane slaughter, there are no happy cows. What there is is suffering, abuse and exploitation. That' a fact.
For all we know, this person is 100% vegan and is telling this story to discredit the meat industry. If that's what this is, they've done a great job.
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