Yet most of the articles, if they showed an image, chose an image of cheese. And it wasn’t just any image of cheese, it was the kind of image that’s used to sell cheese. That is, the images were cheese-positive. These critical websites were doing Dairy Management’s work for them by visually promoting the risky product!

Here are some of the images they used, below. From Treehugger to VegNews to Change.org Sustainable Food, they each did their own share of free dairy promotion:

Instead, here are the images they should have used…

Cholesterol build-up in arteries:

Heart attack:

Dairy cows confined in Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (aka factory farms) living unnatural lives and polluting the environment:

Calves stolen from their mothers and slaughtered as babies to become veal:

Good health, environmental, or animal blogging isn’t just about sharing information. It’s about helping your audience see things differently. So they can making things better.

I’m posting this to remind activists of what vegan education can look like. And to remind newbie activists that some forms of vegan education are as simple as copying and pasting.

Most animal advocates tend to think about vegan education in terms of leafleting, tabling, or one-on-one conversations. But vegan education can take many forms. And in fact, it should take many forms. Here are some ideas:

• Start a vegan blog
• Make a simple static website that features vegan videos
• Make your own educational video with text and graphics
• Donate vegan nutrition, vegan cooking, and animal rights books to libraries
• Tack leaflets to community cork-boards
• Twitter about veganism
• Put an animal rights message on your voicemail greeting

Got more ideas? Please share.