Welsh chef sparks backlash after dropping ‘divisive’ vegan label

Nation.Cymru Staff

A Welsh chef who built a global following through vegan cooking has prompted backlash from fans after saying he intends to eat invasive species such as “crayfish or venison or pigeon”.

Gaz Oakley also revealed during his guest spot on The Mood Booster podcast, published on 26 May, that  he no longer considers himself vegan, and if he had been aware of alternative movements would not have gone vegan at all.

Oakley, formerly known as Avant-Garde Vegan, is a chef and author from Cardiff who owns Tŷ Fferm in Abergavenny, a community space offering crafts, homeware, herbs, homemade teas, coffee and cakes.

In 2023, VegNews described Oakley as one of the ’37 Creative Chefs Crafting the Future of Vegan Food’, and also named his cookbook Vegan 100 as one of the ‘Top 100 Vegan Cookbooks of All Time’ in 2024.

His latest book, Plant to Plate, won the prestigious ‘Book of the Year’ award at the Food and Travel Magazine Awards in late 2025.

Discussing his journey with sustainable living and eating on The Mood Booster podcast, Oakley explained that after going vegan ten years ago, he’s recently been more focused on localism, self-sufficiency, natural materials and reducing dependence on global supply chains.

He said: “Many, many years on now, ten years on of strictly eating plant-based and now connecting with nature and growing my [own] food, the vegan rule set doesn’t fit within that…

“I only wear natural materials now. So, that means that I’m not strictly vegan and if a vegan sees me wearing these [second-hand leather] shoes, they’d think ‘you’re not’.

“I get it because the leather industry is awful too, but my way to wear more natural materials is to only buy second hand clothes, and that’s what I do.”

Praising vegan principles, Oakley added: “I think we need to be more compassionate. We need to take a leaf out a lot of the rule sets of veganism and the compassionate side of it.

“But, you know, there’s certain things that don’t fit in with my lifestyle now and that’s a very privileged thing to be in.

“Living out in the country, growing my own food. My local farmer has manure. ‘Do you want some for the garden?’ Like, of course, but that’s not vegan. There’s so many things that I do now that aren’t.

“So, I don’t class myself as vegan. I don’t class myself as plant-based. We have honey from my friend who has bees, so we use honey medicinally and there’s a whole thing on rewilding and that’s something I want to do in the future.”

After speaking about rewilding, the process of restoring natural ecosystems and the impacts of invasive species, Oakley continued: “The craving to be part of a group is just gone now. I don’t care to follow a group.

“I think taking a group like veganism, there’s extremists in every group and they’re often the loudest, which gives a movement that is based off compassion a bad rep and I do feel bad for for that. 

“Putting yourself in a group, particularly something divisive like veganism, you open yourself up to all kinds of scrutiny — from vegans a lot of the time annoyingly, and also from the non-vegans.

“And I think before I even had any of these thoughts that I’ve just described to you, I just dropped all labels. I haven’t mentioned the word vegan in any of my videos for about four or five years…

“Despite dropping the word vegan from my life and not being part of that group, I would never ever, ever eat industrial farmed animals or dairy. I think that is hell and I’ll avoid that at all costs.

“I want to do a challenge where I only eat local food in the near future and that will probably see me eating invasive species like crayfish or venison or pigeon.”

Oakley added that if he had been shown “a community” that lived off the land and only ate meat when it became available, rather than documentaries which promote veganism, he would have “not done the extreme opposite of going vegan, which has so many faults in its own.”

Reacting to the podcast and Oakley’s intention to eat invasive species, Instagram user @kevinthevegan wrote: “@gazoakley you have been an amazing advocate for plant based cuisine. Please reconsider this decision.”

 

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Others agreed, with a commenter writing: “Humans are invasive are you going to start eating us too?” Another added: “Is someone going to tell him pigeons aren’t invasive?”

“The vegan aesthetic has worn off for so many of these people,” a viewer wrote, accusing Oakley of using the movement for financial gain. “The amount of people who came in and made their money off it all and are now onto the next thing is so cringe. What a bum.”

Others suggested followers show their “disappointment” by unfollowing Oakley and not interacting directly with his content.

The Mood Booster is a wellbeing community, run by Charlie Allnutt and Dr Marcus Bull. Their podcast is available here.