British counter-terror police have been engaged in protecting meat industry workers as action by vegan activists has become move violent.

Workers at abattoirs, farms, and meat-producing factories have been under increasing threat by far-left animal rights campaigners, with the British Poultry Council and the National Pig Association being just two of the bodies seeking support from the counter-terrorism force, reports the Mail on Sunday.

In one historic case reported by Channel 4 Dispatches, militant vegan group SAVE attacked a Jewish kosher abattoir in east London two years ago, breaking into the building and scrawling anti-Semitic slogans on the wall, with one protester yelling, “It’s a holocaust. You Nazis!”

The report of meat producers engaging counter-terror police comes after Waitrose Food magazine editor William Sitwell was forced to resign over a joke about vegans, and found himself subjected to vitriol and threats of violence against him and his family.

Mr Sitwell told the Mail on Sunday, “There were threats to rape my wife, tie her up, and cut off her genitals.”

Organised vegan activists have been calling for their lifestyle to be given the same “protected characteristic” status as race, religion, sexuality, gender, and disability, under discrimination laws, which would make it a criminal offence to mock or discriminate against vegans.

The calls followed the case of Jordi Casamitjana in early December, who took his discrimination claim to the High Court after alleging that his firing from the League Against Cruel Sports was due to discrimination against his lifestyle.

He was dismissed after disclosing details of the company pension fund investment that conflicted with his worldview — namely, that the pension fund invested in firms that engaged in animal testing. The organisation maintains he was fired for gross misconduct.

The results of the court hearing in March 2019 will determine whether veganism is a “philosophical belief” and if so, would result in the eating habits being covered by the UK’s 2010 Equality Act.

The Countryside Alliance has said that there has been a rise in attacks on butchers and abattoirs in recent years.

In May, Breitbart London reported that staff at a butchers in Kent were “living in fear” after vegan extremists threatened to firebomb the establishment, with the outside of the building being daubed in Animal Liberation Front graffiti — a group that the American FBI determined to be “criminal extremists.”