The animal rights group PETA has posted an ad on its blog website comparing the killing and beheading of 22-year-old Tim McLean to the slaughter of animals for human consumption.

PETA planned to run the ad in the Portage Daily Graphic, a newspaper in the Manitoba town 20 kilometres away from where the shocking murder took place.

The imageless ad reads: "Manitoba. An innocent young victim's throat is cut . . . His struggles and cries are ignored. The man with the knife shows no emotion . . . The victim is slaughtered and his head cut of . . . His flesh is eaten. It still goes on!"

The newspaper's website says that the paper has refused to carry the ad.

PETA defended the ad in a press release on its website.

"Like human victims, animals in slaughterhouses experience terror when they are attacked by a knife-wielding assailant," PETA's Lindsay Rajt said in the release. "We are challenging everyone who is rightly horrified by this crime to look into their hearts and consider leaving violence off their dinner plates."

Another blog post on the PETA website says: "While it isn't every day that a human is violently attacked and eaten by another human, it's worth noting that it is the norm for many people not to give any thought to the fact that restaurants are serving flesh that comes from innocents who were minding their own business before someone came after them with a knife. How amazingly and conveniently compartmentalized the human mind is..."

McLean was killed last Wednesday after being stabbed repeatedly on a greyhound bus by a complete stranger. He was then beheaded and according to reports from the scene, his attacker committed acts of cannibalism.

Vinci Li, 40, has been charged with second-degree murder in the slaying of McLean. A psychiatric evaluation has been ordered for Li.