A food editor who resigned after a joke about “killing vegans” spectacularly backfired has claimed he has become the victim of trolls.

William Sitwell, the former editor of Britain’s Waitrose Food magazine, made headlines last month after an inappropriate joke he made via email was shared with the press.

The incident occurred after food and travel writer Selene Nelson pitched a new series of vegan-friendly recipes to the publication.

• How photo foiled $176k robbery

• Insta post costs woman $175k

• Meghan’s $35m ‘worst nightmare’

Mr Sitwell, who had been in the job for two decades, responded by saying: “How about a series on killing vegans, one by one” and also suggested “force feeding them meat”.

The correspondence was leaked to BuzzFeed News and was covered by media outlets around the world.

Mr Sitwell, who is also a UK MasterChef critic, ended up standing down in the face of growing backlash.

However, he recently told The Times he and his family had become the victims of trolls in the weeks following the scandal.

He said some had contacted him via Instagram to say they wanted to “fatten up, kill and roast” his two-month-old son Walter.

“I get the most astonishing, revolting and obscene vitriol,” he told the publication.

“Some people think it’s justified. I don’t take it seriously but people mean it seriously.

“I know from the ferocity and also from the scale of it.”

The 49-year-old said the abuse had been unrelenting.

“There were threats to rape my wife,” he said. “Another said I was an ‘ugly waste of sperm’.

“I blocked people on Instagram but my thumb started hurting so I gave up. No one bays for the blood of a human more than a militant, raging vegan.”

Despite the controversy, Mr Sitwell said he was actually a supporter of the vegan lifestyle.

“Most pursue their lifestyle choices from a moral standpoint that I cannot argue with,” he said. “No one has done more to raise the profile of vegans in the run-up to International Vegan Day than me.”

Veganism is a growing trend worldwide and is especially common in the United Kingdom, with the BBC reporting the number of vegans had jumped from 150,000 in 2006 to 542,000 in 2016.

The trend is growing in Australia as well, with the number of Aussies eating a mainly vegetarian diet rising by over 23 per cent in the last four years, according to Roy Morgan research.

Animals Australia has also claimed veganism was the fastest growing food movement in the world.

Continue the conversation @carey_alexis | alexis.carey@news.com.au