Having worked in magazine publishing, the use of stock photos doesn't really bother me. For the most part, most "foods" photographed for publication are non-edible, whether or not they're vegan.

As recipes are not subject to the same copyright restrictions as other published text, I'm wondering more if VegNews has been veering down the same path as Cooks Source. While I doubt they're plagiarising, they're probably "adapting" meat, pescetarian and vegetarian recipes into vegan ones, and using the stock photos to save on purchase and preparation costs for the food, as well as not having to pay a cooking and/or photo staff.

And depending on how they've contracted their print-publishing run, they may be offsetting some of that cost by piggybacking with another smaller-run magazine, which might cover anything from hair-dressing to hare-dressing.