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The Belgian city of Ghent has launched a plan to "go vegetarian" one day a week as a way of reducing the greenhouse gas emissions associated with meat production.
It's the sort of event that must make PETA proud: the city of Ghent, Belgium, has just started its first "Veggie Day," encouraging the city's residents and restaurants to go meat-free one day a week, for the sake of the planet.
By skipping the beef, pork, chicken or fish, the Flanders' Ethical Vegetarian Association -- one of the groups promoting the event -- projects that the city can cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 18 percent for that day.
A report by the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization published in late 2006 found a host of environmental issues attributable to meat production: not just the resulting 18 percent of GHGs (including gases more potent than carbon dioxide, like methane, which is 23 times as warming as CO2, and nitrous oxide, which is 296 times as warming), but also the huge amount of land devoted to raising livestock and feed for livestock -- 33 percent of the world's arable land -- and the water pollution issues from livestock, especially from concentrated animal feedlot operations (also known as CAFOs, or factory farms).
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More recently, the February 2009 issue of Scientific American magazine published an article that said beef production causes 57 times the GHG emissions as potato production, and 13 times the GHGs as chicken production.
Add to all these environmental issues the concerns about human health, labor and animal welfare as a result of industrial meat production, and there's plenty of justification for Ghent's meat-free Thursdays.
From an article by Ian Traynor in the Guardian:
The city council says it is the first town in Europe and probably the western world to try to make the entire place vegetarian for a day every week. Tom Balthazar, the Labour party councillor pushing the scheme, said: "There's nothing compulsory. We just want to be a city that promotes sustainable and healthy living."
Every restaurant in the city is to guarantee a vegetarian dish on the menu, with some going fully vegetarian every Thursday. From September, the city's schools are to make a meat-free meal the "default" option every Thursday, although parents can insist on meat for their children. At least one hospital wants to join in.
Now, I've been meat-free for just shy of 10 years (hard to believe it's been that long -- I still remember vividly the last meat I ate, a surprisingly tofu-like serving of fish pudding in Røros, Norway), so this kind of news seems utterly logical to me. But I'd guess it's not quite as easy a sell as I'd expect. So I'd love to hear from our readers: given all the research about how a meat-based diet impacts the environment, have you considered giving up any or all meat for any length of time?
Oh, and by the way, if you happen to be in Ghent, on a Thursday or any other day, here's a handy list of some of the city's vegetarian-friendly restaurants....
Cow photo CC-licensed by Flickr user me'nthedogs.
Vegetarian
Just recentely my mother, brother, sister, and a few friends have decided to go vegetarian due to the fact of the horrible living conditions of factory farmed animals, the environmental issues, and health concerns. it has been about 3 weeks and i have only eaten probably 3 ounces of meat.Before this change i was one of the people that said i would never stop eating meat. Now I love finding new vegetables that i like that i never knew i would like. I think its great they are doing there part to help the environment.
sustainability starts on your plate
I'm wondering if you know that the #1 cause of pollution – more than all transportation around the world combined is from animal agriculture; It’s also a major cause of deforestation, soil degradation, water/food shortages, as well as an inefficient use of grain, soy, electricity, petroleum and increased human health cost due to meat related illnesses. So the most impactful, single thing one can do is to be vegan. You can make a huge difference, one veggie bite at a time! A small change in our diet can benefit us both locally and globally! Our food-print makes up a majority of our carbon-footprint; a vegan diet we can halt 80% of climate change as well as end world hunger too. If you care about human health & the environment please ban meat!
A great idea!
Other governments doing something similar include
* Taiwan (many govt officials have taken "no meat no heat" pledge and govt recommends eating more plant based, less animal products as one of top few things individuals can do to lower emissions.
* Cincinnati Ohio, as part of its Green City Plan, has decided to set up a task for to create plans for reducing the consumption of animal products to lower the city's emissions.
* Queensland Australia is recommending fewer animal products to lower emissions.
* Britain's govt National Health Service announced hospitals would add more vegan and vegetarian meals to reduce the gov't hospitals' emissions.
* The Philippines has begun educating people on the health benefits of fruits and veg (formerly viewed as inferior to meat because they were poor people's food) and also called for the creation of vegetable protein meat alternatives.
These are all remarkable signs of progress.
Additionally, to Anonymous' point, not sure where he/she obtained their research, but according to a BBC show "ethical man goes vegan" humans emit only 0.5 l of methane per day, and cows emit 500 l.
I could see some progressive
I could see some progressive cities like San Francisco and Portland doing this. It's a great idea, especially to get people thinking about the kind of impact meat has.
A few key points to consider
Cows (and other livestock),biologically, in their natural environment, do not produce any more methane than humans do. The problem arises when, on industrial farms, they are fed cheap, fast-growing grains (such as perennial ryegrass and corn) which are extremely difficult for the cows to digest. Digestion takes so long, in fact, the food begins to ferment in their stomachs, a process which produces methane in great quantities.
Unless we desire to push our industrialized, mono-culture agricultural system to even more dangerous levels, grazing cattle is perhaps one of the most natural, ecologically healthy functions we can perform on that land. Most grasses have evolved to prosper under grazing animals (in how they grow and store sugars). The animals dung in turn helps fertilize the ground for new growth.
Finally, as much as vegetarians hate to admit it (I was one for a year), we are carnivores, through and through, who are able to consume a tiny percentage of the plant life around us. Our digestive systems are many orders of magnitude more similar to that of a tiger's than a sheep's. The unhealthy side effects of eating meat in modern countries is due almost entirely to our agricultural systems and processes. There are many healthy, indigenous tribes throughout the world who eat diets made up almost exclusively of meat.
Perhaps instead of shunning a perfectly natural, ecologically sound food source, we turn against the systems and processes that corrupted them in the first place.