The Belgian town of Ghent has embarked on a radical experiment: it has proclaimed that every Thursday will be meat-free day. The report in today’s Guardian newspaper says that restaurants will guarantee at least one vegetarian dish, with some going fully veggie for the day. Schools will have meat-free dishes as the default option. Hospitals and households are joining in too.
The initiative has been backed by Phillippe van den Bulck, a top Belgian chef who happens to be vegetarian. It has come about partly in response to a growing awareness that meat consumption causes more greenhouse gas emissions than all the world’s planes, trains, ships, trucks and cars put together.
There was another interesting article on this topic from climatechange.ie‘s John Gibbons in an edition of The Irish Times from last December.
I’ve drastically cut back my meat consumption for environmental, financial, animal welfare, and health reasons – in that order. But I don’t want to entirely quit!