UK Students Call for Plant-Based Meals at Universities to Fight Climate Change

student-led outreach campaign supported by the climate and animal justice group Animal Rebellion has mobilized hundreds of students at over 20 UK universities. The students are calling for their universities to drop animal products from their catering menus before the 2023-24 academic year. 

Student activist Vaania Kapoor Achuthan, 19, from University College London says that in order to ensure a sustainable future, major institutions like colleges and universities have a responsibility to move “towards 100% just and sustainable plant-based catering.” Achuthan and other students argue that universities choosing to include animal products in their cafeterias not only illustrates complicity in the climate crisis, but also makes it more difficult for them to reach their sustainability goals.

Despite a 2006 United Nations report that found that animal agriculture emitted more greenhouse emissions than all of the transportation sector combined, progress mitigating the impact of animal agriculture on climate change has been slow, and the situation has grown more dire. Animal agriculture currently contributes at least 37 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions, although estimates vary, is responsible for 65 percent of anthropogenic nitrous oxide emissions, and is the leading cause of deforestation around the world. Livestock emissions also account for 32 percent of human-caused methane emissions, which account for 30 percent of global warming to date. The environmental justice group CimateNexus reports that greenhouse gasses could be cut in half by the adoption of a plant-based diet, which is why these students are lobbying their universities to drop meat from their menus.

[… Read more at Sentient Media ]


 

Tilting menus towards plants cuts meat eating, study shows

Damian Carrington, The Guardian, Jan. 31, 2022

Making more sustainable choices easier could be a more acceptable approach than meat taxes, say researchers

Tilting menus towards plant-based meals significantly cuts the amount of meat eaten, according to new research.

The experiments in work and university cafeterias showed making it easier to choose meat-free food can be effective and could be a more acceptable approach than other proposals, such as taxing meat or banning it on certain days.

Meat production is an important driver of the climate crisis and red meat in particular is linked to heart disease and other illnesses. Substantial falls in meat consumption are needed in rich nations to curb global heating and ill health.

The new research, published in the International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity, involved three separate experiments, including the first scientific online study of plant-based menu choices. This used a representative sample of 2,200 UK adults and found that when three of four meal options were meat-based, 12% chose the plant-based option. But when three of four meal options were vegetarian, 48% chose the vegetarian meal. The effect was the same whether the participants were female or male, rich or poor….

[… Read more at The Guardian ]