MEAT-OUT: A call for more plant-based eating started a meat war
At no other time in history have so many animals died or suffered so much throughout their lives. For many farmed animals, the only time they see and feel the light and warmth of the sun will be during the trip to the slaughterhouse.
REYNARD LOKI: Colorado Governor Jared Polis’s declaration of March 20 as “MeatOut Day” to promote plant-based diets—which are beneficial to human health, the environment, and the prevention of cruelty to animals—sparked controversy between animal rights activists and the meat industry that went beyond state lines.
Polis is not the first major politician to promote this message to eat less meat; he joins governors and mayors in 40 additional states and cities who have signed similar proclamations in recent years. Originally conceived in 1985 as the “Great American Meatout” by the Farm Animal Rights Movement, an animal welfare nonprofit based in Bethesda, Maryland, to protest a U.S. Senate resolution proclaiming National Meat week, MeatOut Day has been proclaimed by state and national governments around the globe.
“Removing animal products from our diets reduces the risk of various ailments, including heart disease, [high blood] pressure, stroke, various cancers, and diabetes; and… a plant-based diet helps protect the environment by reducing our carbon footprint, preserving forests, grasslands and wildlife habitats, and reduces pollution of waterways,” said Polis in his proclamation.
The announcement was applauded by environmentalists and animal rights advocates. But there has also been significant pushback, unsurprisingly, from the meat industry and the politicians who support it. The Colorado Cattlemen’s Association (CCA) slapped back with their own call to have a “Meat In” on March 20. “On this day, CCA encourages Colorado to meet in a restaurant and order your favorite meat dish, meet your family and friends for a meal featuring meat”…
In declaring Colorado’s “MeatOut Day,” Gov. Polis became one of those policymakers. And he doesn’t just have environmental and climate science to back up his decision. Health experts and animal rights advocates also have reason to cheer. In 2015, after reviewing more than 800 scientific studies, the International Agency for Research on Cancer, the World Health Organization’s cancer research arm, classified processed meats as a Group 1 carcinogen for human colorectal cancer, while red meat was classified as probably carcinogenic to humans… There is also a powerful ethical argument supporting the shift from meat to plants, as factory farming is the largest source of animal cruelty in the entire span of human history.
According to United Nations data, more than 70 billion land animals worldwide are killed for food every year. (Our fish consumption is another magnitude altogether, with commercial fish farms killing up to 120 billion fish annually, with another trillion fish caught and killed in the wild.) “At no other time in history have so many animals died or suffered so much throughout their lives,” writes the Los Angeles-based nonprofit Animal Equality. “For many animals, the only time they see and feel the light and warmth of the sun will be during the trip to the slaughterhouse”…
Perhaps there hasn’t been a radical shift in perception regarding meat, but there has been a steady growing shift. Since MeatOut was first launched 35 years ago, Polis pointed out in his proclamation, “more than 35 million Americans have explored a plant-based diet and reduced their consumption of meat, dairy, and eggs; and major food manufactures and national franchises are marketing more vegan options in response to this growing demand.”
Young people are driving that shift. According to research conducted in 2019 and published last year by YouGov, a London-based market research firm, millennials (22 percent) are far more likely than Gen Xers (13 percent) and Baby Boomers (11 percent) to say they’ve adopted a vegetarian diet. In 2019, YouGov polling found that more than one in five young Americans “say they would be willing to eliminate meat from their diet in order to reduce carbon emissions and combat climate change.” Younger Americans have shifted to veganism at nearly double the rate of older Americans, according to data compiled by Statista, a market research firm based in Hamburg, Germany. In 2018, half of American millennials were curious about a vegetarian lifestyle. SOURCE…
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