A town in Belgium introduces "Vegetarian Thursdays"

A town in Belgium has declared that every Thursday will be an official "Vegetarian Day" in order to fight climate change. This was actually announced before Paul McCartney official launched "Meat Free Monday".

The city, Ghent is 30 miles west of Brussels Belgium. Municipal restaurants are said to limit their meat to an alternative section of the menu on Thursdays. Tom Balthazar, a Ghent city councilor, says abstaining from meat one day a week "is good for the climate, your health and your taste buds."

The UN says meat production is responsible for nearly one fifth of greenhouse gasses, hence Ghent's decision for the weekly vegetarian day.

Schoolchildren are set to follow public officials with their own "veggiedag" in September.

The Ethical Vegetarian Alternative, Belgium's national vegetarian organisation, said: "Ghent, in co-operation with the vegetarian organisation EVA, is determined to go the extra mile in our common battle against climate change. Other Belgian cities have already shown interest in following Ghent's example."

I am so glad that these countries are introducing healthier alternatives and educating people on healthy eating! Hopefully America will soon follow suit as its the one country whom I believe needs the most help.

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"Meat Free Monday" hosted by Paul McCartney

Meat Free Monday is a campaign which was launched on June 15th 2009. Its aim is to encourage people to remove meat from their diet for just one day a week, thereby reducing their carbon footprint.

The campaign was created and run by a team of environmentalists, including Sir Paul McCartney and his daughters Stella and Mary.

The dominant objective for the campaign was to fully engage with three key target groups.

a) Those with an environmental or ethical interest and motivation
b) Those who are considering reducing their meat consumption predominantly for health benefits
c) Vegetarians – who could help spread the Meat Free Monday message to their friends/colleagues/family etc

The challenge for Meat Free Monday was to address the diversity of the target groups. Vegetarians, meat eaters and those with environmental motives all have different priorities. By completely understanding the target groups, together with the campaign’s brief, Silver Chair devised a digital strategy to allow these targets to become one force with a common goal.

The hard-core environmental facts…
The UK’s Food Climate Research Network suggests that food production from farm to fork is responsible for between 20-30 percent of global green house gas emissions. Livestock production is responsible for around half of these emissions. The more meat we produce and eat the bigger that carbon footprint will get. A sustainable future demands that we cut down - and yet between 1961 and 2007 the world population increased by a factor of 2.2, but meat consumption quadrupled, and poultry consumption increased 10-fold.

As a result the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has concluded that the livestock sector is ‘one of the top two or three most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems, at every scale from local to global.

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(photo by Dave Hogan/Getty Images Europe June 15, 2009 )