Trade bodies from across the UK meat industry have criticised Oxfordshire County Council’s ban on meat from its menu.
In December, Green Councillor Ian Middleton tabled a motion to ensure that all food provided at Oxfordshire County Council’s events would be ‘entirely plant based’.
The motion also seeks to see more plant-based menus available on school lunch menus for 'at least two days per week' - it hopes to encourage students to 'be empowered' when making food choices at schools.
The motion was passed and is set to go to Cabinet for the final decision.
Scientific evidence
A spokesperson from the British Meat Processors Association (BMPA) told Meat Management that substituting British meat for certain more environmentally damaging processed plant-based alternatives could mean that the Council inadvertently create the opposite effect to the one they intended.
They said: “If Oxfordshire County Council are going to meddle to this extent in people’s diet and choice of what they eat in order to achieve environmental goals, then we hope they are using the right scientific evidence.
“Dictating what people can and can’t eat is a dangerous road to go down. One of the largest opinion polls of over a million people in 50 countries that was carried out by the United Nations Development Programme and Oxford University in 2020 suggests that people would rather change other aspects of their lifestyle to help the environment than cut out two of the most nutritionally important elements of their diet; meat and dairy.
“And, as they realise that sustainable livestock farming can be part of the solution to climate change, the choice between these natural whole foods and the new ultra-processed plant-based alternatives will become easier to make.”
They added: “Consumers both in Britain and around the world are becoming increasingly aware of the differences in farming systems and are realising that giving up eating British meat will be of much less environmental benefit than giving up eating Brazilian meat.”
Knee jerk reactions
A spokesperson for the Association of Independent Meat Suppliers (AIMS) Tony Goodger said that the Council needed to reconsider how much income it derives from the business rates of butchers and meat processing businesses as well as from the county’s livestock farmers.
He said that he wasn’t entirely sure what the Council meant by the phrase ‘Vegan-Friendly Food’. Goodger added: “Given that 99% of UK households purchase dairy products, they are pandering to the 1% who don’t.
“As ever these sorts of decisions are often made due to knee jerk reactions based on the views of the few, and not the sound science that backs up sustainable British farming.”
This story was originally published on a previous version of the Meat Management website and so there may be some missing images and formatting issues.
