Dutch City Set To Ban Meat Advertisements In ‘World First’
Adverts promoting meat, holiday flights, and fossil fuels are to be banned in the city of Haarlem, in a bid to help encourage residents to choose more environmentally-friendly alternatives.
A city in The Netherlands is set to ban advertisements that promote meat products, in a bid to help encourage residents to choose more environmentally-friendly foods.
Haarlem, in the country’s north, is believed to be the first city in the world to instate such a ban, which will apply to adverts in public spaces including on buses and shelters.
The move comes as local councillors try to curb consumer habits that contribute to the climate crisis.
"Meat is very harmful to the environment. We cannot tell people that there is a climate crisis and encourage them to buy products that are part of it," Ziggy Klazes, a councillor from the political party GroenLinks, who proposed the motion, told Dutch newspaper Trouw.
A global shift towards a meat-free diet is necessary to combat the worst effects of climate change, according to the United Nations, and research from the University of Oxford shows that going vegan is the “single biggest way” to reduce your impact on the planet.
Along with meat, the ban will also outlaw the advertisement of holiday flights and fossil fuels The Dutch cities of Amsterdam, Leiden and The Hague have already banned so-called “fossil-advertisements”, but Haarlem will become the first to extend the ban to include meat products too.
Environmental Impact of Meat
Public awareness around the environmental impact of meat products has increased in recent years.
As a result consumers are increasingly making lower-impact food choices, including reducing their meat-intake and choosing plant-proteins like tofu and soya-based ‘meats’ instead. Only 20 percent of people in the Netherlands eat meat every day, and nearly half (45 percent) consider themselves ‘flexitarian’, according to Statistics Netherlands.
“We want to do what is in our power locally and do not want to tempt people to make choices that are bad for the environment,” added councillor Klazes. “We believe that a kilo of pork for a few euros is really no longer acceptable at this time. It is too heavy a burden on the environment.”
As governments try to introduce initiatives to encourage a reduction in meat consumption, brands are adding more meat-free options to meet demand. Burger King is rolling out meat-free versions of their most popular products around the world, and recently launched a provocative campaign asking “Normal, or with meat?”, to highlight how meat-free options have become the ‘new normal’. And Tyson Foods, the biggest meat producer in the US, launched its first-ever meat-free range nationwide last year.
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