Veggiedag

The Belgian term for a day upon which people abstain from meat – literally, “veggie day.”

Officials in the Belgian city of Ghent are to forgo meat once a week (on Thursdays) in an acknowledgement of livestock farming’s detrimental effect on the environment, according to the BBC’s Chris Mason:

The UN says livestock is responsible for nearly one-fifth of global greenhouse gas emissions, hence Ghent’s declaration of a weekly “veggie day.”

Public officials and politicians will be the first to give up meat for a day. Schoolchildren will follow suit with their own veggiedag in September.

The Guardian quoted one of the councilors behind the campaign, who said:

“There’s nothing compulsory. We just want to be a city that promotes sustainable and healthy living.”

And observed:

A small, dreamy city of spires, bicycles, and canals, prospering since the Middle Ages, Ghent may be on to something. It appears to be tapping into a zeitgeist awareness of the cost to human health and the environment of intensive meat and dairy farming. Other towns in Belgium and the Netherlands are making inquiries; there has even been one from Canada.

In September 2008, Rajendra Pachauri, the chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, urged people to give up meat one day a week to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions: “In terms of immediacy of action and the feasibility of bringing about reductions in a short period of time, it clearly is the most attractive opportunity.”

Meat production is notoriously carbon intensive – so much so, that a group of scientists recently designated hamburgers the “hummers of food.” In a September 2008 Observer report – “Meat by Numbers” – Caroline Daviesclaimed that 36.4kg of carbon dioxide is emitted during the production of 1kg of beef.