Animal Aid

In May 2009, Ghent City Council in Belgium attracted worldwide media and public attention when it announced that it would promote one meat-free day a week to encourage the city’s inhabitants to reduce their contribution to climate change and, simultaneously, boost their health. Will your city be next?

Animal Aid is encouraging UK city councils to follow Ghent’s example and declare a weekly voluntary meat-free day. To support this initiative we have produced the following resources, which you can use to influence your city councillors.

News from around the world

Washington DC has become the latest US city to adopt a Meat-Free Mondays Resolution.

In April 2010, San Francisco became the first US city and Cape Town the first African city to officially endorse one meat-free day a week.

Tel Aviv University in Israel joins Oxford, Harvard, UCLA and Columbia in the international campaign to hold a meat-free day once a week.

The City Board of Helsinki, Finland voted (13-1) in favour of a weekly day of vegetarian food in educational institutions.

A community school in Manhattan, New York City will be meat-free every Monday - an initiative that The New York City Department of Education is considering expanding to all school cafeterias throughout the city

Ministry of Education officials in Taiwan have said elementary and junior high schools should provide one vegetarian lunch per week to pupils to promote healthy lifestyles and help reduce global warming.

In January 2010, Bremen became the first German city to promote a meat-free day.

Ghent has introduced a weekly vegetarian day in all 35 city schools - an initiative that has also been enacted in schools in Baltimore, USA.

The Swedish government has produced guidelines on healthy and climate-friendly eating which includes a recommedation for meat reduction.

The Brazilian city of Sao Paulo has now joined the global initiative. As of the 1st October 2009, Sao Paulo will be supporting Meat-Free Mondays.

The cities of Hasselt and Mechelen in Belgium have now joined Ghent in promoting every Thursday as a veggie day.

The Meatless Monday initiative is helping to spread the word in the USA in association with the John Hopkins' Bloomberg School of Public Health.

The Stop All Killing Association with the help of Sadhu Vaswani Mission is promoting a Meatless Day in Malaysia.