[imagesource: Reuters]

Animal cruelty aside, meat production does a number on this planet as one of the leading causes of global warming.

That means when an impassioned vegan is chewing your ear off about the evils of meat, you kinda have to admit they’re on to something.

When a whole city in the Netherlands takes heed, then you might really have to pause for thought regarding your meat consumption.

The Dutch city of Haarlem, not too far from Amsterdam, is set to become the first in the world to ban advertisements for most meat because of its impact on climate change.

The ban, drafted by green political party GroenLinks, will come into effect from 2024, outlawing ads for all “cheap meat from intensive farming” in public places like buses, shelters, and screens, per Phys.org.

That includes meats like supermarket chicken and fast food burgers, but perhaps not sustainably-produced meats, which have yet to be specified in the ban.

Ziggy Klazes, councillor for the GroenLinks, said they are no longer tolerating how the city “earn[s] money by renting the city’s public space to products which accelerate global warming”.

Amsterdam and The Hague have already banned ads for other environmentally harmful practices like air travel, petrol-driven cars, and fossil fuels.

Meanwhile, in South Africa, the government is fixated on the names we give plant-based meat products, basically assuming that meat-eaters are the types to be easily confused.

Haarlem adding meat to the list of things that increase fossil-fuel consumption is perhaps the next step that makes sense.

However, the meat sector is opposing the ban, naturally, arguing that it’s patronising and that it goes against free speech, per Time Out:

“Banning ads for political reasons is nearly dictatorial,” Joey Rademaker, a Haarlem councillor for the right-wing BVNL party, said in a statement.

The Dutch meat industry body, the Centrale Organisatie voor de Vleessector, said Haarlem authorities were “going too far in telling people what’s best for them,” the Trouw newspaper said.

The point is, as the UN has stipulated, a massive 14% of all greenhouse gases are produced by livestock:

There are several reasons why meat production produces greenhouse gases and worsens global warming. For one, forests are often cleared to make way for livestock grazing and the production of animal feed, reducing the Earth’s capacity to take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. Then there’s the fact that animals themselves produce greenhouse gases: sheep and cows, for instance, produce loads of methane from their, er, digestive processes.

This ban has come at a challenging time for the Netherlands. Farmers have been actively protesting the government’s plans to cut nitrogen emissions to meet EU environmental targets.

While an attack on freedom of expression and job/money losses are a threat, losing biodiversity and entire ecosystems is a fate that may have further reaching implications.

[sources:timeout&physorg]