Storm

Eating meat is bad for the environment. I think that every Stormer has heard this sentence more times in his life than the sentence: I love you. As we as Stormers are wildly know for our general loving it has something to do with the first sentence of this Blog being said over and over. As a flexitarian I can say it worked, at least partly, as propaganda to stop me from eating meat. But as I go on thinking about this I’m not really sure that it was this specific sentence that brought me to the idea of eating less meat. A much bigger impact was made by traditions within Storm and by eating with groups of non-meat eating friends. While you do this you realize how particular easy it is to not consume meat and still have a wonderful meal. This is why I wonder why people always try to negatively effect peoples behaviour. People tend to react in a better way on positive input on their behaviour. For instance if you tell a boy he can’t take any candy he will not like it. But if you give him a tasty vegetable snack he will thank you and gladly eat it. He will not even think about eating candy anymore. The same effect works on older people. If you show them how to eat vegetarian instead of saying they shouldn’t eat meat the effect is much bigger.

The question however is how do you show big groups of people how to eat vegetarian. This can obviously be done by cookbooks and television shows. But cookbooks have been there for years and cooking shows already often show how to cook vegetarian. This is why we should develop other ways to spread the message of becoming vegetarian. We could invent vegetarian festivals, we could pop-up more vegetarian snack bars, which will reduce the consuming of meat after nights out, and we could only serve vegetarian food in schools. Although all of these options sounds fun, there is one option that will be the most effective of them all. We should make use of advertisements.

Advertisements are used nowadays more than ever. At the exact moment I open my Facebook, advertising companies start bidding on if they can have the advertising space on my timeline. The winner of this bid will probably influence me a lot. This is how for instance the FVD ( a Dutch political party) got two seats in the parliament. They aimed at a certain group ( people age 20-35) and bought the advertisement space. It is incredible that Facebook an other multimedia websites make such a difference when it comes to voting. Our goal should be to use these same multimedia websites and apps to promote vegetarianism. This is what you thought the next sentence would be. But no, I don’t think we should promote total vegetarianism. We should promote to eat less meat. Lets say we promote people should eat meat 3 times per week. But if they eat meat they should eat really tasty and more expensive animal friendly meat. People can save the money for this kind of meat by not eating meat the other four days. This way the climate goes up, people enjoy their meat more and animals get a better life. In Meat, A Benign Extravaganza (2009) Simon Fairlie actually claims that we can have a sustainable way of eating meat. He claims that if we let cattle grass on lands we cannot use for other things, such as grass lands, and we use waste to feed animals like chickens and pigs, it is possible to produce meat in a sustainable animal friendly way. By doing this Fairlie claims that there will be 18 kilograms of meat per person per year. This means roughly 350 grams of meat per week, which is roughly 3 suppers and some meat on your bread. While I am a bit in doubt about these numbers, I still think it is an interesting concept to investigate. As it will probably be impossible to ban meat for everyone.

As I already expect some of the Stormers strongly disagree with me about eating meat I would like to say that I am not at all against vegetarians or vegans. I respect what you guys do and I think it is a good way of living. It is just that I lost my fate in mankind as a species when it comes to making everyone in the world become vegetarian or vegan. As I do want to help to fight climate change and animal abuse I think it is better to take on the meat problem step by step. Becoming vegetarian is really hard for most people, eating less meat is not.

Helge giezeman