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Students from over 20 UK universities participated in a student-led outreach campaign, which was supported by Animal Rebellion, a climate justice and animal justice group. Students are urging universities to remove animal products from catering menus before the 2023-24 academic calendar.
Student activist Vaania Kapoor Anchuthan, 19, from University College London says that in order to ensure a sustainable future, major institutions like colleges and universities have a responsibility to move “towards 100% just and sustainable plant-based catering.” Achuthan and other students argue that universities choosing to include animal products in their cafeterias not only illustrates complicity in the climate crisis, but also makes it more difficult for them to reach their sustainability goals.
Despite the fact that there are a 2006 United Nations reportThe study found that animal agriculture was responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions than all transportation sectors. Progress has been slow in mitigating climate change’s impact on animal agriculture. At the moment, animal agriculture contributes 37. Percent of all greenhouse gases emissionsAlthough estimates vary, it is believed that. 65 percent of anthropogenic nitrogen oxide emissionsIt is the leading cause for deforestation worldwide. Livestock emissions are also a factor. 32 percent of methane emissions from human activitiesThey account for 30% of the global warming so far. The environmental justice group CimateNexusAccording to reports, greenhouse gasses could be reduced by half if people eat a plant-based diet. This is why these students are lobbying universities to remove meat from their menus.
Many universitiesAlready, they have begun to include sustainable development goals within their strategic goals. At the Berlin UniversitiesMany cafeterias are now switching to a majority of plant-based menus to meet their sustainability goals. In 2019, Berlin universities fed roughly 5.6 million meals to their students, and thus shifting to plant-based meals has the opportunity to have a large impact on the universities’ climate neutrality goals.
Over 100 student activists in the UK have been organizing outreach and education events since January. This was to inform students and faculty about the environmental costs of animal products. Students advocates have also reached over 500 people with their outreach campaigns. They lobby for policy changes that will make universities more accountable for their sustainability goals.
Policy motions to adopt the 100 percent plant-based on-campus catering by the 2023-24 academic year have been filed at University College London, King’s College London, The University of Warwick, Lancaster University, Coventry University, and The University of Sussex with over a dozen more anticipated to do the same. Students say that if universities refuses to file motions, they will resort directly to action tactics to force universities to account for their role in the climate crisis.
While Animal Rebellion’s “Plant-Based Universities” campaignIt is a social-justice driven campaign that joins other divestment campaigns such the The Real Food Challenge, Fossil-Free Campaign, prison divestmentCampaigns to reduce the negative effects of capitalism and the Anthropocene. Contrary to campaigns like the Real Food Challenge which is similarly university-based and student-run and food justice-oriented Animal Rebellion’sCampaign does more than work to reduce reliance on animal agriculture and substitute factory-farmed products. More ethical alternatives. Instead, students are asking their universities to divest from it completely in order to “secure a future, not only for their students, but for the rest of humanity, animals, and the planet.” This is especially important for universities not just because of the impact they as institutions have on the environment, but also because Many universities are failingto even reach their short-term environmental sustainability targets.
In the last few years, environmental issues have been a major topic of conversation. Institutions have failed to connect climate change with animal agriculture, despite hoards of evidence illustrating that the Western diet–notoriously heavy in meat and dairy–is one of the major Causesfor our current climate predicament. For example, the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference was attended by world leaders These topics were discussedDeforestation and carbon trading, financing of coal, methane gas polluting, and carbon trading were all factors. Menu. Notable: This was a reflection of the tone-deafness that was displayed in the decision not to serve meat at the conference Absence of the global food system’s environmental footprint in climate discussions. While governments have failed, Implement climate solutions relating to animal agriculture, universities’ decisions to offer animal products in their catering menus similarly illustrate the failure of institutions to extend their concept of sustainability to what we eat.
However, in order to accomplish sustainability goals, universities don’t just need to drop animal products from their menus. They should also listen to their students when they demand that universities abandon fossil fuels, prison-industrial complexes, and other violent structures.
Nathan McGovern, an Animal Rebellion volunteer believes that animal liberation and environmental justice are integral to the just and sustainable future the Plant-Based Universities campaign strives for.
“Human justice is climate justice,” says McGovern.
Vegan, food justice, environmental politics, and vegan movements must include a Consistent anti-oppression frameworkTo dismantle the Root causesOur current environmental dilemma is not our fault. To create a more equitable world, the climate and animal protection movements need to fight in solidarity with other movements for social change—movements against speciesism, movements against cisheteropatriarchy, and movements against white supremacy.
Animal Rebellion offers support to students in outreach training, social mobilisation tactics training, organizing and campaign blueprints. Students can find out more information about the campaign here. HereRegister now for the campaign Here.
