City Of Ghent Goes Meatless On Thursdays
Print This Post
The citizens of Ghent, Belgium, are pledging to go veg every Thursday. And it began with a chef. Philippe van den Bulck, a gourmet vegetarian chef, served a veg meal to the City Council, thus adding the last bit of persuasion needed to encourage the council to vote in favor of Veggie Day.
To kick off the effort, which statistics show can have the same effect as taking half a million cars off the road, the city and EVA (Ethical Vegetarian Alternative) hosted a party. Food, recipes, lists of veg restaurants (of which Ghent has many) were handed out. Demonstrations were held.
Of course, the nay-sayers jumped in, commenting on this article with the usual inaccurate reasons this is such a bad idea. I, for one, plan to send information on this change to my own city council and to urge a similar action here. But first I’ll contact fellow veggies here to see if we might be able to make a coordinated effect. My city is small but is in the heart of farm country, so fresh produce is readily available. It is also a fairly forward-thinking city – the first in the U.S. to outlaw smoking not only in restaurants but in bars. Worth a shot, I say!
Photo from Council of European Municipalities and Regions
Hehe, yeah I posted this before: http://www.vegansoapbox.com/meatless-one-day-a-week/
But I think you’ve got a good idea about trying to get SLO to do it. It will take some serious effort, but it’s worth a try.
I do usually read all the soapbox articles, or at least scan them. I must have thought that one was just a suggestion.
Again I am proud to be a belgian :p I wrote a post about it as well on my blog some time ago. I have used the original news sources of the belgian vegetarian union in that blog. For those who are interested in what is going on in Ghent:
http://empathyforanimals.blogspot.com/2009/05/belgian-city-goes-meatless-for-one-day.html
There were a lot of naysayers in belgium too. Mostly because the schools will serve meatless on thursday, and some idiots started protesting on blogs, forums and through letters to the editors of newspapers, because we were ‘imposing our views’ on children, how abnormal it is not to eat meat, and the other usual rubbish. The newspapers even held national polls because of it…we didn’t came out too well as far as I remember. There was a big fuss about it. Needless to say: the critizism was far out there (references to the soviet union and other stupid nonsense)…It has died done by now. In the end, most people do seem to agree that it is a good initiative. I hope other cities will follow, and I am very proud that my country is taking the lead in this.
~ Recent blog post: Euthanizing animals: how change is coming ~