"Meatfree Monday" at Tel Aviv University

Change Begins at Our Plate

                                      Tel Aviv University students joined their peers in Oxford, Harvard, UCLA, Columbia and dozens of other universities in the international campaign to have a vegetarian day once a week. This campaign is led by celebrities Paul McCartney, Yoko Ono and others, along with climate scientists and public health
institutions.

                                       During a colourful event to launch "Meatfree Monday", hundreds of vegetarian meals were handed, free of charge, to students: among them smoked tofu appetisers, seitan (wheat gluten) shawarma, soya goulash and an Indian legume dish. Most university cafeterias joined this initiative, and undertook to encourage students to buy veggie dishes and also serve a special veggie dish each Monday. The event took place two days after the international "meatout" day (Meatout celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2010).
During their breaks, students were able to attend quickie-lectures on the links between steaks and rainforest destruction.
 

                                        Prof. Dan Rabinowitz, former president of "Life and Environment", the Israel Union of Environmental NGOs, said: "Changing our eating habits, such as suggested by "Meatfree Monday", is the simplest and most effective way for each of us to help, quite without effort, the global campaign aimed at stopping climate change."

Background:

                                       A special UN report, Livestock's Long Shadow, exposed in 2006 that the animal-based food industry is the leading contributor to global warming. According to that report, the animal-based food industry is responsible for 18% of GHG emissions, more than all means of transport (planes, cars and ships combined). Renowned research institute Worldwatch even claimed that according to calculations also taking into account the fish and meat processing industries as well as other aspects of farm animal husbandry, the industry's GHG emissions reach about 51% of total emissions. The UN report also showed that 70% of the South American rainforests were destroyed in order to clear land for cattle grazing, and that a large proportion of the rest is used for fodder production. The animal-based food industries also seem to be the main contributor to reducing biological variety (i.e. causing various animal species to become extinct), due to their contribution to forest destruction, air pollution and land and water pollution with animal excretions, antibiotics and hormones.
 

                                        About 18 months ago, Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), called for a reduction of meat consumption. During a controversial speech in London, Dr. Pachauri showed data according to which a single day of vegetarian eating is equal to taking 5 million cars off British roads. In Israeli terms, this equals to taking half a million (!) cars off our roads.
 

                                        Leading world environmentalists, alongside celebrities such as Paul McCartney and Yoko Ono, took that cause and started an international campaign called "Meat Free Monday". Whole cities have already joined this campaign (Ghent and Hasselt in Belgium, Sao Paulo in Brazil, Bremen in Germany), as well as dozens of leading universities (among them Oxford, Harvard, UCLA and Columbia). During the summer of 2009, dozens of Israeli restaurants joined the "Meatfree Monday" campaign run by "Al HaShulchan" food magazine. Israeli environmental activists now wish to see public institutions joining this campaign.
Tel Aviv University is the first public institution in Israel to join the campaign.