Edmonton City Council faces divisive vote on whether to make all of its catered meals vegan or vegetarian

nationalpost.com
July 6, 2015
By Elise Stolte

A debate over vegetarian food is threatening to split Edmonton’s city council as they confront a new request from the youth.

“Most of us said, ‘What the heck?’” said Coun. Tony Caterina, surprised at a formal motion from Edmonton’s youth council that asks councillors to make all their catered meals vegan or vegetarian because of the impact reducing meat consumption typically has on water use, land use and carbon emissions.

In practice, the change would be small - eliminating an occasional meat and cheese platter served on full council days several times a year.

But as a public statement in historically pro-beef Alberta, a yes vote would be significant.

“It’s a huge step,” said Kelly Struthers Montford, a PhD candidate studying food politics and meat-eating culture at the University of Alberta. She advised the youth councillors when they voted to make their monthly meals vegan.

“This is a very political issue in terms of what Alberta understands itself to be,” she said, pointing to backlash from the beef lobby when Calgary Mayor Al Duerr lent his support for Vegetarian Month in 1995. Pressure forced him to rescind his proclamation just four days later.

When Alberta’s country star k.d. lang appeared in a anti-meat commercial, dozens of radio stations banned her songs, the agriculture minister of the day said he felt betrayed and hate-mongers defaced k.d. lang signs in her home town of Consort, Alta.

But Edmonton isn’t Consort or even Calgary.

Coun. Andrew Knack said he’ll vote for the motion. Past councils have already voted not to use bottled water in City Hall and to serve fair trade coffee.

“This makes a small change, but a big impact for sustainability,” he said. The motion is not asking people to become vegan or vegetarian, but simply to reduce meat consumption by a little bit. “To me, it’s a really small change,” Knack said. “If everyone did that, what does that look like?”

Knack sits as an adviser on the youth council, an appointed group of 16 Edmonton residents between the age of 13 and 23. The motion originated with heir sustainability committee but was passed by the full council unanimously.

“My first reaction hearing this debate was, ‘Really? This is important?’” Knack said. But that’s the point of the youth council. They bring issues that are important to them, even if they aren’t on the radar for elected councillors.

Marina Banister, chair of the youth council’s sustainability committee, said eating meat has far larger environmental consequences than most people realize.

To produce a hamburger, the farming industry first has to grow enough grain to raise the cow. That means serving beef, particularly when the cow been raised on grain in a feedlot, requires more water and land than serving grain and bean-based options.

Fertilizer and manure run-off can also pollute streams and rivers, and increased methane from livestock is a potent greenhouse gas, she said. It has to be a nuanced debate because eating almonds grown during a drought in California or a mango shipped from halfway around the world also has implications. But as a general principle, reducing meat is a good environmental choice.

“The vast majority of meat sold in grocery stores is factory farm meat,” said Banister, a 20-year-old political science student. “This is a very small change that has a big impact...It’s not that meat eating is terrible. It’s that having less meat in your diet reduces your environmental impact.”