26.okt apples!

The French Government Outlaws Vegetarianism in Schools

Whoever believes that animals are not ours to eat is now in France a second-class citizen.

EUROPEAN VEGETARIAN UNION - PRESS RELEASE

14 October 2011

A governmental order issued on October 2, 2011(1) has determined that all meals served in school canteens in France must contain animal products, and that meat and fish will be served at a certain minimum frequency. This implies that by law from now on no vegetarian can eat at any public or private school in France.

Six million schoolchildren are now forced to eat animal flesh, whether they wish to or not. For many families lunch at home is not an option. At best, a vegetarian student will be allowed to leave the meat on the plate, and consequently suffer from inadequate and imbalanced meals.

Following a law voted last year by the French Parliament(2), similar decrees will be taken shortly regarding almost all forms of catering from kindergarten to hospital, prisons and retirement homes. Vegetarianism will then have effectively been banned for a large part of the population.

These measures ostensibly aim at ensuring the nutritional quality of the meals. Animal flesh is imposed as the only source of good quality protein and iron and dairy products as the only sources of calcium, in disregard of the fact that all these nutrients can be obtained in adequate quantity and quality from plant and mineral sources. The internationally recognized fact that: appropriately planned vegetarian diets, including total vegetarian or vegan diets, are healthful, nutritionally adequate, and may provide health benefits in the prevention and treatment of certain diseases [and that] well-planned vegetarian diets are appropriate for individuals during all stages of the life cycle, including pregnancy, lactation, infancy, childhood, and adolescence, and for athletes(3) is flatly ignored.

No practical considerations warrant a blanket prohibition of vegetarianism even in those canteens where the management is willing to offer vegetarian or vegan alternatives. These decrees are thus an arbitrary violation of the rights of the vegetarian citizens of France.
The European Vegetarian Union wishes to point out that the decision that many citizens have taken not to eat animals is not a mere dietary whim or a nonconsequential choice of lifestyle, but follows, for many of them, from deeply held beliefs about the way animals should be treated. A democratic government cannot arbitrarily restrict the beliefs of its citizens nor the practice thereof. The Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, which is binding on member states including France, holds that: Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion. This right includes freedom to change religion or belief and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or in private, to manifest religion or belief, in worship, teaching, practice and observance.(4)

The public debate regarding animal rights and the moral status of animals is active in France as in many other countries. Citizens are entitled to choose freely where they stand on these issues, and those who believe that they cannot, in conscience, accept to eat animals must not be discriminated against.

A government cannot settle a philosophical, ethical and political debate by restricting the rights of those who disagree with its own positions. For years, the official policy of the French government has been openly hostile to vegetarianism.(5) The French agriculture minister, Bruno Lemaire, declared in January 2010 that the government's aim in determining its public nutritional policy was to defend the French agricultural model and specifically to counter initiatives such as those of Paul McCartney calling for a reduced consumption of meat.(6)

The European Vegetarian Union demands that the recent governmental orders outlawing vegetarianism in school canteens be rescinded and that the French government respect the civil rights of its vegetarian citizens.

Renato Pichler
President
European Vegetarian Union
Niederfeldstrasse 92, CH-8408 Winterthur
Fax: +41 (0)71 477 33 78
www.euroveg.eu / president@euroveg.eu


Footnotes:
1. Décret n° 2011-1227 du 30 septembre 2011; arrêté du 30 septembre 2011.
2. "Law for the modernization of agriculture and fisheries", published on July 27, 2010.
3. Position statement of the American Dietetic Association
4. Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, article 10.1
5.An example is the site mangerbouger.fr, where the only nutritional advice given to a teenager contemplating becoming a vegan is "By all means, do not follow that diet!" (www.mangerbouger.fr/pro/IMG/pdf/guide_adolescents-2.pdf, page 11).
6. http://tinyurl.com/FlashLeFigaro

http://www.evana.org/index.php?id=67865

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Talongihind tõusis 20 senti, mis tähendab, et pikema jutuga saab vee asemele mahla. Üleüldse võiks tasuta piimaga samal ajal olla tasuta mahl neile, kes piima ei joo.

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You’re Paying More for Meat than You Think

The meat industry is a powerful economic and political force, and besides spending millions of its own dollars to promote meat-eating, it has also managed to grab an unfair share of our tax dollars. Practically speaking, the meat production process is so wasteful and costly that the industry must be subsidized to survive. Most people are unaware of how heavily national governments support the meat industry with outright grants, favorable loan guarantees, and purchases of its surplus products, which are often destroyed. The price tag of those government subsidies shows up in the health of our children. In 2003 the U.S.’s National School Lunch Program gave schools more than 6 billion dollars to offer low-cost meals to students. That sounds like charity, but the National School Lunch Program was originally designed to serve two purposes: to provide healthy meals to children regardless of income, and to subsidize agribusiness by „shoring up demand for beef“. In light of all the health hazards of a meat-based diet, what is this doing to our children, and to families who have little choice but to accept the subsidized lunches?

These days, the federal government purchases more than $800 million worth of mostly meat and dairy products each year and delivers them to schools to serve to their students. Altought the federal government is supposed to purchase all farm products – grains, vegetables, and fruits, as well as meat and dairy – it tends to make its purchases in direct response to lobbying. In 2001, the USDA spent a total of $350 million on surplus beef and other meat products for schools – more than double what it spent on fruits and vegetables (most of which were canned or frozen). Jennifer Raymond, a nutritionist who has worked with schools to develop healthier menus, states, „Basically, it’s a welfare program for suppliers ... It’s a price support program for agricultural producers, and the schools are simply a way to get rid of the items that have been purchased.“ The money to run this „welfare program“ comes out of tax dollars.And citizens are also left with their schildren’s health bill, as parents now battle such previously rare problems as schildhood obesity, heart disease, Type II diabetes, and all the other once adult problems that go along with a high-cholesterol, high-saturated-fat diet.

More tax dollars go down the drain in the form of the millions of dollars the U.S. government spends each year to maintain a nationwide network of inspectors to monitor the little-publicized problem of animal diseases. When diseased animals are destroyed, the government pays the owners an indemnity. A New York Times editorial called this subsidy bill „outrageous,“ characterizing it as „a scandalous steal out of the public treasury. „Nowadays, governments around the developed world pay farmers for their „mad cows.“ In 2001 alone, the UK government paid out over 91 million pounds sterling for „mad cows,“ and other governments have had similar bills.

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