16 Dec. Become a Beefatarian: EU advertising campaign goes against the Green Deal
The European Commission is providing 3.6 million euros to support the "Become a Beefatarian" campaign. The explicit aim of the campaign is to promote the sale of European beef in particular.
We finally need to turn to sustainable, organic farming if we want to stop destroying our planet, inflicting further suffering on animals and endangering our health!
Manuela Ripa, MEP of the Ecological Democratic Party (ÖDP), is outraged by this approach of the EU Commission: "Such a campaign is absolutely misleading for consumers, poisonous for our climate ambitions and animal cruelty supported by the EU. In order to achieve the goals of the Green Deal, especially the climate goals, meat consumption in the EU must fall by 71 percent by 2030. A campaign like this has exactly the opposite effect!" In particular, the Farm to Fork Strategy, a key element of the European Green Deal, cannot be reconciled with such an advertising campaign: "The Farm to Fork Strategy clearly states that our food system should have a neutral or positive impact on our environment - so we don't need more meat consumption, we need less."
Together with other MEPs, Manuela Ripa has written a letter to EU Health Commissioner Stella Kyriakides and EU Environment Commissioner Janusz Wojciechowski to ensure that EU funds are not used for campaigns that go against the objectives of the European Union.
In addition to the negative climate effects, increased meat production is directly linked to high nitrate pollution of drinking water, soil depleted by animal feed production, causes serious problems with antibiotic-resistant germs from factory farming and causes additional animal suffering. "We finally need to turn to sustainable, organic farming if we don't want to continue to destroy our planet, inflict further suffering on animals and endanger our health," Manuela Ripa concludes.