The New American
By Selwyn Duke
In the 19th century, European immigrants might write home a letter including something such as the following. “Dear Uncle Maarten, it’s unbelievable: Here in America, I can eat meat every day!” Such a lifestyle was unheard of in the Old World. And now there may be the 21st-century version of this incredulity. It goes something like this:
“Dear Uncle Maarten, it’s unbelievable: Here in America, I see meat advertisements every day!”
This isn’t so far-fetched now that Amsterdam, Holland, has just banned the advertising of all meat products. This comes on the heels, too, of another story about the “War on Meat.” In that case, cited were two “bioethics” professors who suggested spreading ticks whose bite can cause a severe meat allergy. (Yes, really.) Insofar as drug capital Amsterdam goes, however, meat is not the only target. As The Independent reported Monday:
Amsterdam has become the first capital city in the world to ban public advertising for both meat and fossil fuel products.
Adverts for burgers, petrol cars, and airlines have been removed from billboards, tram shelters, and metro stations from 1 May.
The ban, approved by the city council on 22 January following a proposal by the GreenLeft and Party for the Animals parties, covers advertising for air travel, cruises, and petrol-powered cars alongside meat products.
Politicians behind the move say it is about aligning Amsterdam’s public spaces with its own environmental targets — carbon neutrality by 2050 and halving local meat consumption over the same period.
“The climate crisis is very urgent,” said Anneke Veenhoff of the GreenLeft Party. “If you want to be leading in climate policies and you rent out your walls to exactly the opposite, then what are you doing?”
… On meat, the memo describes excessive consumption of animal products as “harmful to the environment and generally undesirable from an animal welfare perspective”. The council draws an explicit parallel with tobacco regulation, calling the ban “comparable to a ban on tobacco advertising: a visible discouragement policy in public spaces.”
…
The New American 
Be First to Comment