One other assumption that jumps out to me (represented in your model under “School meals affected per year (190 days)”)
If I recall correctly, HSUS in the US originally sought Meatless Monday commitments, but found that many school districts, etc., that committed, didn’t actually reduce their purchasing that much (or at all) - they ended up just making their normal orders for meat, and added some veg stuff on top of that. This likely meant that these districts ended up serving more meat on non-Mondays. So, they changed their ask to a “20% overall reduction in meat purchases”. This might mean the effectiveness is unfortunately a bit lower, if this is generally the case (though for HSUS it was for US school districts, so purchasing might work differently in the UK).
I wonder if there are a lot of low-hanging fruit for these campaigns around the world. I imagine there are a fair number of local animal advocacy groups who are really well positioned to do this advocacy, and my impression is that some of these might be really easy to get to change—e.g. a teacher in a district having a few conversations with the right people and bringing them some information.
That’s a great point and one that I actually hadn’t thought of. As we’ve been asking for this commitment on the basis on helping councils meet their climate targets and lower their catering costs, not actually purchasing less meat would be shooting themselves in the foot! Although I could definitely see some variation of this happening (e.g. purchasing 10% less vs 20% less). I’ll mention it to ProVeg in our meeting this week and will see if they’ve had similar issues in the past or if they’ve considered this. Thanks for flagging it!
Regarding your second point - I definitely agree. I’m actually attending a workshop of teachers who want to see more plant-based meals in school this weekend so the goal is to inspire them to do something similar! The only challenge is that it’s extremely difficult to export something like this to a different country as laws and governance structures are so varied. People from Sweden and Portugal have said they’re interested and want to try it but there really isn’t many ways we can support them from the UK as we have no idea how those countries operate. But as your article shows, it really can be very straightforward if you happen to talk to someone who is already sympathetic.
This is great! Thanks for the write up!
One other assumption that jumps out to me (represented in your model under “School meals affected per year (190 days)”)
If I recall correctly, HSUS in the US originally sought Meatless Monday commitments, but found that many school districts, etc., that committed, didn’t actually reduce their purchasing that much (or at all) - they ended up just making their normal orders for meat, and added some veg stuff on top of that. This likely meant that these districts ended up serving more meat on non-Mondays. So, they changed their ask to a “20% overall reduction in meat purchases”. This might mean the effectiveness is unfortunately a bit lower, if this is generally the case (though for HSUS it was for US school districts, so purchasing might work differently in the UK).
I wonder if there are a lot of low-hanging fruit for these campaigns around the world. I imagine there are a fair number of local animal advocacy groups who are really well positioned to do this advocacy, and my impression is that some of these might be really easy to get to change—e.g. a teacher in a district having a few conversations with the right people and bringing them some information.
Thanks for the feedback, that’s much appreciated!
That’s a great point and one that I actually hadn’t thought of. As we’ve been asking for this commitment on the basis on helping councils meet their climate targets and lower their catering costs, not actually purchasing less meat would be shooting themselves in the foot! Although I could definitely see some variation of this happening (e.g. purchasing 10% less vs 20% less). I’ll mention it to ProVeg in our meeting this week and will see if they’ve had similar issues in the past or if they’ve considered this. Thanks for flagging it!
Regarding your second point - I definitely agree. I’m actually attending a workshop of teachers who want to see more plant-based meals in school this weekend so the goal is to inspire them to do something similar! The only challenge is that it’s extremely difficult to export something like this to a different country as laws and governance structures are so varied. People from Sweden and Portugal have said they’re interested and want to try it but there really isn’t many ways we can support them from the UK as we have no idea how those countries operate. But as your article shows, it really can be very straightforward if you happen to talk to someone who is already sympathetic.