World Meat Free Week

The History of World Meat Free Week

Meat-free days have been a part of many traditions and religions over the millennia. In Catholicism and Anglicanism, for example, believers are told they should avoid eating meat on Fridays, using this small act of deprivation to honor Jesus Christ, who they believe died for their sins on that day.

In fact, in the past English law stated that butchers and grocers were prohibited from slaughtering animals or selling meat on the weekly ‘fish days,’ which were Friday and Saturday.

Meatless days have also been created during times of war or other hardship due to the general shortage of foodstuffs, as a way of making what little meat there was last a little longer–the “Meatless Tuesdays” created in Canada during World War II are a good example of this, as were the meat-free days created in the People’s Republic of Poland in the eighties.

Today, the reasons for creating meat-free days are quite different, with the main reason being reduction of anthropogenic climate change and the improvement of human health and animal welfare.

So far, meat-free days have been endorsed by the city councils of various cities in countries around the globe, including Belgium, Brazil, Germany, South Africa and the U.S.A. The City of Los Angeles has declared all Mondays to be “Meatless Mondays”.

Schoolchildren in numerous private and public schools are served vegetarian dishes and adults are encouraged to eat vegetarian as well as a way of washing away the unhealthy choices presumably made on the weekend with a healthy start to the week.