A popular British children’s TV show, Blue Peter, has been criticised for encouraging children to eat less meat in a climate change challenge.
Children’s TV show, Blue Peter, has come under attack from parents and meat farmers after the show was accused of encouraging children to stop eating meat.
Blue Peter offered green badges to viewers in exchange for taking a pledge to go vegetarian for two weeks as part of a climate change challenge. The challenge also encouraged sports teams to take the pledge by reducing their energy use and using recycled water bottles. The green badges are meant as an incentive to encourage Blue Peter’s young viewers to live sustainably.
Upset parents claimed that Blue Peter failed to give kids a “balanced view” of the impact meat has on climate change. Claiming that sustainable meat farming and consumption can be climate neutral.
“The evidence is absolutely clear that vegan diets are much more environmentally friendly on average than diets containing animal products.”
However, this is not true. Research from Oxford University, conducted in 2018, showed that if more people switched from a meat diet to a vegan diet, we could reduce the amount of land used for farming animals by 76{85424e366b324f7465dc80d56c21055464082cc00b76c51558805a981c8fcd63}, it could help cut greenhouse gas emissions by 49{85424e366b324f7465dc80d56c21055464082cc00b76c51558805a981c8fcd63} and it would reduce its scarcity weighted freshwater use by 19{85424e366b324f7465dc80d56c21055464082cc00b76c51558805a981c8fcd63}..
Senior campaigns and policy officer at the Vegan Society, Tim Thorpe said: ‘Many current animal farmers object to the notion that plant-based diets have a lower environmental impact. However, this is a well-studied topic and the evidence is absolutely clear that vegan diets are much more environmentally friendly on average than diets containing animal products.”