Great News: Los Angeles Adopts Meatless Monday

It may have done it partly for the wrong reasons (combat climate change) but partly, and importantly, for the right reasons (animal welfare and also human health).

It is great that on October 24 this resolution was adopted: "the Council of the City of Los Angeles hereby declares all Mondays as 'Meatless Mondays' in support of comprehensive sustainability efforts as well as to further encourage residents to eat a more varied plant-based diet to protect their health and
protect animals."

It is very, very good that, before this declaration, several Californian and US colleges and universities had added Meatless Monday menus in their cafeterias; in Maryland the Baltimore City Public School System had become the first US school district to adopt a 100% Meatless Monday policy in 2009, followed by other school districts in the States; the Council of the District of Columbia had designated Mondays as "Meat Free Mondays"; the City of San Francisco had designated every Monday as "Veg Day"; the Green Cincinnati Plan had recommended going meatless one day a week; and a growing number of American cities had passed "resolutions encouraging residents to explore vegetarian eating to help
protect their health, the environment, and animals".

Los Angeles has now become the largest city in the US to sign a Meatless Monday resolution.

The U.S. Meatless Monday campaign was launched in 2003 in association with the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Now the "cut out meat one day a week" program is active in 24 countries and growing.

A great number of celebrities are participating in the Meatless Mondays campaign: the picture above shows a collage of some of them.

To start Meatless Monday in your city, download the free Meatless Monday Community Toolkit.

Catholics already have a meatless day, Friday, and have been abstaining from meat on that day for centuries. This is to commemorate the day of the Crucifixion of Our Lord.

Some Catholics, like the blog Maxine, have proposed that the meatless day should be changed to Friday. I understand the rationale behind Meatless Monday: it is the beginning of the week, so we want to start it well, on the right foot. But I also understand the Catholics who say that they

believe it would be a nice gesture (changing Meatless Monday to Meatless Friday) that would allow our society to be on the same page - even if we are doing much of the same thing for different reasons.

It would be a good thing, bringing together people from different viewpoints, making Catholics nearer vegetarianism and vegetarians nearer Catholicism: both good perspectives on life.

Don't forget that Jesus banned animal sacrifices and Christianity is one of the very few religions that do not practice animal sacrifices.