Kitsilano butcher makes own statement on city’s first ‘Meatless Monday’
June 10, 2013 Bruce Constantineau, Vancouver Sun
While Vancouver celebrated its first official “Meatless Monday” to encourage people to go without meat one day a week, diligent butchers carved up a water buffalo carcass during a media event to promote the consumption of ethically-raised animals. The timing didn’t sit well with angry vegetarians.
“Someone tweeted that there’d be a butchering party here and I found that quite offensive,” said Sandy Currie, one of a handful of protesters who demonstrated outside West Broadway Meat Co. in Kitsilano. “You’d think that people who call themselves sustainable farmers would try to keep a low profile on this day.”
Julia Smith, an urban farmer who helped organize the event at the butcher’s, said local farmers and food industry workers only wanted to make a point, and had no intention of mocking the Meatless Monday message.
“We like the concept of eating less meat, but we want people to make more responsible choices year-round, not just on Mondays,” she said. “We should eat a lot more vegetables, and when we do eat meat, it should be in smaller portions. We should know where it came from, and it should be raised sustainably and ethically.”
The water buffalo in question was slaughtered last month after being raised on a 2.4-hectare farm in Chilliwack, where it foraged for food and was never given grain, antibiotics or pharmaceuticals of any kind.
Smith received a slew of angry calls on Monday
from what she called upset “vege-terrorists,”
some of whom apparently believed a false rumour that the water buffalo would be
paraded around Kitsilano before being slaughtered like the unsuspecting animal
in Apocalypse Now.
“A lot of people were upset and my partner didn’t come here because we were afraid to leave our animals at home today,” she said. Smith’s family operates a small farm in south Burnaby where they grow vegetables and raise chickens, ducks, geese and a pig. (& rabbits)
West Broadway Meat Co. head butcher Lorne McMillan said he wants people to know there is a better way to eat meat. “We don’t completely disagree with vegetarianism or Meatless Monday,” he said. “It’s about separating businesses like ours from the large factory farms out there. We need to get away from factory-farmed products because they’re horrible for people’s health.”
Smith said it was strictly a coincidence the media event happened on Meatless Monday, but was pleased it attracted so many observers, including protesters and journalists. “We really weren’t expecting this kind of turnout, but if it gets a conversation going, then it is totally worth it,” she said. Photo: Laura-Leah & Carmina
January
22, 2019
Canada's much anticipated new food guide was just released
and has received
a big makeover
from the previous version, which was published over 10 years ago in 2007. Gone
are the traditional four main food groups Canadians have seen in the food guide
for years, replaced instead by three categories: fruit and vegetables, whole
grains and protein foods.
https://food-guide.canada.ca/en/
Of note, too, is that unlike previous revisions of the food guide, industry lobby groups like meat and dairy, didn’t have an opportunity to meet one-on-one with Health Canada and instead had to submit their comments on the guiding principles along with the rest of the general public. That was a welcoming step forward!
Stigmatizing meat; Teaching Children a Separate Morality for Food Animals