FACT CHECK: The meat lobby has been up in arms since Oxfordshire County Council voted on Tuesday in favour of its historic plant-based meals motion, throwing about accusations of unfair treatment of those who choose to eat the body parts of dead animals. But is there any substance to their argument?

It’s been quite a week for plant-based food system campaigners, with Oxfordshire County Council voting on Tuesday to have only plant-based meals at their meetings and bring in more animal-free school meal options. But hasn’t it caused a lot of fuss from the other side, the animal farmers, meat lobbyists and disgruntled traditionalists?

Not least of all Oxfordshire Conservative Councillor David Bartholomew, who during the cabinet meeting ranted about the motion’s hidden vegan agenda and suggested that meat-eating should be a protected belief much like veganism. According to Claire Hamlett, who was there at the time reporting for Surge, Bartholomew said he didn’t want to be forced to “suck a lump of tofu”, kindly handing us the headline for this article on a delicious vegan platter.

This sentiment was of course mirrored by TV-presenter-turned-farmers-rights-activist Jeremy Clarkson, who harumphed at great length outside the chambers, resorted to name-calling and offered vegans the mashed potatoes off his shepherd’s pie, which is somewhat insulting to potato farmers (who stand to benefit greatly from plant-based initiatives). For more on Clarkson and the council motion, check out Surge co-director Ed Winter’s Instagram reel.

It’s always funny when vegans and plant-based environmentalists are called ‘woke’ or ‘snowflakes’ for pointing out genuine cases of discrimination, yet GB News - a TV and radio network that prides itself on not caring about others - saw fit to run an entire segment on Bartholemew’s assertion that the council motion had offended meat-eaters. They must have really thought they’d got one over on the snowflake generation.

Huge credit to animal rights activist Doug Maw - a former slaughterhouse worker, we might add - and Viva! UK’s campaign manager Laura-Lisa Hellwig for going up against Dan Wootton, host of Dan Wootton Tonight - whose over-the-top, crowd-pleasing hostility was like something out of a naff Christmas pantomime - and “the nation’s favourite animal harmer” Gareth Wyn Jones, presenter of the BBC’s The Family Farm.

Neither Wootton nor Jones seemed to grasp that the motion wasn’t actually a vegan one, based not on animal ethics but on environmental justice that just happened to result in meals that vegans would choose to eat. Yet that key distinction didn’t stop them from using all this as an opportunity to rile up the anti-vegan brigade. A pretty farcical viewer poll showed 94 per cent agreeing that Oxford council had discriminated against meat-eaters, hardly a useful survey although the fact that six per cent disagreed is actually quite encouraging given the GB News audience bias.

Anyway, to the question at hand: did Oxford council discriminate against meat-eaters? In a video posted to his YouTube channel, Doug Maw elaborated on a number of points he and Laura had attempted to make during the GB News debate but were mostly shouted down.

To summarise, Maw pointed out that a plant-based menu is actually the only truly inclusive one because people who are lactose intolerant or abstain from certain animal products due to religious reasons, and indeed anyone, can eat vegan-friendly food. Furthermore, Maw pointed out that plant-based options are all too scarce, meaning that those who choose to eat ethically or with the lowest carbon footprint are somewhat marginalised. Wootton’s point made to the contrary during the debate, that simply adding some plant-based options was enough to make the menu fully inclusive, holds little water when such options are always in the minority and so deprive large sections of society from most of any menu.

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However, in the case of religion - specifically the Islamic faith - many followers believe the rejection of any food provided by Allah (except from pigs, of course) is in itself haram (forbidden and against the word of the Quran). This isn’t a universal interpretation, but there is enough belief in it to cause problems for young Muslims who choose to go plant-based.

There are many arguments for and against Bartholemew’s assertion, but cases of discrimination can only truly be decided in court. In 2020, Jordi Casamitjana brought a landmark discrimination case against former employer League Against Cruel Sports who he claimed sacked him because of his veganism. He of course won, resulting in ethical veganism being formally recognised, for the first time, as a protected philosophical belief under UK law.

Whether the same could be achieved for meat-eating depends on the legal test for discrimination, although an earlier 2019 case concerning the protection of vegetarianism - which crucially allows for eggs and dairy products - is somewhat telling. Consider this from Jess Swallow, a solicitor with Advocates for Animals and author of Surge’s upcoming report on discrimination against vegans in the workplace:

“Interestingly, in a case which considered whether vegetarianism was capable of protection under the law, the same judge who heard the Casamitjana case considered that it was not. 

“This was largely based on the fact that vegetarianism is a dietary choice and there is a wide range of reasons why a person might follow a particular diet (such as lifestyle, health or moral considerations), whereas vegans (specifically, ethical vegans) by definition have a shared belief system that it is wrong to consume or exploit animals unnecessarily.

“Their diet is simply a consequence of that belief system, which they hold in common with all other vegans.”

If we apply this reasoning to meat consumption, it would have to be argued that eating dead body parts, eggs or secretions is part of a shared belief system that holds that it is in fact right to exploit nonhuman animals. 

There are of course many who would attest to holding this belief, but without any sort of formalised faith or coherent philosophy, this seems difficult to argue in court. So agrees Dr Jeanette Rowley, a leading authority on veganism and law and founder of the Vegan Society’s International Rights Network: “I prefer to point out to meat-eaters that they need to meet the legal test which is clearly difficult without a supporting religious element.”

Without wishing to give the other side too many hints or trivialise too much, imagine a world in which ‘carnism’ was actually an organised faith or at least a ‘genuinely held belief’ - one of several legal tests derived from European Court of Human Rights case-law (which still has relevance to us in the UK post-Brexit). Stranger things have happened.

As with any legal case, it boils down to the arguments presented, the analysis of the court and the eventual ruling. So while we can speculate and joke, we wouldn’t have an answer until an actual case or perhaps an appeal against the Oxford council motion was heard in court. Cases take time, effort and money to launch, or solicitors willing to work pro bono, but given that the meat lobby is choosing to view the Oxfordshire motion as a “dangerous precedent” and a knock-on domino effect seems likely as plant-based initiatives are normalised, it strikes us as only a matter of time before such a case is heard as a push-back against the vegan revolution.

Andrew Gough is Media and Investigations Manager for Surge.

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