From Vox:

“Animal agriculture accounts for around 15 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions — yet lawmakers largely ignore it when crafting policy to combat climate change.”

“That neglect extends to the food industry more broadly, which for a long time has paid even less attention to its emissions than the energy or transport sectors. But as big fast food chains, grocers, and food manufacturers roll out sustainability plans, some are specifically committing to increasing and promoting their plant-based offerings, which are much less carbon-intensive than conventional meat and dairy products.”

Here come the big guns:

“Panera Bread kicked things off two years ago when it announced in January 2020 that it would make half of its menu plant-based in several years, up from 25 percent vegetarian at the time. Earlier this month, Burger King UK went a step further by announcing a plan to make its menu 50 percent plant-based by 2030 as a way to achieve its goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 41 percent by 2030. And this week, McDonald’s announced plans to trial its McPlant burger made with Beyond Meat in 600 San Francisco and Dallas-Fort Worth area locations starting February 14.”

KFC too has plant-based “chicken” rolling out currently in the US which apparently tastes terrifyingly like chicken, but the texture is still a bit different.

In the end, the goal (for sentient life to continue on the planet) is to have animal production and sales decrease gradually:

“While it’s hard to imagine governments taking bold action in the near future — if ever — to reduce meat and dairy production, there are rumblings. The Dutch government has introduced a $28.3 billion, 13-year proposal to pay farmers to stop raising animals, raise fewer animals, or relocate their herds, all in an effort to reduce animal manure pollution by reducing the number of pigs, chickens, and cows by a third. Several governments have even entertained imposing a meat tax, though the politics of that are extremely challenging.”

I’ll bet.

An intermediate strategy:

“One intermediate strategy grocers and other food companies could use to increase plant-based purchasing — given they’re not likely to reduce animal product availability anytime soon, if ever — is what Pyett calls “choice architecture,” or changing the environments where people eat and purchase foods.”

One example: In France, at Monoprix supermarkets, there are at least two brands of grated non-cheese cheese that have been slipped right in to the middle of the extremely long cheese aisle recently. One is “mozzarella” and the other is “cheddar”.

The former is the exact colour and consistency of cheap emmental. This is not exactly a high standard for cheese, but I’d bet you’d not realise it wasn’t cheap-n-cheerful emmental unless someone told you. It smells like cheese too. Have yet to melt it yet to see what happens.

Will try the cheddar next.

The most surprising thing with these two non-cheese cheeses was that they were cheaper than nearly all of the cheeses around them. No vegetarian/vegan “mark-up”, which tends to be how things go in big supermarkets.

Be brave, test one, and get back to me!

[Cover photo credit: Angela Weiss/AFP via Getty Images]