Haarlem in the Netherlands wants to become the first city in the world to ban public displays for meat

No more public billboards promoting hamburgers for fast food chains. No more posters on buses or in bus shelters to encourage the consumption of beef or any other meat. All this will be prohibited from 2024 in this city of 160,000 inhabitants, which bequeathed its name to the famous district of Harlem in New York. The Dutch Haarlem, very close to Amsterdam, is also known for its canals and its paintings by Franz Hals.

The will of its municipal council to prohibit any public display encouraging the consumption of meat is therefore a world first. Neighboring Amsterdam had already banned advertisements for air travel or fossil fuel automobiles. But the meat is unprecedented. The green party Groenlinks, behind this decision, received the support of the Christian Democrats to have this resolution adopted. The ecologists point out that this is in no way a ban on consumption but only an incentive to do so less. Because, they say, one side cannot say “there is a climate crisis”and on the other encourage people to buy products that are partly responsible for this situation.

It is obviously not unanimous, to say the least. Right-wing and far-right parties denounce a measure “dictatorial”, the embodiment of punitive ecology. They also see it as a threat to freedom of enterprise and to the powerful pork production sector in the Netherlands. And they are already announcing legal action, particularly on the grounds of freedom of expression. The association of meat producers obviously also expresses its disagreement and considers that this measure “going much too far”. In addition, this decision by the municipality of Haarlem comes at the precise moment when the producers have just launched, by unfortunate coincidence, an advertising campaign to promote their products.

The real impact of meat production on global warming has been estimated by the UN. This represents almost 15% of global greenhouse gas emissions. There are emissions directly linked to production (emissions of carbon dioxide and methane), and indirect effects linked, for example, to fertilizers or deforestation to develop soybean crops intended to feed animals. The Greenpeace association gives another statistic: according to it, if the European Union wants to achieve its objective of carbon neutrality in 2050, we must divide our annual meat consumption by three, from 80 kg to 24 kg. It is therefore possible that the initiative taken by Haarlem will be emulated in other European cities.