Vegtember: Climate Solidarity Project

Ralph Ferrett (Plymouth and East Cornwall) and former Chair of the YAC is engaging in a personal project as part of the YAC Climate Solidarity Action group. His Project is to give up eating meat for a month.

Ralph explained everything about the project on his Personal Blog http://lunchtimelegend.co.uk which is reproduced below. :-

"So what is Vegtember then? Put simply it is a Vegetarian September, Why? Well my union the CWU is part of a green project called Climate Solidarity. This is a coalition of a number of Trade Unions which includes the PCS, the NUT, the UCU, ourselves and the charity COIN. The idea is to set up a number of climate change action groups in which individuals will look to reduce their personal carbon footprint at home or at work.

The CWU's national youth committee is one such action group, and as a result I needed to come up with an idea for what I was going to do. Based on the "Meat Free Mondays", recently espoused By Caroline Lucas of the Green party; I decided to do something around eating less meat. To make it a bit more interesting rather than just not eating meat once a week I decided that I was going to give up meat for the whole of September. I will document my experiences here at Lunchtime Legend, and also with V-Blogs on my YouTube channel, which I will also post here. See the first of which below.

I am a massive carnivore, I love to eat meat and it features in almost all of the food that I cook. So I anticipate that this for me is going to be something of a big and difficult challenge. However it's a challenge that I am really looking forward to, I have no doubt that by the end of the month I will be absolutely jonesing for a bacon sandwich mind you!

Despite not having any problems with people eating meat, and not being in any way a conscience vegetarian, I do recognise that there are problems with the way we consume meat in Western Europe and North America. Meat production requires very intensive farming, considerable amounts of agricultural land, and associated problems that range from the ethical treatment of animals to the usage of antibiotics and genetic engineering.

I have no intention of giving up eating meat permanently, however in common with most people in the West I think for the good of the environment it would be better if I ate less.

I anticipate that there are likely to be other associated benefits from Vegtember. Firstly I imagine that my diet is likely to become a bit healthier, whilst many in of its self is not inherently unhealthy there are many ways in which it can be. Recent research shows that processed meat can have health implications if consumed too regularly, and things like sausages and bacon whilst delicious can be very fatty.

Additionally being able to eat meat sometimes makes me quite lazy about how I think about what I'm going to eat. Knowing that I can easily pick up some fast food, or bought lunches from the local supermarket or the canteen at work means I don't always prepare healthy lunches in the way I should. Fast food, and prepackaged convenience food is usually high in fat, sugar and salt and in all honesty it would be good for me to eat less of this.

Not what is normally in my shopping basket!

The other big benefit I am hoping to see is to save some money. In preparation for the start of Vegtember I went to buy a load of things I expect to use when cooking vegetarian food, I was amazed by the relative economy compared to my normal shop. And as I expect to be eating much less take away and convenience food I'm sure that I will necessarily save some money.

Clearly individuals will not be able to address the problems of climate change only by moderating individual behaviour. And I think it would be both wrong, and improper to somehow suggest that people are individually to blame. Individuals are unable to exercise influence into how our economies are organised, how our energy is generated, and how we move people around. But despite this individuals can be part of a movement to change. Our individual consumption levels of resources and carbon in the West is unsustainable. Projects like climate solidarity will look to help people move on to a more sustainable footing.

I hope that at the end of Vegtember I will have improved as a cook, lost a bit of weight, saved a lot of money and reduced my carbon footprint. And whilst I fully intend to go back to eating meat at the end of Vegtember my plan is that through the lessons I learn this month I will have a healthier and more balanced diet in which I do not consume as much meat.

I'd like to give an acknowledgement to James Ramsden, author of my favourite food blog, off whom I totally stole this idea (though he did it much more extreme than I intend to, going totally Vegan!).

P.S. I dont see how I can do this without using Nam Pla, so I won't be 100% kosher vegetarian unless someone can suggest to me a suitable vegetarian alternative."

Ralph will be writing regular content for CWUYouth.org about how Vegtember goes, and if you want more information on the "Climate Solidarity Project" then visit their website:-

http://www.climatesolidarity.org.uk/