SAN FRANCISCO—The City Board of Supervisors passed a vote on August 11 to reduce the consumption of animal products significantly in jails and public hospitals in the city of San Francisco.
The passed vote’s content should be as follows; jails must reduce consumption of animal products including meat, eggs, and dairy by 50 percent by 2024, and public hospitals, including Zuckerberg General and Laguna Honda, must reduce it by 15 percent by 2023, according to SF Weekly.
This vote was conducted in response to animal rights and environmental NPOs and local businesses including Compassionate Bay, Direct Action Everywhere – DxE, the NRDC, Teamsters’ Joint Council No 7, Farm Forward, the Center for Good Food Purchasing, 100+ local physicians and nurses, 350SF Stop Climate Change, and Citizens Climate Lobby: San Francisco, said Compassionate Bay on Facebook. On 8 August 2019, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change stated in the special report that plant-based diets would be a major opportunity for mitigating and adapting to climate change. According to the nature’s article, Hans-Otto Pörtner, a chair of the IPCC’s working group on impacts, adaptation, and vulnerability said “it would indeed be beneficial, for both climate and human health, if people in many rich countries consumed less meat, and if politics would create appropriate incentives to that effect.”
Sandra Lee Fewer, who is a member of the SF Board of Supervisors said “People will look back in 20 years and say, ‘Wow, I can’t believe that we were eating all this meat”, as meat’s saturated fat is said to have bad impact on human health, according to SF Weekly. Doctor Saray Stancic, MD, made a documentary called Code Blue about the need to switch hospital food containing animal products to plant-based for the health of patients and doctors. She reflects her own experience of recovering from her multiple sclerosis diagnosis by changing her life-style including food.
The new law is waiting for Mayor London Breed’s approval. Compassionate Bay commented, “This is just the start.” The Supervisor who introduced this said at the first hearing on the measure: “I do think, and I hope, that we get to 100%.”
