If it's Monday, from now on students dining in Baltimore Public Schools' cafeterias may notice one thing missing -- meat in their school lunches. System's (BCPSS) cafeterias. That's thanks in large part to Tony Geraci, BCPSS's director of food and nutrition services, who recently unveiled the school district's first "Meatless Mondays."
The decision to go with a vegetarian menu on Mondays has earned the school district PETA's Proggy Award for Most Progressive Public School District of 2009. "Proggy" is for "progress."
"As soon as we heard, we wanted to encourage it because it's a huge step forward in healthy and humane eating. Baltimore is setting a great example for other school districts by instituting a program that's going to improve kids' health, be good for the environment, and also be something that helps fewer animals suffer," says Ashley Byrne, spokesperson, PETA.
Proggy awards are handed out to organizations that are leading the way by adopting more humane policies or creating more humane products. In the past the award has been given to a variety of organizations including restaurants and businesses. This is the first time the award has been given to an entire school district.
The Meatless Monday campaign is an effort to encourage Americans to cut beef and pork from their diet one day a week as a way of reducing the greenhouse gas emissions produced by the livestock industry and as a way of supporting locally grown foods.
"Removing meat from the menu one day a week will have a tremendous environmental impact. A recent UN report says that one pound of meat creates the equivalent greenhouse gases of driving a Hummer 60 miles. When you multipy that by one meal for an entire school district you can imagine what an impact just a single day a week is having," says Byrne
The American Dietetic Association says that a vegetarian diet is appropriate for all stages of life and reduces one's risk of heart disease, obesity, and cancer. Cutting down on meat also reduces greenhouse-gas emissions. In a U.N. report titled Livestock's Long Shadow, scientists concluded that raising animals for food generates more greenhouse-gas emissions than all the cars, trucks, ships, SUVs, and planes in the world combined. And, of course, going vegetarian is the best thing that anyone can do to help stop animal suffering. Vegetarians save more than 100 animals a year from factory-farm filth, mutilation without painkillers, and a terrifying death.
The school system's meat-free experiment also garned it the 2009 Award for Visionary Leadership in Local Food Procurement and Food Education from the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future.
Source: Ashley Byrne, PETA
Writer: Walaika Haskins