Campaigners renew call for ban on meat at City Hall

Vegan campaigners have renewed calls for a council to stop serving meat and cheese in City Hall to help cut greenhouse gas emissions.

They argue Bristol City Council should make all catering plant-based.

The council said an upcoming council review will explore suggested pledges on making this change to internal catering.

Bristol resident James Jones said he and other campaigners had been "routinely ignored" by the council, the Local Democracy Service reported.

The authority's current policy includes reducing the amount of meat served and improving its quality.

And a new contract for internal catering is being worked up at the moment, which could see big changes to food in the next year or so.

Members of the public repeated their calls to councillors at an environment policy committee last month to change the council’s policy on internal catering.

Elsewhere in England, other councils have already done so.

Mr Jones told the committee: "The only food system that can ecologically sustain eight billion people is one based on a plant-based diet, a fact that existed even before this council declared a climate emergency six years ago.

"Myself and others have been routinely ignored, had meetings arranged with cabinet members who no-showed, and been given responses that had absolutely zero connection to our questions.

“I’m just thinking this is so, so hopeless. I first spoke to the council on this topic in 2020, four years ago."

Green Councillor Martin Fodor, chair of the environment committee, said: “We have asked officers to review the Plant-Based Councils commitments.

"I look forward to that being reported back to us, and we’ll have a look at that and see what the next steps should be.

“Just to be clear: there is very little catering provided by the council.

“But we should look at the catering, and yesterday I asked about the contract that’s in the process of going through.

"The revised contract is going through in the next 12 months or so.”

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