Worldlog Week 21 – 2008

Last week, Meat the Truth premièred in London, kicking off the international releases of the film in the rest of the world.

Karen Soeters from our scientific bureau and I arrived at the opening at the Odeon West End together with English comedian Dave Spikey. We rode in a rickshaw covered with Meat the Truth posters.

A variety of international celebrities worked on the international version of the film including Pamela Anderson, Bill Maher, Emily Deschanel, Tony Denison, James Cromwell, Elaine Hendrix, Kate Flannery, Debra Wilson Skelton, Joy Lauren and Esai Morales.

For the London première, the Nicolaas G. Pierson Foundation (our scientific bureau) asked the Vrije University (VU) of Amsterdam to draw up a reduction table for Great Britain. I presented it at the conclusion of the film. The audience reacted extremely enthusiastically to the film and was particularly surprised by the reduction table. One example from the table: if everyone in Great Britain would eat no meat for one day a week, the reduction would be comparable to taking five million automobiles off the road.

After the show, just like at the Amsterdam première, we served a cake in the form of melting ice floes with polar bears on them as a symbol for the consequences of the greenhouse effect. With much interest, the cake was cut into.

London is the first in a series of Meat the Truth premières. In the coming months, other cities will follow including New York, Washington, Dresden, Sao Paulo, Barcelona, Brussels, Singapore and Beijing.

After the film premièred in December in Tuschinski in Amsterdam, not only did public debate erupt, but political discussion as well. It seems that even the politicians are finally realising that the production of animal proteins has an enormous impact on climate change, the usage of natural resources and the world food shortage.

This became clear in a recent letter sent to the House of Representatives by Dutch ministers Jacqueline Cramer (environment) and Bert Koenders (development cooperation) on behalf of the Cabinet.

“The consumption of animal proteins must be reduced in favour of sustainably produced animal proteins and vegetable proteins.”

Last Tuesday, we asked the Minister of Agriculture Verburg parliamentary questions concerning her comment that “the data in the film Meat the Truth is allegedly incorrect,” whilst the University of Wageningen had to admit that the calculations from the film turned out to be entirely correct.

Here are the reduction tables for Great Britain and the U.S.A.