2024-04-09 14:50:23
Who doesn’t know the iconic Wiener Schnitzel, the breaded cutlet historically linked to the Milanese cutlet, which has become a symbol of Austrian cuisine together with the Sacher cake? Just in Austria last week the famous schnitzel ended up in the dock. It was the NGO Four Paws, the global organization for animal welfare based in Vienna, that accused it, along with all other meat-based food preparations, which denounced the excessive consumption of meat by Austrians .
According to Four Paws (which is active in German-speaking countries as Vier Pfoten), meat consumption in the country beyond Brenner is almost double the world average. The data comes with the research that the organization carried out and published for the so-called “Meat Exhaustion Day”, the day on which the maximum recommended meat consumption per year is reached throughout the world: by yesterday, Sunday April 7, the Austrian population has already eaten the recommended amount of meat for 2024.
The NGO’s calculation is based on the “Planetary Health Diet”, a food plan scientifically developed by the EAT-Lancet Commission, which takes into account the effects of nutrition on the climate and human health. Austria outperforms its closest European countries (Italy is not ranked) in terms of individual meat consumption. For Germany, in fact, the deadline for “Meat Exhaustion Day” is April 21st, while for Switzerland it is May 6th. Second Veronika Weissenböck, head of the Four Paws campaign, in Austria people eat “almost four times the recommended amount of meat, an alarming figure”. With 58.6 kilograms of cutlets, chops, boiled meats, sausages and the like per capita per year, meat consumption in Austria is almost double the global average consumption (33 kilograms). According to the NGO, every person in the Alpine country consumes eats 1.13 kilos per week, which equates to more than seven Wiener Schnitzels per week, while the recommended amount of 301 grams of meat per week corresponds to no more than two breaded cutlets.
Weissenböck does not stop at these data: «The reality – he says – is that low-cost meat from intensive farming costs Austria dearly», the costs resulting from environmental pollution, climate pollution, the use of antibiotics , but also the increase in health system costs due to a diet too rich in meat have long fallen on the shoulders of Austrian taxpayers. Meat consumption must be reduced as quickly as possible.” For the NGO that deals with animal welfare (and which in 2022 analyzed the menus of 13 of the most famous restaurants in Vienna to verify the transparency of the information on the origin of ingredients of animal origin), if 2/3 were eaten in Austria less meat every year could save 28% of greenhouse gases in the food sector. Four Paws therefore invites the world of politics to reflect on the problem and to propose as soon as possible easily practicable measures to reduce meat consumption, for example putting an end to meat discount campaigns, as well as imposing transparent labeling on products regarding the way animals are raised. A utopian request? Maybe yes. This issue is certainly not among the priorities of the Austrian political landscape.
To realize this, it is enough to remember the disconcerting “everyone at McDonald’s” affair last year, when the chancellor Karl Nehammer ended up on the media’s grill for dismissing left-wing complaints that Austrian children are going hungry by stating that everyone can afford cheap meat, i.e. a 1.70 euro McDonald’s hamburger, “isn’t healthy, but it’s cheap” .
2024-04-09 14:50:23