Earthsave Canada recently made a submission to the Vancouver Food Policy Council, asking for its support in urging Vancouver City Council to adopt the Good Food Cities Declaration. The Declaration represents a commitment to achieving a “Planetary Health Diet” by 2030 by supporting an overall increase in healthy plant-based food consumption, shifting away from unsustainable and unhealthy diets, and reducing food loss and waste. Over a dozen other cities globally, including Toronto, signed the Declaration at the 2019 C40 Mayor’s summit in Copenhagen, but Vancouver did not.
Earthsave Canada’s submission highlights the serious damage that animal agriculture does to the environment, including through greenhouse gas emissions, deforestation, water pollution, biodiversity loss, and inefficient use of land and water resources. The submission also describes how animal-based diets contribute to human diseases, including cardiovascular and chronic disease, antimicrobial resistance, and zoonotic viruses such as COVID-19. The submission concludes that the City must support the shift to plant-based diets on an urgent basis in order to halt environmental degradation, chronic disease trends, and zoonotic virus growth.
A copy of Earthsave Canada’s submission may be found here. We expect that it may be considered at an upcoming meeting of the Food Policy Council.
Photo by Ella Olsson on Unsplash
