Banned on a Mon - McCartney campaign brandished 'gimmicky'

The campaign, ‘Meat Free Mondays’ was launched to highlight the environmental impact of the livestock industry by encouraging consumers to give up meat for one day a week.

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Sir Paul McCartney said: “Having one designated meat free day a week is actually a meaningful change that everyone can make, that goes to the heart of several important political, environmental and ethical issues all at once.

“For instance it not only addresses pollution, but better health, the ethical treatment of animals, global hunger and community and political activism.”

The NFU hit back at the music legend and avid animal rights campaigner, claiming the livestock industry’s contribution to greenhouse gas emissions was being widely overstated.

An NFU spokesperson said: “Diet is a lifestyle matter, and individual choices must be respected, but this campaign has a rather gimmicky air to it.

“It greatly overstates the contribution that British livestock make to climate change, compared to, for example, transport where emissions have been rising rapidly in recent years.

“If individuals do want to have a meat-free day we urge them to do so as part of a healthy balanced diet and make sure they eat British seasonal and local fruit and vegetables.”

The launch of the campaign was followed by further criticism from Friends of the Earth (FoE) this week, which called on Governments to change the way meat and dairy products are produced, urging it to take action to reduce the amount of imported animal feed from South America.

Senior food campaigner at FoE, Clare Oxborrow said: “At the moment the Government is spending millions of pounds of taxpayers' money on factory farms - the killer link in a hidden chain that connects the food on our plates to climate change and rainforest destruction.

“The Government must urgently support planet-friendly farming in the UK by shifting subsidies to help small farmers produce home-grown animal feeds and alternative breeds.”

The food industry is also set to come under fire across the Atlantic when a new film from the makers of An Inconvenient Truth opens in US cinemas next week.

Food, Inc. – being launched on the back of rave reviews - looks at intensive farming and its links to obesity and human disease, and has already been the subject of a number of complaints and lawsuits from the food industry.