Montreal campus bans beef from cafeterias to cut “carbon footprint”

A Montreal engineering school has banned beef from campus menus in an effort to reduce emissions, effectively telling students what they can and can’t eat.

Source: Adobe Stock

Author: Quinn Patrick

A Montreal engineering school has banned beef from campus menus in an effort to reduce emissions, effectively telling students what they can and can’t eat.

Polytechnique Montréal began removing beef options from its cafeteria menu in September to lower the carbon footprint from the roughly 2,500 meals it serves to students and faculty daily.

The decision was in response to research from the University of Oxford, which found that beef produced 10 times the carbon emissions of chicken.

The engineering school is affiliated with Université de Montréal.

The removal makes it the first post-secondary institution in North America to stop offering students beef.

Juno News reached out to Dr. Sylvain Charlebois, director of the Agri-Food Analytics Lab at Dalhousie University in Halifax, to ask what this change meant for other universities.

“Will it inspire other schools in Canada? I’d say it’s too early to tell,” he said. “But I would say that it’s an ongoing conversation in many different places. I do know that there are several universities where they are constantly reducing the amount of beef being bought, simply because of economics.”

However, he added that it’s up to schools to provide choices for students, not eliminate them.

“What you have here is a school making an ideological decision to ban beef. We’ve seen many other universities, I believe Boston and also in Europe, we’ve seen some universities ban beef,” he said. “One can argue that it’s a ban based on convenience because beef prices are pretty high so to maintain a student menu with affordable beef is pretty challenging right now.”

Charlebois noted that the high price of beef dovetails nicely with the emissions goals of many post-secondary institutions.

While he acknowledged that cost could be “pushing Polytechnique in that direction, you’re still not allowing students themselves to make their own decisions about what they eat.”

When asked whether such policies had been adopted at Dalhousie University, where he works, Charlebois said that there have been some discussions but no final decisions have been made.

“My concern about what’s happening with beef bans is that it’s seen as a positive thing from an environmental perspective, so you have groups writing reports every year saying ‘what have you done for the environment?’” he continued. “And they’ll add removing beef on their lists without recognizing that they’re basically withdrawing a choice from the students who do actually enjoy it.”

Charlebois also said that some universities have banned pork as well on religious grounds, leaving students with chicken as the only meat alternative.

Polytechnique did not respond to Juno News’ request for comment in time for publication.