National Week Without Meat is an initiative of Isabel Boerdam, founder of De Hippe Vegetariër. The nationwide campaign is broadly supported by various partners from the food industry. Together, they believe that eating meat every day is no longer appropriate for our times. That is why they want to promote a flexitarian diet, in which meat and fish are alternated with vegetarian dishes.
In the Netherlands, schools are responding to National Week Without Meat this week in various ways. For example, the catering at VSO school De Bodde in Tilburg is vegetarian this week, and vegetarian cooking classes are being given.
Because the National Week Without Meat Foundation believes that providing good information about sustainable and conscious food choices starts with the youngest generation, it has developed an interactive teaching package in which pupils are challenged to investigate the impact of meat on health, animal welfare and the climate, and to form their own opinion about it. There are teaching packages for primary education (years 6, 7 and 8) and secondary education (VWO 1–2, HAVO 1–2–3, VMBO 3–4). These packages can be downloaded here.