The UK government spends over £2 billion annually on food procurement for public, government-owned and operated buildings, such as schools, hospitals, and prisons. Given the scale of food consumption in these institutions, increasing the amount of plant-based options available is a particularly effective way to reduce societal meat consumption. 

Plant-based catering can be a particularly sustainable, healthy, inclusive, and cost-effective choice for public buildings. Plant-based diets are associated with various health benefits. They also tend to be the most inclusive towards different dietary restrictions (i.e. lactose-free) and cultural or religious requirements (i.e. Halal and Kosher). In some cases, plant-based ingredients can be more cost-effective than animal products, which could lead to financial savings for financially stretched public sector catering services. Moreover, public buildings can help create newer, more positive social norms. They can normalise the choice of eating less meat and introduce consumers to the benefits of plant-based eating, potentially having beneficial spillover effects.

Despite the fact that a balanced vegan diet is just as, if not more healthful than animal-based diets, animal proteins are still often seen as a necessity in public buildings. For example, the English School Food Standards require meat or poultry to be served three times a week in state schools, and a dairy product every day. 

There have been examples of effective plant-based catering programmes in public buildings. NYC Health + Hospitals, the largest municipal health system in the US, made plant-based meals the default meal choice in their 11 public hospitals. After a year, they claimed a 36% reduction in food-related carbon emissions, a satisfaction rate above 90%, and cost savings that reached 59 cents per tray. 

In an effort to encourage school children to eat more plant-based meals, an Oakland, California school district implemented meatless Mondays, cut its animal product purchases by nearly 30%, and increased its purchases of fruits, vegetables, and legumes by just 10%. The district achieved substantial environmental and financial savings as a result. In two years, the district was able to reduce its foodservice carbon footprint by 14% and save 42 million gallons of water. Furthermore, the district saved $42,000 over the short period on food purchases. A report on the intervention estimated that an equivalent carbon footprint reduction would have cost the school district $2.1 million for sufficient residential solar panels. 

If every U.S. school district adopted these measures, the environmental benefits would equate to driving nearly 1.6 billion fewer miles or taking 150,000 cars off the road every year. 

Despite its potential, plant-based catering in public buildings is often dismissed as politically distasteful. Our survey, however, finds good support for increased PB options in public buildings, with 57% of respondents supporting this proposal, and less than a quarter being actively against. 

Public support for serving more plant-based food in public buildings is relatively high at 57%. However, support drops significantly to 23% when the proposal shifts to the exclusive use of plant-based food in public buildings. 

This insight may suggest that animal advocates should focus on incremental campaigns that modestly increase the proportion of plant-based products in public buildings, to retain majority public support. Maintaining support is important as strong public opposition to plant-based interventions can prove lethal. The Danish government’s plan to implement two vegetarian days a week in state canteens, for example, was scrapped due to public backlash. This represents a waste of political capital on a change which was too ambitious and unpopular. However, some campaigns – such as the UK organisation Plant-Based Universities – have achieved significant support and success by explicitly calling for a 100% transition to plant-based catering. 

It is worth noting that not all institutional efforts to reduce meat consumption require majority public support. Transformational efforts, even if unsuccessful, help to make incremental efforts more palatable to the public. These findings do not therefore invalidate the value of major efforts to reduce meat consumption in institutional settings. They simply show that, given the choice between the increased or exclusive use of plant-based food in public buildings, the former choice received much higher levels of support from our respondents.  

Government fiscal policies can also be implemented to change the market dynamics of animal and non-animal proteins. Currently, a range of factors provide a markedly unequal playing field for animal and alternative proteins, meaning that the more environmentally sustainable food products often face far more challenging market conditions. 

Agricultural subsidies contribute significantly to this discrepancy. Government subsidies are financial grants, funded by public tax money and given to private institutions or public entities  to drive down production costs and make the subsidised industry more financially viable. The UK spends at least £1.5 billion annually subsidising livestock farms, and livestock grazers in particular are heavily dependent on public subsidies to retain economic viability (around 90% of their profits come from these subsidies). Unlike animal-based proteins, alternative plant-based proteins receive no government subsidies, despite being more sustainable and in need of financial support.   

Our survey found significant levels of support for government investment in alternative proteins. Almost 40% of respondents supported the use of government buyouts to incentivise animal farmers to pursue alternative options (such as rewilding land, pivoting to novel protein production or farming alternative protein inputs). Almost half of Brits supported subsidising meat alternatives including plant-based and cultivated meat. These findings are consistent with our recent report on public attitudes to alternative proteins and meat reduction, which contains more detailed data on support for various public policy measures.

We also surveyed support for placing taxes on meat products, which we compared with the results on support for a reduction in meat product subsidies.

• Despite claims in the media of “meat taxes” being “political suicide”, we found that only a slim majority of Brits are actively against them (54%), with 29% being at least somewhat supportive. 

• A greater proportion of respondents – 35% – were somewhat or fully supportive of a reduction on the current levels of meat subsidies on offer to meat producers.

• Interestingly, compared to support for taxation, a much higher proportion of respondents – 34% – reported having no strong opinion on reducing meat subsidies . This could demonstrate a widespread lack of knowledge on the role of government subsidisation, and an opportunity for advocates to educate the public on this topic.

It’s important to note that these results also show that framing can play a significant role in whether the public is for or against proposed changes. While placing taxes on meat products and reducing subsidies on them are two sides of the same coin, we find significant differences in support levels. Ultimately, either of these measures would serve to get closer to achieving price parity between alternative proteins and animal products.

We also considered the role of political affiliation in determining support for institutional change measures.

As a general trend, liberals were significantly more supportive of institutional efforts to reduce animal product consumption than moderates or conservatives. However Brits across the political spectrum showed  strong support for higher welfare standards in factory farms. 

With regards to the increased use of plant-based food in public buildings, however, liberals were significantly more supportive of this proposal than both conservatives and moderates: whilst 70% of liberal respondents were in support of the measure, only 45% of conservative respondents claimed to be supportive. This suggests that making public building catering changes may be easier in liberal constituencies, or in generally liberal institutions such as universities. 

Fiscal policy changes proved less popular across all political affiliations, although liberals were significantly more supportive of these measures than conservatives and moderates. 

Institutional change can be a particularly effective way to encourage reduction in  meat consumption across demographics, and this survey has found significant levels of support for various methods of institutional change. Furthermore, we uncovered an underlying acknowledgment by 64% of respondents that meat reduction was an important societal goal. Given these findings, we recommend targeting the following interventions: