So you are against any lobbying? Green campaigners are lobbying for personal gain because they want a habitable planet. Even if you have a vested interest, surely you are allowed to have an opinion? If you have an opinion surely you are allowed to express it? If you are allowed to express it, surely people are allowed to listen to it? Should politicians be insulated from all industry voices, even if they have a valid point?
Just seems weird that no one really cared about it until this guy popped up on the radar.
Personal gain is when you yourself profit from something way more than other people do. In this case - getting boatloads of money for something that ultimately doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things.
Personal gain in the case of green lobbying is a subset of universal gain. Exactly the same as Vince's case. It doesn't follow the he will profit more than anyone else, as anyone else can supply meat-free food too.
Except you say that there is universal gain from allowing dishes to not contain meat. When there is not, if it isn't even worse. So now the lowest bidder will simply give you a less nutritious meal because they care about money not the students. And this is exactly why a law like this existed. So that a catering company won't just feed people potatoes mixed with potatoes 100% of the time.
Cool. Do you trust a random catering company to get it right for millions of students? To maintain the exact diet that's needed to get every nutrient, at a kitchen that hires random cooks and asks them to make food for 200 people at a time?
In reality, cooking a meat based meal is easy, fast and scalable. Cooking a plant-based one and only doing that isn't. There is a reason why laws exist - and this one exists because they were cheapening out and serving substandard meals. So they made it mandatory to at least contain some protein in the form of meat.
Meat is only cheap because of the subsidies provided to the industry. It's expensive in environmental terms too. There are many sources of protein that don't have either drawback.
The idea is that in this case everybody profits. Universal gain ≠ personal gain, even if the campaigners are included.
In the case of Vince, everybody profits because of the sustainability, BUT he has another very clear personal economic gain and that makes his intentions questionable. It would be more easily accepted if there wasn't this clear conflict of interests.
Oh FFS you're really going out of your way to misunderstand the issue here. Nobody is claiming that the meat industry is good. People are just voicing concerns because a rich guy is doing what a rich guy usually does: defending his own interests above the common good. It might go in the same direction for a while, sure.
What do you mean for he’s not doing it for the common good because it doesn’t show anywhere where he is “telling anyone to use his business only.”
The vegans have always “have an agenda but never the multi-billion animal agriculture” that is made of factory farms where billions of animals are exploited and slaughtered for nothing in horrid conditions where they’re crammed together in filthy dark rooms in massive structures increasing the likelihood of pandemics and antibiotic resistance many times over. Now that is truly selfish.
Even the vegans who do not own a business are often excused of being “self-serving” when advocating for more people to be ethical sustainable and healthier.
It’s like marginalized groups being called “selfish” for when they’re advocating for equal treatment in society.
He's not campaigning to have his company's food served at schools, just for the rule compelling schools to serve meat to be changed. His argument is that it is better for children's health and for the environment that less meat is eaten - and he's right. It doesn't automatically follow that his company will gain from any change, as there are many other options available to schools and it's perfectly possible for existing meat providers to start providing meatless meals.
Rule of meat being served to be changed for his company to then cater more food that doesn't have meat in it. I don't know how you don't see the obvious conflict of interest of a dude with a vegan catering company who supplies schools pushing for more vegan meals in schools.
But it will give advantage to his company directly. Like, honestly, I don't know if you just want to push some narrative but there is an obvious conflict of interest that you are dismissing without addressing it.
You seem to be under the apprehension that making food without meat in it is some mystic art that is beyond the comprehension of anyone other than his company. What is stopping any other company producing exactly the same products as his? Changing the law will have no effect on the marketplace.