THE McCARTNEYS’ MEAT FREE MONDAY CAMPAIGN
LAUNCHES NEW FILM – ‘ONE DAY A WEEK’
With appearances by Paul, Mary and Stella McCartney, Woody Harrelson and Emma Stone, ‘One Day a Week’ highlights the damaging environmental impact of animal agriculture and encourages people to help by eating less meat
Ahead of the UN Climate Change Conference (COP 23) next week, Meat Free Monday has released a short film about a huge contributor to climate change that is often left out of conference discussions – animal agriculture.
“There’s a simple but significant way to help protect the planet and all its inhabitants”, says Paul McCartney to camera. “And it starts with just one day a week. One day without eating animal products can have a huge impact in helping maintain that delicate balance that sustains us all.”
With dire consequences for ourselves and future generations, livestock production results in vast amounts of greenhouse gases being released into the atmosphere. It requires increasingly
unsustainable levels of precious resources including land, water and energy, and is a major contributor towards global environmental degradation and climate change.
The Meat Free Monday campaign has had an incredible response since its launch in 2009, with many of the world’s leading authorities on climate change endorsing meat reduction as an effective
way of fighting global warming.
The campaign’s new film ‘One Day a Week’, largely funded by Bloomberg Philanthropies and produced in collaboration with French film director Yann Arthus-Bertrand’s Hope Production,
amplifies this message using the breathtaking aerial photography with which Arthus-Bertrand has become synonymous.
Narrated by Paul McCartney, and with appearances from Paul, Mary and Stella McCartney, Woody Harrelson and Emma Stone, the film describes how the beauty of the planet only exists through a
delicate balance of climatic conditions – a balance we are dangerously disrupting through our insatiable desire for animal products.
The film uses Paul McCartney’s own music – tracks from his 1997 classical music album Standing Stone, as well as an unreleased song called Botswana.
Meat Free Monday’s aim is to raise awareness and inspire people to make a change in their diets from an easily achievable starting point.
For more information about Meat Free Monday, and to view One Day a Week, please visit meatfreemondays.com.
Additional Information
PHOTO: Mary, Paul and Stella McCartney © 2017 MPL Communications Ltd
About the campaign
Launched by Paul, Mary and Stella McCartney in 2009, Meat Free Monday is a not-for-profit campaign which aims to raise awareness of the damaging environmental impact of eating meat, and to encourage people to help slow climate change, conserve precious natural resources and improve their health by having at least one meat free day each week.
About the film
One Day a Week was largely funded by Bloomberg Philanthropies, and produced by Hope Production in collaboration with Meat Free Monday. The film was directed by Baptiste Rouget-Luchaire, whose work includes ‘7 Billion Others’ (a worldwide project by Yann Arthus-Bertrand) and ‘A Thirsty World’, a film about global water issues.
Facts
• Almost a third of all land on Earth is used for livestock production.1
• A third of all cereal crops, and more than 95 per cent of soy, is turned into feed for farmed
animals.2
• An area of rainforest the size of a hundred football pitches is cut down every hour to create room
for grazing cattle.3
• It can take 2,350 litres of fresh water – that’s about 30 bathtubs! – to produce just one beef
burger.4,5
• According to scientists at the United Nations, livestock production is responsible for 14.5 per
cent of all global greenhouse gas emissions.6 Other scientists say the percentage is even
higher!7
• If present trends continue, over the next 100 years or so there will be a global mass extinction of
species.8
For Meat Free Monday, contact:
Suzanne Barnard + 44 7854 115 799; press@meatfreemondays.com
About Hope Production
Hope Production was born from the meeting between Yann Arthus-Bertrand and Jean-Yves Robin in 2011, and is entirely dedicated to major environmental and humanist issues. For more
information, please visit robinandco.com/hope.
About Bloomberg Philanthropies
Bloomberg Philanthropies was created by Mike Bloomberg to encompass all of his charitable giving activities, including his personal giving, corporate giving and the Bloomberg Family
Foundation. The organisation works to ensure better, longer lives for the greatest number of people by focusing on five key areas: the arts, education, the environment, government innovation and
public health. For more information, please visit bloomberg.org.
1 Steinfeld H et al, Livestock’s Long Shadow: Environmental Issues and Options, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United
Nations, Rome, 2006, p. xxi.
2 Steinfeld H et al, p.12 and p.43.
3 (a) Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais, PRODES, 2016, online at http://www.obt.inpe.br/prodes/index.php (accessed 28
September 2017); (b) Bustamente MMC, et al., Estimating greenhouse gas emissions from cattle raising in Brazil, Climatic Change, 115, 2012, 0pp. 559–577; (c) Laws of the Game 2017/18, The International Football Association Board, 2017, p.34.
4 Ercin AE, Aldaya MM and Hoekstra AY, The water footprint of soy milk and soy burger and equivalent animal products, Ecological
Indicators, 18, 2012, p.400.
5 Waterwise, online at http://www.waterwise.org.uk/news.php/11/showers-vs.-baths-facts-figures-and-misconceptions (accessed 28
September 2017).
6 Gerber PJ et al, Tackling climate change through livestock – A global assessment of emissions and mitigation opportunities, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Rome, 2013.
7 Goodland R and Anhang J, Livestock and Climate Change: What if the key actors in climate change were pigs, chickens and cows?,
Worldwatch Institute, 2009.
8 Rothman, DH, Thresholds of catastrophe in the Earth system, Science Advances, Vol. 3, No. 9, e1700906, 2017.