Following a vote on Tuesday evening, state nurseries and schools in Freiburg im Breisgau have removed meat and fish from their menus.

Freiburg schools and nurseries to introduce vegetarian-only menus

For the coming school year, children attending schools and nurseries in the German city will only be served vegetarian food in cafeterias. On Tuesday night the local council held a vote on the proposition, with 27 voting in favour and 14 against. School meals are set to go up in price soon and the motion was put forward with the intention of effective saving money. As such, more expensive animal products were the first to go.

Schools and nurseries are also making a move to include more organic products on the menu. Currently, 20 percent of ingredients used are organic, this will increase to 30 percent. And considering that schools in Freiburg provide more than 500.000 meals per year to students, the switch is likely to have a signifiant societal and environmental impact.

So far the decision has been met with some criticism from parent council members and the Ministry of Agriculture in Stuttgart. According to Berliner Zeitung, the ministry said, “Children should be able to develop their own tastes as they grow up. This includes eating meat.” Until now there ave always been two options where fish and meat were on offer.

Vegetarianism in Germany

Freiburg, which lies surrounded by the Black Forest in the southern state of southern state of Baden-Württemberg, is known for its environmentally conscious politics as “the green city of Germany”.  However, all over Germany people’s meat eating habits are changing as the links between animal agriculture and climate change become harder to ignore. 

Traditional German food is not always vegetarian and vegan friendly, but supermarkets now offer many, reasonably priced vegan and vegetarian versions of salami and bratwurst or regional dishes like Spätzle and Maultaschen. 

Further north, in Berlin last year, university canteens switched to an almost completely vegan and vegetarian menu, an initiative instigated by students. Many student cafeteria (Mensa) menus in Germany's capital city are now 68 percent vegan, 28 percent vegetarian and 2 percent fish and have a single meat option.