{"id":75138,"date":"2026-05-05T11:44:21","date_gmt":"2026-05-05T11:44:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/75138\/"},"modified":"2026-05-05T11:44:21","modified_gmt":"2026-05-05T11:44:21","slug":"hide-your-burger-billboards-amsterdam-just-banned-the-public-advertising-of-meat-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/75138\/","title":{"rendered":"Hide Your Burger Billboards, Amsterdam Just Banned the Public Advertising of Meat"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the category of \u201cOkay, I guess I can see what you\u2019re going for here if I sort of squint,\u201d we have today\u2019s surprising news that Amsterdam will become the world\u2019s first capital city to ban public advertisements for meat,<\/a> in addition to banning ads for the wide-ranging category of \u201cfossil fuel products.\u201d The reason for the ban is not necessarily driven by health rationalization\u2013rather, it\u2019s an acknowledgement of the higher levels of carbon output<\/a> involved in the commercial meat industry than meals produced via plant-based alternatives, by a progressive Dutch city that has already vowed it will become carbon neutral by 2050. The city hopes to effectively tie the two together\u2013meat and fossil fuels\u2013as carbon-producing industries in the public consciousness, to decrease consumption of both of them over the same period.<\/p>\n

What does this look like in practice? Well, no more billboards or signage for chicken nuggets, for one. No billboards for cars or airlines, either\u2013nor budget travel agencies advertising low-cost flights to other European vacation destinations. Amsterdam\u2019s leaders and political officials hope that less advertising in these sectors will lead to natural decreases in consumption, implying that we are more susceptible to ads than we would likely choose to acknowledge. They see it as an opportunity to create what one activist termed a \u201ctobacco moment\u201d for high-carbon foods, referring to the near-total banning of tobacco advertising.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe climate crisis is very urgent,\u201d said Dutch GreenLeft Party representative Anneke Veenhoff to BBC.<\/a> \u201cI mean, if you want to be leading in climate policies and you rent our your walls to exactly the opposite, then what are you doing? Most people don\u2019t understand why the municipality should make money out of renting our public space with something that we are actively having policies against.\u201d<\/p>\n

There is empirical reason to think that a decrease in this advertising could have at least some kind of modest effect. Back in 2019, Transport for London, which operates the city\u2019s Underground and public transportation systems, banned \u201cjunk food advertising\u201d in its spaces, defined as \u201chigh in fat, salt and sugar\u201d (HFSS) foods. A later analysis<\/a> of millions of grocery purchases in the period after the ban suggested that a modest but statistically significant dip in buying of junk food such as chocolate and confectionery did indeed follow. Nor is Amsterdam the by any means the first to ban fossil fuel advertising, as that particular trend has been catching on in cities such as Edinburgh, Florence and Stockholm\u2013in fact, all of France has now banned it.<\/p>\n

In Amsterdam, however, the broadness of simply banning advertising of any form of \u201cmeat\u201d has a rather more arbitrary feel, raising accusations that the city is enforcing impractically anal nanny state policies. This is not helped by the commentary of politicians like Amsterdam\u2019s Anke Bakker of the Dutch Party for the Animals, who made the following supposed appeal to personal freedom in the same BBC piece:<\/a> \u201cEverybody can just make their own decisions, but actually we are trying to get the big companies not to tell us all the time what we need to eat and buy. In a way, we\u2019re giving people more freedom because they can make their own choice, right?\u201d<\/p>\n

That is a disingenuous argument at best, the fallback of an activist literally working for a political party centered on animal rights. Oh, you don\u2019t want \u201cbig companies\u201d telling you \u201cwhat we need to eat and buy,\u201d but it\u2019s only an issue if the thing in question is a hamburger? It\u2019s not a problem if PepsiCo attempts to influence you to replenish electrolytes with sugar-packed Gatorade, or the wholesome, farm-freshness of Lay\u2019s potato chips? You\u2019re fine with being \u201ctold\u201d to consume those via advertising? Unsurprisingly, entities like the Dutch Meat Association have a rather different read and opinion on the idea of such an advertising ban, calling it \u201can undesirably way to influence consumer behavior,\u201d because meat \u201cdelivers essential nutrients and should remain visible and accessible to consumers.\u201d You\u2019ve got to love the idea of a concept as wide as \u201cmeat\u201d needing a PR agent to speak for it as a whole.<\/p>\n

Indeed, it is difficult to really consider the implications of such an advertising ban for \u201cmeat\u201d without running into a constant bevy of \u201cbut what about\u2026\u201d questions. For instance, how about meat in pet food products, for creatures that are obligate carnivores? What about advertising for alcohol and liquor? As far as I can tell, they\u2019re still universally allowed throughout Amsterdam, even when public ads for burgers, cars, tobacco and other traditional vices like gambling are all banned. Vodka ads, though? Those are apparently fine. Everyone knows that booze doesn\u2019t ad to global carbon emissions. It seems safe to say which of these industries ultimately had the best lobbyists.<\/p>\n

Moreover, the ban takes on a greater air of absurdity when you consider the following: Fast food giants like McDonald\u2019s can still advertise in these spaces under the letter of Amsterdam\u2019s new law, provided they simply feature visuals and products that don\u2019t involve meat. McDonald\u2019s in other words, can still put up as many billboards for French fries as it wants, and Wendy\u2019s can tiptoe around the 81 grams of sugar found in a large Frosty to its heart\u2019s content. The city is apparently just hoping that if you\u2019re influenced by advertising to visit McDonald\u2019s for fries, that you\u2019ll eschew meat while there. Nor does the law actually regulate digital advertising in any way, merely the physical billboards and signage we encounter when we\u2019re out and about. In a world where our eyes are perpetually tied to screens, even while in transit, how big an impact can the banning of advertising in those public spaces really achieve? Surely there\u2019s no one out there who will attempt to argue that roadside billboards somehow have a deeper influence on us in this day and age than the almighty social media algorithm.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, science types still seem cautiously optimistic that even a modest decline in the amount of fast food advertising the average person is buffeted with will ultimately have both health and environmental benefits, even if the ban doesn\u2019t affect the digital screens that almost certainly must register as the single largest influences we encounter on a daily basis.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we see advertisements for fast food everywhere, it normalizes the behavior of fast food consumption,\u201d said<\/a> Dutch epidemiologist Joreintje Mackenbach. \u201cSo if we take away those types of cues in our public living environments, then that is also going to have an impact on those social norms.\u201d<\/p>\n

Perhaps it will, although good luck stigmatizing burgers as effectively as cigarettes. They might both cause cancer, and be responsible for heating our planet, but only one frequently comes topped with cheese and bacon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the category of \u201cOkay, I guess I can see what you\u2019re going for here if I sort…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":75139,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[101],"tags":[40107,199,40353,35093,200],"class_list":{"0":"post-75138","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-amsterdam","8":"tag-advertisements","9":"tag-amsterdam","10":"tag-dutch-meat-association","11":"tag-fossil-fuel","12":"tag-netherlands"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@dk\/116521799948207159","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75138","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75138"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75138\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/75139"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}