Dutch cities are banning meat advertising – will Switzerland follow?

A billboard by a major Swiss meat producer. Georgios Kefalas / Keystone

Amsterdam will become the first capital city to introduce a ban on advertising meat products to address climate change. It will be more difficult to implement such a policy in Switzerland.

Long known for its “coffee shops” selling cannabis and its red light district where prostitution is legal, Amsterdam is one of the most permissible cities in the world. But despite its live-and-let-live image, the city is cracking down on a vice judged to be too dangerous for the citizens of the hip Dutch capital: eating meat.

In January, 27 of 45 members of the Amsterdam’s municipal council voted in favour of banning the advertising of meat. The motion titled “Stop advertising that contributes to the climate crisis” was proposed in April 2024 by the Party for the Animals (Partij voor de Dieren) and the Green/Left party (GroenLinks) and will be implemented from May 1.

“Our proposition was to ban advertisements for products and services that fuel the climate crisis. For our party it’s clear that such a proposition should not only apply to products and services with fossil fuels for example, but also for meat products,” says city councillor Anke Bakker of the Party for the Animals who co-proposed the motion. “The international production chain for meat is incredibly polluting, from deforestation of the Amazon to the transports of animal feed and live animals around the world.”

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations estimates that livestock production accounts for about 12% of global greenhouse gas emissions.

The Amsterdam ban will contribute to the city’s goal to ensure that 50% of its citizens’ diet is plant-based by 2050. The restriction will apply to advertising in public spaces and includes billboards, bus stops, train and tram stations and all public transport vehicles. However, shop windows can continue to advertise meat products.

“In our proposition it is clearly stated that all advertisements around and inside of a building, like an advertisement poster in your window or a sign in front of your doorstep for example, aren’t part of the ban. This gives local businesses with a physical store in the city the chance to still advertise their goods as they see fit,” says Bakker.

The ban is mostly aimed at multinational fast-food chains who have a lot of money to spend on billboards and posters.

“Our proposition aims to effectively reduce harmful consumerism in Amsterdam. Big and polluting fast-food chains like McDonald’s are definitely included in the ban, since they play a big role in sustaining polluting industries. McDonald’s, KFC etc. advertise all around the city public space, so most likely these big chains will be most affected by the ban,” says Bakker.

Amsterdam is not the first city to implement such a ban on meat advertising. The Dutch city of Haarlem was the first in the world to decide on such a ban in 2022 and was followed by others in the Netherlands like Utrecht, The Hague, Zwolle, Nijmegen and Delft a year later.

Swiss subsidy for meat advertising

Like the Netherlands, Switzerland too could have been a pioneer in saying no to meat advertising. In 2015, Social Democrat politician Beat Jans submitted a parliamentary questionExternal link to the government challenging the merits of a taxpayer’s subsidy for meat advertising that contradicts the government’s own objective of a green economy.

Proviande, the industry association for the Swiss meat sector, receives CHF5.2 million ($6.7 million) a year in federal government funds for marketing and communication activities (this sum was CHF6.1 million when Jans questioned it). Proviande’s members contribute an equivalent amount, bringing the annual advertising budget to about CHF10 million.

A Proviande poster promoting Swiss meat. Proviande

“Since Swiss agriculture must meet strict environmental and animal welfare standards, it is consistent with the Federal Council’s objectives for a green economy and agricultural policy, as well as the recommendations of the Federal Food Commission, to prioritise Swiss meat over imported meat,” stated the official government response to Jans at the time.

Jans is now the federal justice minister, but the subsidy for meat advertising remains in place despite a recommendation in 2018 from the Swiss Federal Audit Office to the Federal Office for Agriculture to discontinue this funding.

Do meat adverts even work?

Both the meat industry and legislators seeking to ban advertising have one thing in common: both believe that meat advertising encourages people to buy meat. But is this even true?

It is difficult to quantify the effects of the meat advertising restrictions in the Netherlands because cities do not track this metric. However, in 2024, the Dutch ate less meat than at any time in the previous two decades, according to the annual Meat ReportExternal link produced by the University of Wageningen for the animal rights organisation Wakker Dier.

Ted Schroeder, a professor of agricultural economics at Kansas State University was one of the first to study the effects of advertising on meat consumption. His 1995 paper “The impact of brand and generic advertising on meat demand” showed that generic advertising of beef and pork did not have a significant impact on demand for these commodities while branded advertising did. Generic advertising (as practised by Proviande) promotes the general qualities of a product category and, therefore, benefits all firms in the category.

“Generic advertising would have essentially zero impact on localised demand whether in a local meat shop, online, or at the weekend farmer’s market,” says Schroeder. “Advertising typically starts with a brand name and then secondarily with a product of that brand.”

Switzerland’s meat producers can supply about 80% of domestic demand. The rest is imported mainly from Austria, Germany and Ireland for beef and Brazil for poultry. Proviande claims that its subsidised advertising campaign is meant to ensure that the value added by the meat industry benefits Swiss stakeholders.

“The aim of our marketing and communication activities is not to boost meat sales. Our aim is to convince consumers that meat is an important part of a balanced diet and that consumers should choose Swiss meat over imported meat,” says spokesperson for Proviande Philippe Haeberli.

Let the consumer decide?

Dutch politician Bakker feels that with the climate crisis reaching a critical point, it is more important than ever to make strong policies that help protect the climate. She does not believe the ban will affect consumer choice.

“No citizen of Amsterdam has ever asked for an advertisement sign to be placed. A ban on advertisements will give polluting industries less opportunity to manipulate people into buying their products or services,” she says.

Proviande’s argument against Amsterdam’s meat advertising ban is that it is anti-liberal and patronising to consumers.

“Consumers should be able to decide for themselves what they want to consume and what they do not. We consider such advertising bans in public spaces to be a drastic encroachment on the freedom of businesses and individuals. And we formally reject this,” says Haeberli.

The Swiss Consumer Protection Association is against consumers paying via their taxes for the promotion of products that contradict the goals of environmental and food policy. It also does not agree that a ban on meat advertising will negatively affect Swiss consumers’ freedom to choose.

“Consumers are still free to consume meat as often and as much as they like. This is also the case with smoking, for example. However, we fear that an advertising ban would trigger a major controversy that would outweigh the positive effects of local advertising restrictions,” says spokesperson Josianne Walpen.

Direct democracy could make a ban difficult

At present cities in Switzerland cannot ban advertising of products without passing a law. But a legal precedence already exists. In 2022, the city of Vernier in canton Geneva decided to remove all advertising billboards to free public spaces from visual pollution and fight against overconsumption. The left-wing proposal was narrowly passed in the city’s parliament by 17 votes to 14 and led to the removal of all 172 commercial billboards in July 2023 when the ban was implemented. In 2024, Switzerland’s highest court rejected an appeal against the decision by affected companies. The Federal Court ruled that the ban on billboards was an “acceptable infringement” of economic freedoms.

There is also one more hurdle to cross in Switzerland: direct democracy. Any law passed by the city’s parliament or a modification of an existing law can be challenged in a referendum. This is what happened in Geneva, which attempted a ban on advertising billboards even before Vernier. The ban was overturned in a referendum in 2023 with 51.9% of votes against the measure. Opponents of a ban argued the regulation would infringe on the freedom of trade, harm local businesses and result in an annual drop in revenue of CHF10 million.

Edited by Virginie Mangin/ts