We’re back!

Daily Table fans – we apologize for the lack of content on our blog this week. We had some problems with our server and are glad to be back on line. Meanwhile, it’s been a fabulous week for the program – with scintillating coverage in The Washington Post, Huffington Post and more.  Check it out here!

Here is a taste of what the Washington Post had to say about Meatless Monday…

It’s enough to make the meat industry nervous. Over the past year, lobbying groups including the American Meat Institute, the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, the National Pork Board and the Farm Bureau have launched a quiet campaign to try to reverse the momentum. They have fired off missives to institutions that embrace the call to reduce meat consumption, and they have posted talking points for meat producers on the Internet. They are also making a final push to ensure that the government recommendation of two servings of meat per day remains enshrined in the new dietary guidelines that the Department of Agriculture will release this fall.

“When you start talking about this kind of stuff at institutions, it sends a panic through the industry,” said Tony Geraci, the director of food service for Baltimore City Public Schools, who received a raft of what he calls “cease and desist” letters from meat industry lobbyists. “If Baltimore does it, then what happens? The goal is to cut meat consumption by 15 percent.”

This is not the first time the meat industry has faced a meatless-day movement. The concept has its roots in World War I, when the U.S. Food Administration told Americans that “Food Will Win the War” and proclaimed Meatless Mondays and Wheatless Wednesdays. The New York-based nonprofit group Healthy Monday relaunched the idea in 2003 in association with the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. It really began to take off in 2009, said the organization’s president, Peggy Neu, when institutions and restaurants started to embrace the idea. The scheme has spread overseas. Last year, the city of Ghent in Belgium became the first European city to endorse a meat-free day.

Read the rest of the article here.