Airlines should offer vegan meals 'to help offset emissions'

Airlines are being urged to offer a vegan in-flight meal as standard to “help offset carbon emissions”.

SAS is one airline which expanded its vegan offering recently.

The FlyVe website, launched today by The Vegan Society and Humane Society International, provides consumers with the first ever online rating system for vegan inflight meals.

The group argues that currently, the default meal options provided by most airlines are dominated by meat, dairy and eggs, meaning that passengers have to proactively request a vegan meal in advance.

Elena Orde, senior campaigns officer at The Vegan Society, said: “Adding vegan options to every standard in-flight menu would mean that all passengers can opt for a more environmentally-friendly meal.”

The group said that airlines serve an estimated one billion inflight meals every year., while animal agriculture produces around a fifth of all man-made greenhouse gas emissions and meat, egg and dairy production is a bigger contributor to global warming than all forms of transportation combined, including aviation.

Emirates recently said that it served over 20,000 vegan meals during January this year, while Scandinavian Airlines launched vegan meals on more than 4,000 flights last November.