The Virgin Group (excluding Virgin Australia) is cutting back on the amount of beef it serves on its planes, trains & hotels with the aim of reducing greenhouse gases & saving rainforests.
Founder and entrepreneur, Sir Richard Branson, revealed last week that the group had quietly been experimenting with reducing in-flight beef by halving the amount served across its flight network.
Branson said the group isn’t completely getting rid of beef just yet, but it will extend the experiment to include more flights and Virgin Trains. Virgin Hotels doesn’t contain beef in its menu, The Financial Review reported.
Image: Virgin Atlantic
“We are dropping it on quite a lot of our flights and we are not getting any bad feedback.”
Sir Richard Branson, Virgin Group Founder
According to the businessman, who stopped eating beef in 2014, the form of red meat accounts for 15 percent of global greenhouse gases and requires 28 times more land to produce than pork or chicken.
Image: Stijn te Strake/Unsplash
He believes that if every airline in the world were to reduce in-flight beef options, then “we could start saving the rainforests”.
“The rainforests are being torn apart for more and more cattle. The inevitability of all the rainforests disappearing is a fact. It’s going to happen.”
Sir Richard Branson, Virgin Group Founder
“And the only way of stopping that is to either keep beef consumption to where it is today or reduce it,” he added.
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