
WeWork Bans Meat - bleachedsleet
https://sfgate.com/business/article/WeWork-tells-employees-meat-is-permanently-off-13073731.php
======
detaro
duplicate:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17526695](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17526695)

also some here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17524534](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17524534)

------
core-questions
This is kind of insane, even by virtue-signalling standards.

What business is it of the company what kind of food I eat? Alcohol
restrictions make enough sense, but beyond that how is it at all reasonable to
place these kinds of restrictions on their employees, especially when
traveling for business? Some cities simply don't cater to the vegan market on
a large scale. Sometimes you don't have as much of a choice what restaurant
you're going to.

How will they even know what you ate? Receipts from restaurants often don't
have that much detail. Are their Accounts Payable people going to scrutinize
every receipt and google it up to determine if it's vegan compliant?

All I know is that if I'm looking for coworking space, it ain't gonna be from
these guys.

~~~
smt88
> _What business is it of the company what kind of food I eat?_

They aren't policing employees' eating habits or anyone else's. They've just
decided not to spend company funds on meat.

There are valid social, political, and environmental reasons to avoid most or
all meat. A company should be able to decide not to spend their money on
something both ethical and socially beneficial that won't harm anyone else in
the process.

> _How will they even know what you ate?_

Some restaurants have line items, but most likely this is a marketing tactic
more than a rigid policy that will be easily or thoroughly enforced.

> _Some cities simply don 't cater to the vegan market on a large scale.
> Sometimes you don't have as much of a choice what restaurant you're going
> to._

Where did you get vegan? They seem to be allowing expensing of vegetarian
food.

And when do people not get to choose where they eat? And when they do, why
would it be a place that serves zero vegetarian options?

Also, they seem to be pursuing a pescetarian policy (no mammals or birds, but
fish are OK).

~~~
rsj_hn
There are not valid environment or social reasons to avoid meat.

Cattle is the most efficient way to produce calories in a dry region in which
water rather than land is the binding constraint (Western U.S., middle east,
north africa). Crops are the most efficient way to produce calories in regions
where land rather than water is the binding constraint (e.g. China, Northwest
Europe).

The idea that one is necessarily more efficient than the other _as a food_ is
pure B.S. It just depends on where that food is grown.

There is a reason why the societies in the fertile crescent began with cattle
culture, and continued to raise cattle in areas where water is more costly
than land. Dry areas like that produce scrub and grasses, which is inedible to
humans, but edible by cows. That's why we graze the cows in areas where we
can't eat the natural crops, and instead we eat the cows. This is the most
efficient method, most environmentally friendly method, and is the long
standing practice of all societies living in dry regions.

This notion that the peculiar environment constraints that bind in northwest
europe bind globally is either ignorance or bigotry.

Really, if they wanted to virtue signal, they should ban cotton, which takes
up a lot of water, and is grown in areas that shouldn't be growing cotton. As
good a case can be made against grains as against cattle.

This is just bumper sticker virtue signalling and has no place in the business
world.

~~~
fjsolwmv
WeWork doesn't operate in the (noncoastal) western US, so your argument is
irrelevant to them. Most of us don't live in ancie Mesopotamia anymore. WeWork
employees aren't expensing meals at Montana ranches.

~~~
rsj_hn
1\. Almost all of the entire entire Western U.S. (including most of
california) is an arid area. It used to be called "The Great American desert".
For more information, I'd recommend reading "Cadillac Desert" 2\. Where WeWork
is headquartered is not the point. The point is the notion that meat is bad
stems of a view of the entire world having a certain climate where growing
meat has much higher opportunity costs. Once we recognize that we do not live
in a world like that, we can hopefully move on from these types of myths.

------
anonytrary
> The startup has told its 6,000 global workers that they will no longer be
> able to expense meals including meat, and that it won’t pay for any red
> meat, poultry or pork at WeWork events

Title seems to be clickbaity -- they aren't _banning_ meat, they are just no
longer subsidizing it.

------
gregoriol
This seems to be a "startup PR act": they had to find some "new cool thing" to
make people talk about them, that's what WeWork do, that's what most startups
do.

It's not about money, it's not about virtue: they could as well have made
flamethrowers or a tiny submarine or put ping-pong tables everywhere. It's a
media distraction: everyone is focused on this now, and not on the real
goal/activities (or finances) of the company.

Good PR job.

------
spraak
Mic the Vegan just released a relevant [1] video today called "The Real Cost
of Meat" [2]

[1] it isn't clear to me that WeWork did this for cost or ideals, but I
thought I'd share in any case

[2] [https://youtu.be/tA9f2JU5bRs](https://youtu.be/tA9f2JU5bRs)

------
spraak
This policy aside, I think it's strange that fish is not considered meat...

~~~
geoalchimista
<sarcasm>They may have some Catholics sitting on their board</sarcasm>

------
tracker1
I'm allergic to legumes and diabetic... WeWork can go to hell.

~~~
mattl
WeWork is just saying they won’t pay expenses on meat. They’re not banning
anyone from eating meat.

~~~
Rebelgecko
So they're just financially penalizing people that do

~~~
mattl
Nobody is telling WeWork employees they need to eat meat while traveling. Lots
of places prohibit the expensing of alcohol.

------
Rebelgecko
Has anyone done the back of the envelope math on this? If you send an employee
across the country and stop them from eating meat, does that offset the
environmental damage of their flight?

~~~
throw_away2
This doesn't hold up at all.

Cross country flight: .61 metric tons = 1344 lbs
([https://calculator.carbonfootprint.com/calculator.aspx](https://calculator.carbonfootprint.com/calculator.aspx)
)

1 hamburger: 4 lbs ([http://www.businessinsider.com/one-hamburger-environment-
res...](http://www.businessinsider.com/one-hamburger-environment-
resources-2015-2) )

So, one flight is 336 hamburgers (in terms of CO2).

------
fjsolwmv
Shaking out all the rabid anti-vegetarianists might who kneejerk response with
seething hatred and without reading, might enough of the business benefit to
overcome any costs of this policy.

