Criminalisation of Meat Consumption in the Western World (The Second Enlightenment)

Starting with the criminalisation of the importation and consumption of meat-based products in the Republic of the Netherlands in 2092, many Western countries began to introduce such legislation which made it illegal for meat to be consumed. This was due to radical changes in the moral zeitgeist and social attitudes to animal rights instigated during the Second Enlightenment which, by the end of the 21st century, was responsible for a gradual acceptance of vegetarianism and veganism as a norm in Western diets, and great public contempt towards meat consumption and the slaughtering and mistreatment of animals for such purposes.

Though meat consumption had been criminalised in the Republic of India much earlier, in 2049, as a result of the influence of the country's majority-Hindu and thereby vegetarian population, such proposals for criminalisation in European and North American countries did not become mainstream until the 2080s. While the major factor for the proposals was that of ethical and social awareness for animal rights, which had advanced astronomically since the early 2000s, the environmental impact of meat consumption and cattle farming had reached critical point, particularly in the United States, by this point. The only logical solution was to simply cease meat production in many Western countries.

Such legislation would have been deemed impossible and unfavourable in the early 21st century, due to meat being considered an essential high-biological-value protein and, at the time, a staple of Western cuisine. However, with the mainstream introduction of Micro-foods (edible food sources produced from cultured micro-organisms) and insect-based meat analogues (though of course these sources were eventually abandoned with criminalisation later on) in the 2030s, Western dependence on cattle rearing and mass meat production was greatly reduced, and with it rates of deforestation, methane emissions and numbers of cattle reared in the Western world. Since widespread criminalisation since the 2090s, Micro-foods now constitute the vast majority of protein and 'bulk' food sources in Western meals.

Here is a list of Western countries and the respective years in which they criminalised the distribution, purchase and consumption of meat-based products:

Republic of The Netherlands- 2092

United Republic of England and Wales- 2094

Republic of Spain- 2095

Republic of Catalonia- 2095

Iceland- 2095

Germany- 2097

Republic of New Zealand- 2097

Republic of Scotland- 2097

Republic of Ireland- 2097

France- 2097

Republic of Denmark- 2097

Lithuania- 2097

Finland- 2098

Federal Republic of Canada- 2098

Italy- 2099

Greece- 2099

Republic of Sweden- 2099

Republic of Norway- 2099

Kingdom of Belgium- 2099

Austria- 2099

United States of America- 2100

Federal Republic of Australia- 2101

Switzerland- 2101

Eastern European Republic- 2101

Republic of Azania- 2101

Brazil- 2103

Poland- 2104

Czech Republic- 2104

Argentina- 2104