All men who eat meat should be banned from having sex, according to an animal rights group which claims that scoffing sausages is a symptom of ‘toxic masculinity’.
The German branch of animal rights group Peta claims that men contribute significantly more to the climate crisis than women, primarily through their meat consumption.
It cites research published in the scientific journal PLOS One last year, which found that men emit 41 per cent more greenhouse gases than the female population with their eating habits.
It suggests that women should ‘go on sex strike to save the world’, and even proposes preventing carnivorous men from having children.
‘Who doesn’t know them, the suburban fathers handling beer bottles and barbecue tongs, who sizzle 70-cent sausages on their €700 grill,’ said Daniel Cox, campaigns team leader for Peta Germany.
‘The zucchini provided by the visitor is viewed with suspicion and tolerated only reluctantly.
‘The fact that Germany’s “grill masters” believe they have to prove their masculinity to themselves and their peers by consuming meat is not only to the detriment of the animals.
‘Now there’s scientific evidence that toxic masculinity also harms the climate.’
The organisation referred to comments by French Green Party politician Sandrine Rousseau, who ignited controversy last month by branding the outdoor grill a ‘symbol of masculinity’.
‘If you want to resolve the climate crisis, you have to reduce meat consumption, and that’s not going to happen so long as masculinity is constructed around meat,’ the self-declared ‘eco-feminist’ said.
As well as the ban on sex and reproduction, Cox also suggests a hefty meat tax of 41 per cent for men.
‘After all, every child not born saves 58.6 tons of CO2-equivalent per year,’ he said.
‘For all fathers who still grill meat and still want children with a future worth living on a livable planet, we recommend changing their lifestyle.’
The call for a sex ban on carnivorous males has caused outrage in Germany, which is famous for its love of bratwurst and schnitzel.
Best-selling tabloid newspaper Bild printed the story on its front page, branding it a ‘crazy suggestion’.
Meanwhile, Alois Rainer, an MP from Germany’s Christian Social Union party, who is a master butcher, said the idea was ‘total nonsense’.
In the UK, Conservative MP Alicia Kearns said it was a ‘sexist assumption’ to think men eat meat and women don’t, and that women somehow enjoy sex less than men so can use it as a tool.
‘It just feeds in to all the worst narratives of the ’90s that women use sex, it’s not something they enjoy, that they should use it as a tool against men,’ she said on LBC’s Cross Question.
‘It’s also incredibly focused on straight relationships.’
However, Dr Carys Bennett, corporate projects manager at Peta UK, told LBC it was intended to be ‘a tongue in cheek suggestion’.
‘It’s a bit of hyperbole … it’s designed to get men to sit up and take note,’ she said.
‘We don’t really care about your sex life… what we do care about is the planet and the animals we share it with.’
Farming accounts for more than 10 per cent of UK greenhouse gas emissions, making it critical to climate change.
A study by researchers at Stanford University and Berkeley, California, earlier this years found that a total elimination of meat production around the world in 15 years could slash global carbon emissions by 68 per cent.
daily mail UK