Vegetarians require meat-free meals in hospitals and nursing homes

day-care centres, nursing homes, hospitals and other public institutions should be required to have vegetarian or vegan food on the menu.

It takes the Danish Vegetarian Association will go to court to get the claim recognised by the courts.

the Association has ten days collected 280.000 kroner for the preparation of an action against one or more public institutions.

the Goal is a half million dollars, informs the association's secretary-general, the Rune-Christoffer Dragsdahl.

We have over six years received inquiries from citizens who have experienced that they have been unable to get a vegetarian or vegan meal at everything from day care centers and nursing homes to hospitals and psychiatry.

- We have also tried to get it through political representation to the majority parties in parliament. Unfortunately, nothing has been done yet.

- Now there are so many citizens in the clamp, that we need a legal clarification, so that we can get established, what man has rights, he says.

for example, There are day-care centres, who turns up to lead a green policy.

But it must according to the Danish Vegetarian Association be a requirement that all public institutions can offer a vegetarian or vegan alternative.

- We have an example of a citizen who has asked ten different day care centers in the Dallas and surrounding areas, and all have said no.

- In denmark we have an example, where the consequence has been, that the family had to choose a institution in a completely different city.

- We think it is fundamentally problematic, that one is not assured here reasonable basic right to a green meal, says Rune-Christoffer Dragsdahl.

the european Court of human rights has recognised that vegetarians and vegan are covered by the convention.

But it is not clear whether it can also be translated, that a citizen has the right to a green meal in a public institution.

a prospective trial clarity.

Approximately 2.5 percent of the danes - equivalent to 140,000 people - living vegan. It is apparent from figures from the Coop Analysis.

Vegetarians eat eggs, dairy products and honey, but no meat, poultry, fish, shellfish or other animal products.