Why Paul McCartney Started the "Meat Free Monday" Movement (Exclusive) | National Geographic

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No thank you, no that's very nice. You've been vegetarian for 40 more years, right Tom?

Yeah.

And not just one day a week, but 24/7.

Yeah.

How has that affected your life?

It's—I love it, you know, and I get mates, you know, and people say, "Don't you miss your sausages and stuff?" I don't.

You don't?

No, this—there's so much good return for these days anyway that you've got more than enough. My original thing, which still is at the core of why they say, was compassion.

I just saw a video of the campaign.

Oh yeah.

And one of the things I think is so interesting about it is you're just asking for one day a week.

Mmm.

Why did you decide to just do one day a week?

I think, you know, if you say to people, "I'm a vegetarian. I think it's great. I've been this way for 40 years now. You should be a vegetarian." It's too much for them to take in what it means. They've got to change the whole lifestyle.

So what we find is if you say to people, "We'll try one day," they can do that, and they're kind of willing to do that.

And then some people go, "Oh, this is good. Well, maybe I'll do two days."

So I think you think's like that?

Yeah. I don't think you're gonna approach with the sledgehammer. You've got to kind of just keep it gentle.

Well, sometimes, you know, I see environmentalists with messages, and it sounds like moralistic scolding, and I don't know that it's terribly effective. I try and keep it as something that I would have understood and I would have accepted before I was vegetarian.

So years ago, we were—Linda and I were on a farm, and we had sheep, and they'd had lambs. And it's the most beautiful time of the lamb's life—they're sort of full of spirit and full of energy.

And we happened to be eating like a lamb. We weren't vegetarian.

And so when we made the connection, we said, "You know, or should we try and not do this?"

So we did and never looked back. But it basically was sort of out of compassion for these lambs who had just been born.

Yeah, we're in the first month of their lives and we're shortly to have ended. It's like it doesn't seem right.

But more recently, people have started to draw this comparison between greenhouse gases and just basically too much livestock on Earth.

It wouldn't be so bad if it was just one or two on a farm, but, well, there's billions. The way we now do it has a big effect on the atmosphere.

And there was, in 2006, there was a report that came out from the United Nations called "Livestock's Long Shadow" that I read.

It explained that livestock were responsible for more greenhouse gases than transport, which I thought it was airplanes, trucks, cars—I thought that was the big culprit.

But when this fact came out, I thought, well, you know, that's important. It's quite amazing. And you don't think about it, but then when you start to think, wait a minute, some of the fast food people, their prevalence in the world and the amount of cattle needed to feed that worldwide craving is huge.

So do you think that there will be receptivity to this message?

I mean, a lot of people don't have any problem with eating meat; they just think, "What we do, that's how we grew up."

Yeah, well, I was that.

Yeah, and that's exactly how I was. Still, in my case, I saw the lambs and made the connection.

I mean, like I say, you know, for me, the bottom line is we are on this incredible planet, and there doesn't appear to be another one within sight.

Somehow, it seems that we are this miraculous little planet, and we are on it, this human race, and alongside us, these little dudes, these animals, and that we've all got this chance in life to sort of survive.

And so I like the idea of giving them their best shot.

So, you know, that's the idea for me is just, it's a life. And I don't see why I shouldn't allow that animal to have that life when I don't need to take it.

I mean, I like—I used to do a bit of fishing. I remember catching a fish once and pulling him in and just seeing him kind of struggling for life.

But I thought, "Oh, okay, you know, that's where you live under the water; now I'm pulling you out into this alien that was fierce."

So what did you do?

Put him back.

But that was the last time I fished because I, you know, I'm I suppose I'm a bit conscious of that now.

Particularly whereas when I grew up, you never thought of it as meat. It was just some stuff that arrived from a supermarket, right?

And didn’t look like an animal until my mom one day served tongue, which looked like—oh no, it’s very good, you know.

But generally speaking, you didn't make that connection because it all came wrapped.

So I think that's, you know, how most people are.

I think there's a tension a little bit sometimes though between we're able to say we're not gonna eat meat a day a week or not eat meat at all.

Yeah. You know, in a lot of parts of the world though, there are people for whom raising livestock is their livelihood, and that in parts of the world, even having one pig or one goat or one cow is sort of the road out of poverty.

Does—how does you—how do you balance this?

But I don't think that's the problem. I think the mass production is where the big problem starts to come in, where certain companies have billions of animals, not just one pig—billions of pigs, often cramped in a little—in a really cruel condition.

So all that comes into play, and you know, I say to people that what happens is like me, I was brought up just ordinary people in Liverpool, and we just had ordinary food, just the same as everyone in our streets.

But when I reached a certain age, I made a change. I just thought, "You know, maybe this isn't what I want to do. I've got the free will to do something else."

So I encourage people, I say it's actually quite fun when you look at what you do, what you eat, how you live, and think, "Is this how I'm going to do it the rest of my life, or would it be kind of interesting just to try making a change?"

And I think a lot of people do that these days.

Particularly—I just think—I think for a lot of people they think vegetarian, "Oh, that means I have to eat tofu all the time."

Yeah.

You know, and that doesn't seem appealing to a lot of people.

No.

Well, I agree with that. The truth is there's a lot of options these days.

So what we're doing with Meat Free Monday is just urging people to just try it one day, and because it will make some kind of a difference if enough people do it, or if the idea spreads.

You know, every—I hear about all my kids has just decided he wants to go vegan because he's a sportsman, and, you know, it's decided that's better for him.

Was it hard to get other people to join this message?

In that video I saw you've got Emma Stone and Woody Harrelson.

I mean, are you still recruiting other people to try to take this message forward?

As I say, I know a lot of people who are either veg or—Woody, for instance.

Woody Harrelson is very vegan. I mean, you look, he's a strapping lad, you know, and he does all sorts of action pictures; he's very healthy.

And Emma's a friend, and I like the idea that people will—like the fact that she's a great actress, and if she says the message, you'll just get a bit more attention, you know.

I meet a lot of people say, "Well, you know, I still eat meat, but I'm too, you know, eating less."

And people that we call their meat producers?

Mira?

Do okay.

Step there.

Are people who do that?

Yeah.

I might—sort of ultimate theory is that you've got this beautiful little planet we've talked about, and it's going to be overpopulated.

Is it doesn't seem to be anywhere around that, so you've got to make the food go further and it helped by not passing it through a cow.

So you think some of the main advantages here are personal health?

I mean, tells of the planet, animal compassion?

Mmm.

What am I leaving out?

Those are the three.

Okay. Over those, I'm sure there are other reasons, but I think those are my main three.

So you're one of the most famous people in the world.

You've been one of the most famous people in the world for a very long time.

You could support so many causes and have your voice heard by a lot of people.

Why this cause, and why now?

Well, this is personal, you know, this is personal.

And I do a lot of other causes too, but this particular one, this is how I live.

And I like the idea of this particular campaign because I can then say to people, "Just try it."

If you were me, what would you ask?

Yeah.

What do we think about National Geographic?

I love National Geographic, and I've loved it since I was a kid.

It's sort of always there, that yellow frame, and you know exactly where it is and you know you're gonna get great photos and great stories about the world.

So it brings the world to you, and so I’ve always loved it.

Anyway, but one particular issue in the—I saw in the 60s had a woman and she looked very proud, and she had a baby.

And I saw that as a kind of Madonna thing—mother and child—and I could just, you know, sometimes you see pictures of mothers, and you go, "She's a good mother."

If you just tell there's a bond, and it just affected me, that photo.

And so I was inspired to write "Lady Madonna," my song from that photo.

Well, you know, I hear that from people all the time how they would open the magazine and get a sense of the world that otherwise they never had, because, you know, lots of us didn't grow up traveling around the globe as kids, and so we got to see everything that's right.

I think that was one of the great things about it.

Well, great photography.

Well, and great photographer who—

Well, Paul, I just want to thank you so much for talking to us about your campaign and sharing your feelings about it.

Well, thank you very much. I'm honored to be in NG.

Thank you.

Thanks a lot.

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