Employees of Igloo Regeneration will no longer receive expenses for meals which contain meat. This, unsurprisingly, has prompted questions surrounding the legality of this particular workplace policy and whether meat-eaters would be protected under the Equality Act 2010.
For meat-eaters to receive protection, they’d generally have to show that eating meat is a “protected philosophical or religious belief” to succeed in any discrimination claim. Amongst other legal hurdles, they’d need to show that their meat-eating was a genuinely held belief, not just a viewpoint or opinion, and that it represents a substantial aspect of their life and behaviour.
Only last month ethical veganism received protection under the Act, and was considered to be a philosophical belief. The tribunal pointed to the fact that ethical veganism goes far beyond a simple dietary choice and extended to other areas of the individuals life. Last year, a vegetarian failed to make this argument successfully, meaning that it’s unlikely that eating meat would receive the same protection offered by the Equality Act 2010 – particularly given that the tribunals have so far adopted a relatively high hurdle for an opinion to be classed as a protected belief.
