Rune-Christoffer Dragsdahl on winning the largest government investment in plant-based foods

A podcast showcasing innovative and impactful ways to help animals and build the animal advocacy movement. Amy Odene & James Ozden talk to experts about a variety of topics: animal rights, animal welfare, alternative proteins, the future of food, and much more. Whether it's political change, protest, technological innovation or grassroots campaigns, they aim to cover it all with deep dives we release every two weeks.

SUBSCRIBE: Apple Podcasts | RSS | Spotify | Amazon

Rune-Christoffer is an impressive person. In addition to being almost 10ft tall, he led the Vegetarian Society of Denmark’s efforts in getting the Danish government to invest over 110 million Euros in plant-based foods and develop an Action Plan to boost plant-based foods in the country. 

Given this is one of the most significant policy wins the animal advocacy and plant-based movement has seen in recent years, we chat about how they built the political will to achieve this. We speak about the importance of building coalitions, developing relationships with politicians, and even engaging with the animal agriculture industry. We also speak about their plans to scale this work in the EU so stick around to the end if you want some optimistic and ambitious next steps.

Resources: 

• Denmark’s Action Plan for Plant-Based Foods
• Strategy of the Plant-Based Food Grant
• Plant-Based R&D strategy made in collaboration with farmers
• Ishmael – Daniel Quinn
• Meat: A Natural Symbol – Nick Fiddes 
• Meat: A Benign Extravaganza – Simon Fairlie
• In Defense of Food – Michael Pollan

00:00:00:00 | Intro
00:02:26:23 | A recent mistake others can learn from
00:04:30:12 | Action Plan for Plant-based Foods
00:08:20:01 | The Plant-Based Food Grant
00:17:22:12 | Key things that helped on the way to success
00:24:59:13 | Whole-Food and Plant-Based diet
00:28:35:17 | Building relationships
00:37:06:14 | Stance of the Meat industry
00:41:40:18 | Organic Denmark
00:46:57:16 | Collaboration with other organisations
00:51:54:04 | Tactical tips
00:58:31:03 | Plan for expanding through EU
01:10:45:20 | Working with more challenging countries
01:17:49:12 | Closing questions

If you enjoy the show, please leave a rating and review us – we would really appreciate it! Likewise, feel free to share it with anyone who you think might enjoy it. You can send us feedback and guest recommendations via Twitter or email us at hello@howilearnedtoloveshrimp.com. Enjoy!