Flowers blossom in Haarlem, the Netherlands, Feb. 26, 2019. Haarlem saw unseasonably warm weather with temperatures up to 18 degrees Celsius on Tuesday, whereas the average temperatures at this time of the year are between 6 and 8 degrees. Photo:Xinhua

The Dutch city of Haarlem is set to become the first in the world to ban advertisements for most meat because of its impact on climate change, officials said Wednesday.

The city of 160,000 people near Amsterdam has agreed to outlaw ads for intensively farmed meat on public places like buses, shelters and screens from 2024.

The move was approved by the city council in November, but went unnoticed until last week when a councilor announced he had officially notified advertising agencies.

"It will be the first city in the Netherlands - and in fact Europe and indeed the world - to ban 'bad' meat ads in public places," Ziggy Klazes, councilor for the GroenLinks (Green-Left) party who drafted the motion, told AFP.

She said it went against the city's politics to "earn money by renting the city's public space to products which accelerate global warming."

The ban would target all "cheap meat from intensive farming," Klazes said, adding, "as far as I'm concerned that includes ads from fast food chains."

The city had not yet decided whether to outlaw ads for organic meat.

Amsterdam and The Hague have already banned ads for air travel, petrol-driven cars and fossil fuels but now Haarlem is set to add meat to that list.

The ban has been criticized by the Dutch meat industry and some political parties who see it as a form of censorship and stigmatization of meat eaters.

"Banning ads for political reasons is nearly dictatorial," Joey Rademaker, a Haarlem councilor for the right-wing BVNL party, said in a statement.

The Dutch meat industry body, the Centrale Organisatie voor de Vleessector, said Haarlem authorities were "going too far in telling people what's best for them," the Trouw newspaper said.

The sector recently launched its own campaign called "Netherlands Meatland" to promote meat-eating.

Haarlem's ban comes at a sensitive time for the Netherlands, which has seen months of protests by farmers angry at government plans to cut nitrogen emissions to meet EU environmental targets.

AFP