Austria: First Apprenticeship for Vegetarian Culinary Arts
Served at last after a long cooking time: Vegetarian-vegan culinary apprenticeship finally decreed in Austria.
After a long wait and hard-fought negotiations, ÖVP Minister Martin Kocher has published the long-agreed ordinance on the newly created apprenticeship trade of “Specialist in Vegetarian Culinary Arts.”
Vegetarian-Vegan Culinary Apprenticeship as a Political Issue
What began as an international push towards a contemporary gastronomy and a tool against the shortage of skilled workers in the industry has developed into a political issue. Through enormous effort and relentless commitment on the part of culinary apprenticeship initiator Joachim Ivany, the Green parliamentary club, the Vegan Society and the Green Economy, the vegetarian-vegan culinary apprenticeship was ultimately pushed through. In Switzerland too, plant-based nutrition is growing rapidly.
Austria can be proud: with 5% of the population living vegan, Austria is the European champion, and as of today even the world champion when it comes to meat-free culinary training, rejoices Felix Hnat, chairman of the Vegan Society.
Official Launch on 1 July 2025
The formal start of the new apprenticeship is on 1 July 2025. Like a standard culinary apprenticeship, the vegan and vegetarian culinary apprenticeship lasts three years. Before the first apprentices can learn the craft of a “Specialist in Vegetarian Culinary Arts,” however, course content and final examination content still need to be developed, and apprenticeship positions must be reviewed and approved. All information on registering as a training company can be found here.
More on the subject of recreational hunting: The scientific evidence is presented in the overview Studies on the Effects of Recreational Hunting.
The position of IG Wild beim Wild: IG Wild beim Wild rejects recreational hunting. Our model is the canton of Geneva, which has managed without recreational hunting since 1974: without hunting seasons, without hunting dogs, without driven hunts, without high seats, without the animal cruelty and crime that go hand in hand with hunting season elsewhere. What has worked there for over fifty years disproves every position paper by JagdSchweiz. An association that bases its policy on claims it refutes in its own documents is not a professional organisation, but a factory for misinformation.
