Vegetarian policy violated rights, former worker says

A former employee of a Montreal company specializing in vegetarian handbags is complaining that a workplace policy banning meat from the office violates her rights as a carnivore. Matt & Nat has been making animal-free, faux leather purses and belts for 15 years as part of its vegetarian philosophy. But a former employee, who wanted to remain anonymous, told the CBC that she was forced to sneak meat into her purse and hide it in her car to get around the company’s strict no-meat policy. “It’s a free country,” she told the broadcaster. “I think we should eat what we want.” The company’s founder and creative director, Inder Bedi, said the no-meat policy has been around since he started the company in 1995 as part of a school project for Concordia University. Employees are told upfront in the job interview that the company is a meat-free zone. “This is very much a vegan company, and we just felt it would be odd if we had meat and fish floating around the premises,” he said in an interview. “So meat and fish are banned. But no, we do not police it; we do not go around checking people’s lunches and people do make mistakes.” Most of the company’s 18 employees are not vegetarians, but none has complained about not being able to eat meat at lunch, or at restaurants while representing the company, Mr. Bedi said. Employees are free to lunch at the dozens of non-vegetarian restaurants in the area, or eat their meat on street benches in front of the company’s head office, he said. Otherwise they can participate in the company’s meat-free potlucks and scour through the in-house library of vegetarian cookbooks. Mr. Bedi said he was surprised by the sudden attention the company’s vegetarian policy has been getting and that anyone could consider it a human rights issue. “I’m not going to lie, it’s become a little bit of a humorous topic in the office,” he said. While the Quebec Human Rights Commission said the employee’s complaint is an “interesting” issue, it has no plans to investigate it as a human rights complaint. Spokeswoman Patricia Poirier said the commission has not yet received a complaint, and it’s unlikely the right to eat meat qualifies as one of the 13 grounds of discrimination under the Quebec Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms. Those grounds include race, religion, sexual orientation, age and physical disability. “We’ve never studied the question and it’s a new issue,” Ms. Poirier said, adding that “it’s not even clear if it’s a human rights issue.” Companies have a right to protect the safety of their workplace and the integrity of their product, but the issue becomes murkier when a business requires an employee’s commitment to the philosophy of the brand, said Cara Zwibel, director of the fundamental freedoms project at the Canadian Civil Liberties Association.