Wurst days are over for Volkswagen
Volkswagen cuts off its workers’ sausagesThe latest environmental push by Volkswagen Group CEO Herbert Diess is attracting some angry pushback by Volkswagen workers – and it’s not electric cars.
Diess, a fitness enthusiast, has ordered that Volkswagen quit production of its iconic Currybockwurst sausage, a long-time favourite available in Volkswagen worker canteens and the Autohaus museum centre in Wolfsburg.
Also sold in shops all over Wolfsburg, the German delicacy is arguably Volkswagen’s most successful production unit, tallying more than seven million sales a year and even earning its own part number.
We kid you not. It’s 199 398 500 A, if you want to look it up.
But Diess is shutting down the 30 or so corporate sausage makers who bring in pork from farms around Wolfsburg because of their CO2 emissions.
Even though the Volkswagen wurst has far less fat than traditional German wurst, Diess insists Golf and Tiguan workers would be healthier on a more vegetarian-based or vegan diet – like his own.
With carbonbrief.org insisting meat and dairy consumption accounts for 14 per cent of the world’s carbon emissions, it’s possible that Volkswagen’s sausage production emits more CO2 than its car production.
“If I were still on the supervisory board of VW, there would have been no such thing,” former German chancellor [and former Volkswagen Group Supervisory Board member] Gerhard Schroder said on LinkedIn.
“A vegetarian diet is good, I do it myself in phases. But, basically, no Currywurst? No!
“Currywurst with fries is one of the power bars of the skilled production worker. It should stay that way.
“When I’m in Berlin, my first path usually leads me to one of the excellent currywurst stalls.
“Also in Hanover there are excellent curry sausages. I don’t want to do without that, and I think many others don’t want that in their company canteens either.”
Germany’s Green Party recently insisted that companies should introduce one meat-free day a week in factory cafeterias to lower carbon emissions, but Volkswagen is moving to surpass even that.
Diess is targeting the total removal of meat from Volkswagen Group canteens by 2025 – and that would include those at Audi and Porsche (Germany), Bentley (UK), Lamborghini and Ducati (Italy), Skoda (Czech Republic) and Seat (Spain).
Related: Volkswagen sausage-fest goes wrong
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