Trust equals influence, while force creates resistance. When New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio handed down his mandate on the New York Public Schools to implement Meatless Mondays, my anger was palpable.

Why do I care? My kids aren’t even close to being affected by his obvious lack of information. He has his reasons, although flimsy at best – he did remark that consuming meat contributes to the biggest existential threat of our age, climate change.

Starting this fall, in all NYC public schools, in the name of saving the Earth and helping our children make healthier choices, Mayor de Blasio will take away their best source of protein, niacin, thiamin, riboflavin, vitamin B6, vitamin E, iron, zinc, and magnesium.

In making the breakfast and lunch choices void of animal protein, he is robbing those children of proteins that function as building blocks for bones, muscles, cartilage, skin, and blood. These are also building blocks for enzymes, hormones, and vitamins. He is taking way one of the best sources of iron, which is used in carrying oxygen in the bloodstream.

Citing that the raising of livestock contributes to greenhouse gas emissions, and siding with those who propagate the perilous prognosis that we will all be destroyed in 12 years, de Blasio showed that he not only has a deep abiding faith in faulty science but that he has no belief in God. This is the same God who not only maintains a world that He set in motion, but named every single star in the sky and has every hair on his head numbered.

When a leader like this has his trust in the wrong place, it’s difficult to trust that he knows best for our children. Because he believes in climate change, children pay the price.

Look at any objective poll and you will find people on either side of the climate change argument – so how can he make the sweeping generalization that it’s an existential threat and force everyone to abide by it? He is forcing his opinion and the consequences of his beliefs on an entire population of children, and we are supposed to just stand by and agree?

I don’t think so, Bill. Keep your climate change worries to yourself, and the rest of the consuming public will make their own food choices. In the meantime, I hope the parents of these children will ditch this dereliction of duty and pack their children’s lunchboxes with the meat of their choice every single Monday.

And de Blasio ought to be respectful of a parent’s right to choose – after all, was it not choice that the mayor so emphatically applauded just a few weeks ago?

The views and opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and not necessarily those of Farm World. Readers with questions or comments for Melissa Hart may write to her in care of this publication.