The company has put a policy in place where all corporate entertaining, workshop catering and even staff expenses must now be vegetarian if staff wish to be reimbursed.

Kate Marfleet is head of the company’s values team and convinced staff to turn vegetarian last year to help reduce the firm’s environmental impact. The notion was put to an internal voe and passed with only a few rejecting the suggestion.

Ms Marfleet told the BBC: “We realised we needed the whole company to come on board, it couldn’t just be imposed. We had some justifications as to why it was a good idea, mostly environmental. There were some reservations from staff, but most of those were based on them being unsure of the environmental impact.”

The company has seen the largest impact of the policy on meal expenses. However, the policy is self-policing and Ms Marfleet urged that employees should be able to make their own decisions based on their dietary requirements.

She added: “If you’re gluten-free and there’s no suitable vegetarian option, then you can make a choice and if you are somewhere where there is no vegetarian option, then obviously you shouldn’t starve. Even if you decided you really wanted a bacon sandwich, then that’s fine, but the company won’t pay for it.”

Gethin Bennett, an employment lawyer at Capital Law, said: “Employees of Igloo Regeneration will no longer receive expenses for meals which contain meat. This, unsurprisingly, has prompted questions surrounding the legality of this particular workplace policy and whether meat-eaters would be protected under the Equality Act 2010.

“For meat-eaters to receive protection, they’d generally have to show that eating meat is a ‘protected philosophical or religious belief’ to succeed in any discrimination claim. Amongst other legal hurdles, they’d need to show that their meat-eating was a genuinely held belief, not just a viewpoint or opinion, and that it represents a substantial aspect of their life and behaviour.

“Only last month ethical veganism received protection under the Act, and was considered to be a philosophical belief. The tribunal pointed to the fact that ethical veganism goes far beyond a simple dietary choice and extended to other areas of the individuals life. Last year, a vegetarian failed to make this argument successfully, meaning that it’s unlikely that eating meat would receive the same protection offered by the Equality Act 2010 – particularly given that the tribunals have so far adopted a relatively high hurdle for an opinion to be classed as a protected belief.”