AGRICULTURE

COLLECTIVE FASHION JUSTICE: While leather has been used in fashion for millennia, its production today is an ethical and environmental crisis. Today, over 1.4 billion cattle stand on once biodiverse land, confined to feedlots and in planted pasture systems until they are slaughtered for food and leather... While at least some of the environmental impacts of leather production are increasingly acknowledged by the fashion industry, little relating to the impact of leather production on animals themselves is considered or reported on today. Therefore, this report highlights the plethora of…

JOEL MEAD: The UK is in the grip of its largest ever outbreak of bird flu. As its name suggests, avian influenza primarily affects birds, but it can also infect humans and other mammals... Though the UK government currently assesses the risk to the wider public as very low, some strains of bird flu can pass to humans after sustained close contact... As a result of the outbreak, mandatory housing of chickens has been in place in England since November 2022. This means that no eggs produced in England are currently “free-range”. There is no defined end to this situation and as of February,…

UC BERKELEY: With the world's population topping 8 billion last year, it's clear that humans have achieved a unique status in Earth's history. We are the only creature that dominate all other organisms on the planet, from animals and fungi to plants and microbes. It remains to be seen whether humans can retain this dominance as we push the global climate to extremes while driving to extinction the very organisms that we climbed over to get to the top. In a new book, a group of scientists and philosophers places part of the blame on an attitude prevalent among scientists and the general…

BRIAN KATEMAN: Innovation and technology are doing big things for animal welfare and the health of the planet. Meatless burgers from companies like Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods are now mainstream in a way few could have imagined 20 or 30 years ago. Fermentation is being used to make dairy products without using cows. Scientists are exploring the use of cell-cultured meat as a potential climate-friendly source of nutrition for humans. We’re watching in real time as new technology makes it easier and more palatable for people to buy fewer animal products, especially those that come from…

SMU: Researchers from Singapore Management University (SMU) have released a study that reveals a positive relationship between people's psychological well-being and their willingness to consume cultivated meat. The research, titled 'Higher well-being individuals are more receptive to cultivated meat: An investigation of their reasoning for consuming cultivated meat', which has been published in international research journal, Appetite, provides the first ever empirical evidence to support this correlation. The research also found that individuals' higher willingness can be motivated by the…

KAREN DAVIS: A fellow activist once asked me if I believed chickens don’t mind watching and hearing other chickens being killed in their presence. He asked because a farmer had told him they don’t mind. Was this true? Lest anyone think that chickens don’t mind hearing and seeing other chickens die violently in front of them, or be grabbed by a predator or otherwise traumatized, nothing could be further from the truth. As a chicken sanctuary director for more than three decades, I’ve seen the effect on chickens of a hawk or a fox and the terror those predators inspire in the birds, including…

NICOLE MEYER: A new PETA TV spot airing this week during similarly grim movies The Day After Tomorrow and Zombieland is pointing to animal agriculture as a leading cause of the climate catastrophe and asking viewers, “Are you a bad parent?” while urging them to safeguard their children’s future by banning environmentally devastating meat and dairy from their homes. Much like The Last of Us’ Ellie (played by vegan Bella Ramsey), PETA’s protagonist is a young orphan trying to navigate a post-apocalyptic world. In the video, she lists the rules her mom enforced—such as not touching the stove…

MATTHEW SCHULTZ: It often feels like the progressive circle of moral concern includes every ethnic, racial and sexual minority under the sun... There is, however, an even more glaring absence. Missing entirely from the agenda are non-human animals, who remain among the most oppressed members of our society. According to the progressive worldview, every decade should bring more liberties for more people. The arc of history, in other words, is long and ought to bend toward justice. For domesticated farm animals, however, the arc of history is long and bends toward an abyss. With each year,…

VEGCONOMIST: The Italian government becomes the next in a growing list of those proposing restricted labelling on plant-based meat from using “meaty” terms, in a move ProVeg describes as “misleading and backwards.” The bill notes that its efforts represent an attempt to protect livestock production in the country, even though animal agriculture is responsible for about 20% of greenhouse gas emissions globally... “Plant-based foods emit half the amount of greenhouse gases as animal-based foods, so we need to introduce policies that actively encourage people to switch to more flexitarian…

ROZALI TELBIS: According to the Vegan Society, veganism seeks to “exclude — as far as is possible and practicable — all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose.” By definition, there are no additional prerequisites needed; vegans are not required to subscribe to a number of additional causes in order to adhere to this belief system that centers non-human animals. But intersectional veganism is no longer being promoted in niche online communities only. It’s now being more accepted across vegan communities and organizations in which vegans…