KRISTA KIHLANDER: 'The Raven Corps is a youth-powered nonprofit organization based in Portland, Oregon. High school and college-aged advocates empower other “Ravens” to promote a plant-based diet in the spaces they know best: their own communities. Advocating for a plant-based diet is a large part of what The Raven Corps does. The organization recognizes that factory farming is a leading contributor to the current climate crisis, and is able to see how a plant-based diet can counter this crisis... In the beginning the Raven Corps was just two lunch-time animal rights clubs in Portland high…

LUCY MANGAN: 'You can mentally delete the question mark from Meat: A Threat to Our Planet? (BBC One) pretty early on. You may have felt confident enough to do so after the news that we eat 65bn animals a year, figuring that not much good can come from consumption that vast. Or you may have waited for the scenes in Texas, where beef is considered such a basic commodity that eateries abound that offer free 5lb steaks (just over two kilos) if you can down all of yours in one sitting. Or perhaps your growing feeling of disquiet did not resolve into certainty until you heard a few figures – such…

OPEN PHILANTHROPY PROJECT: 'Investment banks and consultancies are making bold predictions for meat alternatives’ success... Think tank RethinkX even predicts that, by 2030, meat alternatives’ success will have rendered the beef industry “all but bankrupt"... There is reason for optimism. The Beyond Burger is now sold in over 53,000 outlets, including a trial at 28 McDonald’s restaurants in Canada. The Impossible Burger just launched in retail, and outsold all ground beef in its first two weeks on the shelf... These new alternatives come closer than any before to mimicking meat’s taste and…

STEVEN KRICHBAUM: 'Catastrophic fires have been burning all over the world, not just in Amazonia, but also in Siberia, Indonesia, and the Congo basin. These fires are ecological weapons of mass destruction and displacement resulting in habitat destruction and extermination of other species, violent land grabs from Indigenous peoples, murder of forest protectors, and climate refugees. Most of the disastrous fires in the Amazon are the result of clearing forests for cattle pasture or for crops to feed the cattle. In response to the intentional conflagrations in the Amazon, the actor Leonardo…

MANEKA GANDHI: 'A few months ago a Veganfest was held in Delhi. It was attended by hundreds of young, affluent, well read and enthusiastic people. The speakers were from all over the world. But each one represented a company that was making vegan products: mock meat, cosmetic, etc. There were no philosophers, no one to define what veganism could and should be. It was a consumer event. That is what worries me about the rapidly spreading vegan movement. It is simply about buying "something else". It was meant to be transformative, something that would make the world a gentler, happier place,…

ANNA STAROSTINETSKAYA: 'Judge Christina A. Snyder of the Central District of California ruled against the meat lobby group North American Meat Institute’s (“NAMI”) request for a preliminary injunction to halt the implementation of Proposition 12. NAMI is currently suing the state of California and was looking to prolong the enactment of the state’s new animal-welfare law, which goes into effect between 2020 and 2022, during its legal proceedings. Passed by majority vote in 2018, Proposition 12 sets specific minimum space requirements for animals raised for food, which builds upon…

OWEN ROGERS: 'One line of conventional wisdom in the animal advocacy movement is that the more veg options are available, the more people are encouraged to buy them. The goal of this study was to determine whether an increase in the availability of vegetarian meals actually correlated with an increase in purchases. To do this, researchers observed and then experimented with dining halls at Cambridge University in the United Kingdom. Prior studies have determined that mere education about the issues is a weak predictor of behavioral change, and while taxing meat would have a significant…

KAREN DAWN: 'Last year in Berkeley, The Good Food Conference buzzed about the incredibly meat-like Beyond and Impossible Burgers that were just hitting the market. That Berkeley buzz became a Wall Street cacophony a few months later in May 2019, when Beyond Meat went public and became the “biggest popping U.S. IPO” in almost two decades. This year, the buzz at the conference was about cell-grown meat. Or cultured meat. Or clean meat. Or even micro-brewed meat... This brave new industry is still figuring out what the new meat should be called. Last year, the favored term was “clean meat,” a…

ROBERT CHANNICK: 'For more than two years, Eliana Salzhauer paid a premium price to buy Fairlife “ultrafiltered” chocolate milk every week for her family, buying into the company’s claims it was not only a better quality product, but the cows producing it were treated with “extraordinary care,” a promise written right on the bottle’s label, according to one of the lawsuits. When an animal welfare group released the undercover video in June showing alleged abuse of calves at the dairy’s flagship farm in northwest Indiana, Salzhauer, a South Florida resident, became the lead plaintiff in one…

CARLA HEATH: 'It’s World Vegan Month and love it or hate it, you can’t deny that veganism has gone mainstream. Ikea is going completely vegan for Christmas, there’s a vegan football club, and M&S will make 100% of its own-brand wines vegan by 2022. The days when vegan food was seen as expensive, niche and unappetising are long gone. Thanks to chain pubs and fast food brands like JD Wetherspoon, Greggs and McDonald’s, cheap, convenient and flavour-packed vegan food is now available to the masses. But there’s more to being vegan than plant-based food. Traditionally, veganism is about…