HELEN CHRISTOPHI: Last year, the medical journal The Lancet reported that global consumption of red meat needs to fall by 50 percent by 2050 for us to “remain within a safe operating space” on climate change. And in 2018, the journal Nature reported that beef consumption in Western countries needs to fall by 90 percent. Meat production is the primary source of methane emissions, a greenhouse gas 86 times more potent than carbon dioxide over a 20-year period, and beef cattle produced over 70 percent of it via enteric fermentation—belching and farting—in 2016. (Dairy cattle accounted for…

ANDREW MARINO: Impossible Foods, a company that develops plant-based meat products, says its mission is to someday replace the incumbent meat industry entirely, stating that, from a mission standpoint, a sale only has value if it comes at the expense of the sale of an animal-derived product. But what if plant-based meat wasn’t just a substitute for an already-existing marketplace, and instead, it started to make meat that has never existed? On Vergecast podcast, Impossible Foods CEO Patrick Brown talks to Verge editor-in-chief Nilay Patel about how this impossible meat could be a possibility…

PETA: Before the COVID-19 outbreak, many people had never heard the term "wet market," which is believed to be the origin of the novel coronavirus. It's simply a market that sells live and dead animals—often of a variety of species—for human consumption, like those that exist in New York. SARS is a coronavirus that's believed to have first infected humans at a Chinese wet market, just like COVID-19... avian flu, swine flu, SARS, HIV, Ebola, and other diseases are linked to meat production or consumption... Although the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan, China, where the coronavirus…

OLI GROSS: The future of the US meat industry is in serious doubt as farmers are reporting a drastic decline in demand and are expecting the trend to continue. Industry leaders of the cattle industry have complained that coronavirus has caused the industry to plunge to its lowest level in a decade, while the pig industry dipped to its lowest level since October 2018... Rich Nelson, chief strategist for commodity broker Allendale, told Farming Independent... “Much of the trade still thinks the worst is in front of us.” The farming industry publication reported that many key markets are…

DANIEL STARKEY: Climate change is one of the biggest existential threats facing humanity... The problem, though, can often seem astonishingly big. The planet is thousands of miles across… so what can a person do? Actually quite a lot. A new analysis of loads of data sought to narrow down what the average person could do to affect their carbon footprint. They rated each effect averaging out over a person’s lifetime and considered national and regional standards to highlight how different problems affect individuals in different parts of the world. Published this week in Environmental…

PAUL SHAPIRO: It’s easy for those of us in the Western world to shake our heads at the live wildlife markets in China that appear to be the origin of the coronavirus pandemic now paralyzing the globe. Easy, that is, since such a practice is so literally quite foreign to us. (In their defense, at least, China has now banned such markets.) But what’s more difficult is to be honest with ourselves about what kinds of pandemics we may be brewing through own risky animal-use practices. And while the new coronavirus, crippling as it is, might have a somewhat merciful case fatality rate (proportion…

GEORGINA LEE: Plant-based meat maker Nature’s Fynd said it has recently secured US$80 million of funding from investors including former US vice-president Al Gore, as the four-year old food tech start-up begins production in Chicago and prepares to expand into Asia. The latest equity funding round comes after African swine fever and the more recent coronavirus have highlighted how plant-based, or vegan meat is increasingly viewed as a climate-friendly, stable source of animal-protein alternative. In China, which has been hit hard by both epidemics since May last year, extra imports of pork…

EVGENY LEBEDEV: The coronavirus has emerged as yet another gruesome consequence of the way we treat animals. It is clear now that Covid-19 first crossed over from another species, and one potential origin is the pangolin, or scaly anteater. This mammal is poached in Africa and Asia for use in traditional Chinese medicine and has the questionable honour of being the most hunted creature in the world... They are majestic, beautiful animals in the wild. Yet in China, they are pathetic, caged things. Pangolin meat is seen as a delicacy, but some Chinese also believe the scales, once dried and…

MATTHEW BROWN: On March 15, vegan influencer Ed Winters, who often goes by the name “Earthling Ed” on social media, posted a graphic to his Instagram account stating that “COVID-19 was caused by eating animals.” "The new coronavirus pandemic would not have started if we didn’t farm and eat animals," Winters wrote. The post lists several other diseases that reached epidemic and pandemic levels, and it asserts that "the one thing they all have in common is that they started because of our exploitation of #animals." The graphic on the post concludes that “COVID-19 would not exist if the world…

PETA: What’s the link between meat and the coronavirus? As the outbreak of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) grips the world, more and more people are isolating, quarantining, and wondering just how we got here. PETA has long warned about the health risks associated with eating meat. After all, raising animals for food in filthy conditions is a breeding ground for diseases that can be transmitted to humans... Public health experts believe COVID-19 originated at a “wet market” in China, where vendors sell both live and dead animals for human consumption. COVID-19 is similar to the outbreaks…