CALUM CHACE: Jacy Reese Anthis is a polymath and rising star in the fields of Effective Altruism (EA) and artificial intelligence (AI). He is a co-founder of the Sentience Institute and the author of the 2018 book “The End of Animal Farming”. EA is the project of identifying the most impactful strategies to help others, and the book grew out of EA research into the best ways to help animals. He explains his thinking on animals and AI in the latest episode of The London Futurist Podcast. Many people think that factory farming is one of the most pressing ethical problems in today's world. A…

BRIAN KATEMAN: The Food and Drug Administration completed its first premarket assessment of Upside Foods, which grows meat from cells rather than slaughtered animals. It concluded that it had “no further questions” about the safety of how the company produces its chicken. Although Upside Foods still requires approvals from the Department of Agriculture before it can sell its chicken products in restaurants and supermarkets, it’s a monumental leap forward in creating a more ethical and healthy form of meat. Not everyone, of course, is cheering for chickenless chicken. Cell-cultured meat has…

KLAUS MITCHELL: Plant Based News (PBN) founder Klaus Mitchell gave a talk on the environmental impact of animal agriculture at COP27. The 2022 United Nations Climate Change Conference started on Monday, November 6. It is this year taking place in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt. The annual event sees world leaders gather together to work on plans to address the climate crisis. It is thought that around 90 heads of state and representatives from more than 190 countries will be in attendance. Previous COP events have proved controversial due to their omission of discussion of animal agriculture.…

LOOK TO THE STARS: More than 200 prominent individuals have united through an international open letter to call on world leaders at the COP27 climate conference to end factory farming and transform our global food system. The letter – organized by Compassion in World Farming as part of its new End of the Line for Factory Farming global campaign – highlights the urgent need to transform our global food system and calls on world leaders to support and deliver a global agreement on food and farming at the United Nations General Assembly. It is being released on Solutions Day at the conference.…

RUBY RAMSDEN: Japan is a country with a long history of government-enforced meat bans. The first meat-ban, enacted in 673 CE, prohibited the consumption of horses, dogs, chickens, and monkeys, and was likely issued to promote rice cultivation and dissuade citizens from hunting during the spring and summer seasons. Other meat bans had various motivations, from economic to religious. In his book Animal Care in Japanese Tradition, W. Puck Brecher points out that local Japanese religion typically encouraged good treatment of animals, in contrast with Judeo-Christian teachings, which have long…

MELISSA SCOTT: Various research studies have highlighted the factors found to potentially contribute to the onset of neurodegenerative diseases like dementia. In a study, it has been shown that consumption of processed meat could increase dementia risk. This research was carried out by scientists from the University's Nutritional Epidemiology Group. They utilized data from 500,000 people and found that consumption of 25g serving of processed meat a day, the equivalent of one rasher of bacon, is linked with an increased risk of developing the disease by 44 percent... Researchers were trying…

BJORN OLAFSSON: If you don’t know who “MrBeast” is, your kids almost certainly do. He’s massive with the Gen Z demographic, consistently trending on TikTok and YouTube, most famous for eye-grabbing philanthropic stunts or Squid Game recreations, sometimes reaching over a billion views a month. He’s also the latest influencer to collaborate with Undeniably Dairy, a massive, multiyear, marketing campaign designed to boost sagging sales of milk worldwide. But this campaign isn’t a ‘how do you do fellow kids’ cringey faux pax. These videos are popular, cool even: Iced coffee hacks. Cooking…

MOHSINA DODHIYA: New consumer research has found that four out of 10 consumers worldwide think most people will ditch meat for plant-based food in the next decade. The study was conducted by global insights and advisory consultancy GlobeScan and EAT, a science-based non-profit for global food system transformation. They surveyed almost 30,000 consumers in 31 markets around the world across healthy, sustainable, and equitable food provision. The results were presented in the second edition of the Grains of Truth series. Key findings include 42% of the respondents claiming that in the next 10…

POLITICS.CO.UK: A new report 'Wellbeing and Veganism: A Concept Report 2022' by The Vegan Society asks whether veganism can be a pathway towards a greater sense of wellbeing and connection with ourselves, our values and nature. This is the society’s first concept report, which brings together insights from across a range of literature to begin to address the gap in knowledge concerning the relationship between a vegan lifestyle, happiness, and other areas of wellbeing. Considering questions such as “Do we have to sacrifice hedonism if we want to live a life with more meaning?” and “What…

NITIN MEHTA: As world leaders meet in Cairo to try and stop a catastrophe that the human race faces, no one notices the vegan elephant in the room. The world leaders in Cairo will hardly mention meat as the single most cause of the dire state of our planet. Indeed, meat is on the menu for the delegates. According to Gidon Eshel, a geophysicist, when you eat a steak, you kill a lemur in Madagascar. You eat a chicken, you kill an Amazonian parrot. This is because rainforests are being decimated and converted to pasture and feed crops to meet the increasing demand for meat and dairy. Between…