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JUSTINE BUTLER: Cows are sometimes portrayed as lacking intelligence but studies show that they play games, recognise different humans and have a variety of calls to communicate with one another. They have different personalities, hold grudges, bicker, bond and form long-term friendships. In the wild, mothers and daughters stay together for life. They can also feel anxious and depressed and their natural lives are very different to those they are forced to lead on a dairy farm... Shortly after her first birthday, a modern dairy cow will be confined and forcibly impregnated using restraining…

JO-ANNE MCARTHUR: Hidden: Animals in the Anthropocene is a collection of work by 40 photojournalists from around the world, documenting the lives of animals used for research, entertainment and food. “The animals we use most in our daily lives are hidden. They’re hidden away in factory farms, fur farms, and in labs that use them in research and testing,” says photographer Jo-Anne McArthur, who co-edited the collection. “They are also hidden euphemistically; we don’t say we’re eating a calf, for example. We say we’re eating veal.” “As animal rights activists, our battle is against the…

ASSOCIATED PRESS: Founders of the online vegan platform vKind announced that the site has seen fast growth over the past few months as more consumers opt for a healthier, more sustainable lifestyle. vKind is free for everyone to access online or through the vKind mobile app (iOS and Android), with or without setting up a free account. There are now more than 2,000 vegan product brands, businesses and professionals listed on vKind. “Our mission is to make it easier than ever to be vegan,” said Michon Javelosa, co-founder of vKind. “The plant-based products and services featured on vKind are…

DIEGO TORRES: The green wave sweeping parts of Europe could take on a more radical form in Spain. Green parties have been gaining ground in countries such as Germany and the Netherlands, but Spain’s environmentalists have struggled to attract voters. That’s changing, thanks to a radical animal rights party. Pacma — which promotes veganism to fight global warming and wants to ban zoos, circuses, bullfighting, fishing and hunting — is predicted to send one or two MEPs to the European Parliament in May, joining a small club of animal rights parties with a representative in the European…

JOHN R. PLATT: A few months ago a group of scientists warned about the rise of “extinction denial,” an effort much like climate denial to mischaracterize the extinction crisis and suggest that human activity isn’t really having a damaging effect on ecosystems and the whole planet. That damaging effect is, in reality, impossible to deny. This past year scientists and conservation organizations declared that a long list of species may have gone extinct, including dozens of frogs, orchids and fish. Most of these species haven’t been seen in decades, despite frequent and regular expeditions to…

JANE DALTON: Gene-editing will be bad for animal welfare and bad for efforts to curb greenhouse gases, organic farmers and environmental experts claim. Allowing the genes in crops and farm animals to be altered would lead to greater farm animal suffering and would not address food waste, they argue. UK Ministers have announced they will consider the use of the cutting-edge biotechnology in England for the first time, saying crops and livestock could be made to be more productive, so reducing costs to farmers and effects on the environment. Launching a consultation on the move, George…

ALEX FOX: A new study projects that if current trends continue, land clearing for agriculture will eat away at the habitats of nearly 90 percent of land animals by 2050... Humans have appropriated more than three-quarters of Earth’s lands for our own endeavors. According to research published in 2016, that leaves just 11.6 of the planet’s 57.3 million square miles of land to house the wealth of global biodiversity... The researchers behind the new report, published last week in the journal Nature Sustainability, say that unless the world’s systems of food production undergo massive…

ARTHUR NESLEN: When Singapore became the first country to approve and commercially sell lab-grown meat last month, Ira van Eelen couldn't help thinking the wrong continent was making the headlines. "What’s happening in Singapore should have been happening in Europe," said Van Eelen, a board adviser to Eat Just, the company that produced the lab-grown chicken in Singapore. Her father, Dutch scientist Willem van Eelen, pioneered and patented the technology which Eat Just had hoped to launch in the Netherlands. However, the Dutch Food Safety Authority (NVWA) shut down their request to hold…

NEW INDIAN EXPRESS: A 2017 FIAPO report revealed that calves were weaned off their mothers’ milk during the first three months at 74 per cent of the 451 dairies surveyed in India. In December, similar malpractices at the dairy farms were unearthed in a video titled Unholy Cattle of India by Bengaluru Brigade for Animal Liberation (BBAL). Indian dairy cooperative society, Amul, filed a case against the person who had uploaded this video for targeting the company by using its advertisements. To prevent the video from being taken off as well as to expose the hidden cruelty in the dairy…

AFP: French producers of foie gras have called for a mass preventive cull of ducks to try to halt the spread of a severe strain of bird flu that is ripping through poultry farms in the south-west of the country. The highly pathogenic H5N8 virus was first detected in a bird in a pet shop on the Mediterranean island of Corsica in November before spreading to duck farms on the mainland in December. Several European countries have reported cases of infection, five years after a major outbreak prompted the slaughter of millions of ducks in France... The number of outbreaks in France had now risen…