MEAT

KAREN DAVIS: While Peter Singer's new book is said to include updates on the advancing technological assaults on farmed animals and recent cognitive science on certain animals hitherto deemed insentient, his current “recommendations” suggest that his own advocacy for animals has not advanced since 1975 and may even have regressed. Prime example: from The Guardian Q. Conscientious omnivores oppose factory farming but continue to eat animal products from farmers who treat their animals well and don’t subject them to suffering. Do they get a pass? A. Honestly, I can’t show that they are…

CIWF: A new report debunks the myths perpetuated to keep the global factory farming industry alive, and the few multi-national corporations making billions from the systems that are cruel to animals while damaging our health and killing our planet. Factory Farming: Who Benefits? How a ruinous system is kept afloat – produced by Compassion in World Farming – lays out the seven key input providing sectors benefiting from intensive agriculture and obstructing the reforms needed to switch to higher welfare, health- and climate-friendly farming. While the activities of the big meat-providing…

KAREN DAVIS: Ethical protest against the genetic engineering of birds and other animals has focused primarily on the violation of species integrity, although attention has also been paid to the suffering of individual animals, and a moral repugnance has been shown against defining animals as patentable "manufactures." This definition represents a further debasement of nonhuman animals from their traditional low status as property lacking value and claims in their own right. Animals used in genetic engineering are further degraded in not even being recognized as whole beings but only as…

JOHN ELY: A pro-vegan campaign group wants to compare the harms of red meat to cigarettes in pursuit of turning the NHS completely vegan. PETA, famed for provocative advertising campaigns, wants to erect giant billboards outside hospitals of a patient being served a plate of sausages and cigarettes with a slogan saying: 'Still serving meat? How about a cigarette too?' A caption at the bottom states that eating processed meat causes cancer and urges the NHS to go vegan... People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) thinks meat should be banned from hospital menus completely. PETA,…

KAREN DAVIS: It is my impression that mainstream media organizations may actively be sabotaging the effort to replace slaughter-based food products with plant-based, animal-free alternatives. But first: The good news is that, despite the gruesome display of animal carnage at every major food outlet, most now carry an impressive array of plant-based burgers, nuggets, cheeses, milks, and more, all free of animal ingredients. You would think that any civilized person with a choice between food from a slaughterhouse versus foods made from plants would choose the plant-based versions. You’d…

COREENA FORD: Biotech business 3D Bio-Tissues say we are just a few years away from lab-grown leather goods after creating animal ‘skin’ without the need for animals. Scientific engineers at the Newcastle company are on the cusp of revolutionising food, fashion and healthcare markets with its patent-protected IP which has already created cruelty-free meat, human corneas and now skin that will eventually be used by manufacturers to create leather. It has announced that it has entered into a contract with a leather company to test and develop lab-grown animal skin for leather production,…

JUSTIN MARCEAU: The US Supreme Court rarely has occasion to hear an animal law case. Laws having to do with animal treatment are primarily matters of state law, and, historically speaking, precious few of them have threatened industrial animal exploitation to a degree that major federal lawsuits emerged. But California’s Proposition 12, a 2018 ballot measure that was approved by more than 62 percent of voters, sufficiently rankled the US pork industry that it filed a federal lawsuit and, after repeatedly losing, appealed all the way to the Supreme Court. Prop 12 bans the sale of pork in…

EBEN BAYER: Some people seem overly eager to declare the meatless meat industry dead. The promise of so-called alt protein (admittedly not a very catchy term) was to create healthier alternatives to animal meat so indistinguishably delicious from the real thing that they eventually overtook the entire industry. That has yet to become a reality, which should be no surprise given how enormous and entrenched the animal-meat industry is. But as flagship companies like Beyond Meat show weakening market share, cratering stock prices, and bonds screaming “bankruptcy,” the understandable reflex is…

VICTORIA HAWEKOTTE: When it comes to the regulation of lab-grown meat, there may be too many cooks in the kitchen. A battle between two federal agencies that both claimed sole authority to regulate cell-cultured meat ended in 2018 as a plan for these agencies to regulate these products jointly. But is this plan the right path forward for the regulation of cultivated meat? In a recent article, Tammi S. Etheridge of Howard University School of Law argues that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is well equipped to regulate lab-grown or cell-cultured meat independently, and that the…

BRIAN KATEMAN: Big Dairy has been funding pro-milk public relations campaigns for decades: You’ve without a doubt seen a “Got Milk?” ad on a billboard or in a magazine at some point between the 1990s and now. One of dairy’s biggest rivals, oat milk brand Oatly, has just launched its own campaign in response to the many attack ads plant-based milks have been subject to. Oatly’s campaign takes dairy to task with a seemingly simple offer: free ad space in exchange for the dairy industry releasing information on the climate impact of its products... The campaign is brilliant in its simplicity:…