POLICY

JUSTIN MARCEAU, ET AL: The impacts of voluntary prosecution are canonical in American history, from the women’s suffrage movement to the civil rights movement... They can reverse the traditional accountability rationale of the criminal law, which counsels, “Don’t do the crime, if you can’t do the time.” If the public views the charges (or even the criminal statute itself) as unjust or unlawful, then accountability may come, but in the form of a backlash against the legal system. The prosecutor, the judge, and even the law itself will be held to account when the injustice of a prosecution —…

CHARLOTTE POINTING: 'Feeding Tomorrow' is the people who grow food and the people who eat food working together to transform the entire ecology of the planet,” says farmer Mark Shepard in the new documentary Feeding Tomorrow, released on January 23. The film, which has already won multiple awards, including Best Feature Documentary at the Ceres Food Film Festival, guides viewers through the current reality of the food system, which prioritizes fast and cheap production, and as a result, is destroying ecosystems, fuelling climate change, and threatening our health. But, as the name suggests,…

AMBIKA AIYADURAI: In India, it is not rare to see the veneration of the cow on one street corner, and the same animals feeding on trash at the next. The contradictions of “sacredness” attached to cows exist comfortably with the violence against them in our society. Yamini Narayanan’s 'Mother Cow, Mother India' asks crucial questions to help us understand this paradox. Narayanan is well known for her research in animal studies and multispecies research, and she brings her fascinating work to bear in this book on cows, dairies and their linkages to nationalism and capitalism. This is…

ANAY MRIDUL: It’s been an eventful few months for Italy and its adventures with alternative protein. In November, it became the first country to ban cultivated meat, citing health reasons, a risk to the country’s tradition, and a need to safeguard the livestock industry. However, this wasn’t the only ban introduced by Italy, with another legislation going slightly under the radar. As part of the cultivated meat legislation, the country also prohibited the use of meat-related terms like ‘steak’ and ‘salami’ on the product packaging of plant-based meat, which alternative protein think tank…

POLLY FOREMAN: Christspiracy will be screened in over 600 movie theaters around the world on March 20th and March 24th in all of the US, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, and parts of Germany, Switzerland, and Austria... Tickets available now at Christspiracy.com ... Christspiracy caused a huge stir when it was first announced last year, and people around the world have been waiting in anticipation for news of its release date... The film comes from Kip Andersen, the maker of Cowspiracy, What the Health, and Seaspiracy. He teamed up with Kameron Waters, a US-based Christian who posed…

OSCAR RUEDA: To limit global warming at 1.5°C, climate mitigation pathways project the need to remove 100–1,000 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) has been the most prominent carbon removal method considered. However, massive BECCS deployment would likely require cropland expansion to produce the biomass feedstock needed. Such an expansion may worsen biodiversity due to the loss of natural land and food and water security due to competition for land and water resources. A transition from consuming animal-source proteins to…

VEGETARISK FORENING: On February 8th 2024, a lower court in Denmark, the court in the city of Hjorring granted the vegan movement in Denmark a milestone win. A Danish court has now ruled that vegans are protected under Article 9 of the European Court of Human Rights. The ruling is the first of its kind in Denmark, and the Vegetarian Society of Denmark is proud to have taken this case to the courts and won. The case was about the right of vegan children in public daycare institutions to be able to eat vegan food. A Danish kindergarten (and the municipality running it) had refused to prepare…

SILVIA PANIZZA: In their daily practices, many ethical vegans choose what to eat, wear, and buy among a range that is limited to the exclusion of animal products. Rather than considering and then rejecting the idea of using such products, doing so often does not occur to them as a possibility at all. In other cases, when confronted with the possibility of consuming animal products, vegans have claimed to reject it by saying that it would be impossible for them to do so. I refer to this phenomenon as ‘moral impossibility’. An analysis of moral impossibility in animal ethics shows that it…

SYSTEM UPDATE: Glenn Greenwald interviews Wayne Hsiung (Direct Action Everywhere) and John Oberg (animal advocate) on the multi-level atrocities of industrialized factory farms, and how Washington abuses its power to protect them. VIDEO PODCAST

VICKY BOND: Take a moment to picture a farm animal enjoying dinner. Are you imagining a cow grazing on grass or perhaps a chicken pecking at the ground, foraging for seeds and insects? In today’s factory farming system, the “feed” these animals eat is far removed from their natural diets. Rather than munching on grass or insects, most animals on factory farms eat some type of animal feed—a cost-effective mixture of grains, proteins, and often the addition of antibiotics designed to make them grow as quickly as possible. The ingredients in animal feed don’t just matter to the animals’…