SCIENCE

NURIA ALMIRON: Climate change denial refers to the stances that advocate against the evidence posited for human-induced global warming... Since the publication of Livestock's Long Shadow by the Food and Agriculture Organization in 2006, an increasing number of governmental and non-governmental organizations and independent researchers have pointed at animal agriculture, and, by extension, animal-based diets, as a primary contributor to global warming. At the same time, over the last few decades, animal advocates, animal rights organizations, and many scholars and experts from a wide array…

MATTHEW ADAMS: There can be little doubt that industrialized animal agriculture reveals human-animal relations defined by routinized, institutionalized violence on a staggering scale. The number of animals involved is astonishing. There are an estimated 23 billion chickens on the planet at any one time, roughly three chickens for every human, by far the most numerous bird species alive today. The number slaughtered annually is estimated by the United Nations at 66 billion; compared to 1.5 billion pigs and 0.3 billion cattle. The overwhelming majority of these animals are reared and killed in…

CHEF'S PENCIL: If you’ve ever thought about starting a new diet at the beginning of the year, you’re not alone. Much of the world sees New Year’s Day as a time to make lifestyle changes or commit to new habits, and the proportion of Google searches dedicated to diet and nutrition on New Year’s Day can be nearly double that during the last week of the preceding year. Overall, interest in dieting steadily drops as each year progresses, until the next New Year’s Day comes around. Our research is based on Google Trends data for the year 2022. We also got a glance of diet searches for the first…

JARED PIAZZA: Children engage positively with animals from a very young age. They have animal toys, care for pets, visit zoos, and learn ‘life lessons’ from anthropomorphised animals on television. These interactions are often intended to increase children's understanding of and concern for animals. At the same time, children are often shielded from a ubiquitous, less pleasant role that animals play in society: as food for humans. Though most children are raised in households where meat is regularly consumed, many parents, particularly those living in urban and suburban settings, are often…

OLIVIA E. GUNTHER: The human use of other animals for food is problematic for multiple reasons. For example, animals on factory farms are kept in unhygienic conditions where they often cannot move, stand, or breathe fresh air. Additionally, livestock production generates nearly a fifth of the world’s greenhouse gases, along with major contributions to soil, air, and water pollution globally. Further, diseases borne on factory farms pose public health risks, meat can be damaging to the humans who consume it, and humans who work in slaughterhouses often experience physical and psychological…

VEGCONOMIST: The European Scientific Advisory Board on Climate Change has released a report outlining several recommendations for addressing the climate crisis, including shifting subsidies away from animal agriculture. The authors say that the common agricultural policy (CAP) “should be better aligned with EU goals”. This could include “shifting CAP support away from emission-intensive agricultural practices, including livestock production”, instead prioritising lower-emissions products and other environmental policies. Furthermore, the report recommends measures to “encourage healthier,…

LISA HORN: Veganism is a lifestyle choice and movement that is becoming increasingly popular, especially with the use of social media. The number of persons deciding to go vegan is growing and the decision itself is being influenced by several factors... This article focuses on the reasons consumers follow a vegan lifestyle and deals with the research question “Why do people go vegan?”... Whether they are intrinsic or extrinsic, the aim of this study was to identify which are the most common motives when it comes to this decision. Another objective was to analyze the influence of social…

MARINA BOLOTNIKOVA: There is one big domain of livestock production that is often seen as exempt from the hard trade-offs of farming animals for human consumption: animals raised for clothing, like the more than 1.2 billion sheep farmed for wool, or the tens of millions of cows whose skin is processed into leather. Both species, as ruminants, emit massive volumes of methane (the potent greenhouse gas that is responsible for about a quarter of global warming) and take up vast land areas that could otherwise host native, carbon-sequestering ecosystems. According to one analysis of wool…

MARIA CHIORANDO: The new analysis, by the Office of Health Economics, demonstrates how the 100 per cent adoption of a vegan diet could save this huge sum of money through the reduction of disease... The study used an economic model-based analysis to show that with 100 per cent adoption of plant-based diets in England, the total health care cost savings for the NHS could be around £6.7 billion... ‘every 1 million people who switch to a healthy vegan diet would generate an estimated £121 million of health care cost savings’... According to the statement, authors Nadine Henderson and Chris…

STEVEN GAYDOS: “All Illusions Must Be Broken” is the third feature documentary the couple Laura Dunn and Jef Sewell has made for executive producers Robert Redford and Terrence Malick; they picked up SXSW and Nashville Fest awards for the 2016 portrait of celebrated poet Wendell Berry, “Look & See,” and the Indie Spirit Award for their 2007 environmental doc, “The Unforeseen.” For those who love documentaries filled with provocative ideas that demand engagement, “Illusions” packs a walloping punch in the face of complacency and acceptance of a global social order that remains plagued…