Hannah Battersby explores how the worldwide animal agriculture industry is a key driver of zoonotic disease, pollution, climate change, and biodiversity loss.

Academics, policy makers and businesses increasingly consider a shift towards so-called “plant-based” diets that principally require less land, energy, and other resources.

A few years ago, convincing meat-free “meat” was nothing more than a distant dream for most consumers. Meat substitutes in supermarkets lacked variety and quality. Plant-based burgers were few and far between in major fast food outlets – and meaty they were not.

Veganism is arguably the biggest food trend of the moment.

One of the largest meat processors in the UK, has launched a plant-based meat alternative. Before long, the meat producers could take over this growing market for meat-free alternatives.

Before Christmas SCI doctoral researcher Malte Rödl had a piece published in The Conversation challenging cooks to look beyond “meat –eating without the meat”. With ‘Veganuary’ in the headlines we thought it was a viewpoint still worth looking at.

France recently passed an amendment to its Agriculture Bill, prohibiting any product that is largely based on non-animal ingredients from being labelled like a traditional animal product.

Drawing on insights from a qualitative study of meat eating in urban China, Alison Browne, Josephine Mylan and Zhu Di suggest there is a need to re-think the dominant view on changing consumption.

Last Monday was World Meat Free Day. In the first blog of the SCI’s new website, Jo Mylan and Nicklas Neuman argue ‘Meat Free’ days are only one piece of broader puzzle of how to limit the effects of industrial meat production.

In this contribution, Anna Wienhues and Steffen Hirth use theoretical considerations from philosophy and sociology to explore the ways in which ‘the nonhuman’ is – or is not – taken into account.