Industry spin: "we produce pork via a variety of different welfare-based systems to cater for lots of ethical purchasing choices."
Translation: yep, mostly low welfare intensive pig churn, but don't tell anyone.
www.fwi.co.uk/livestock/pi...
Jakarta Declaration: An International Call to Protect Uncontacted Indigenous Peoples
What the declaration calls for: Written and adopted collectively by Indigenous Peoples and civil society organizations from across the world, the Jakarta Declaration focuses on protecting uncontacted peoples. It calls on States and relevant actors to: Recognize their rights over their territories, resources, and ways of life Cease forced contact, violence, and exploitation Guarantee full territorial protection and apply FPIC as non-intervention; Establish No-Go Zones and halt extractive and infrastructure projects in their lands Stop financing activities that threaten their survival
What Survival says: This landmark declaration symbolizes how Indigenous Peoples worldwide are coming together to demand protection for their uncontacted and isolated relatives. It affirms that extractive industries such as logging and mining must be banned on uncontacted Indigenous peoples' lands. It also calls for anyone else seeking to exploit such peoples to be banned too, whether they're missionaries, adventure tourists or influencers. Uncontacted peoples have the right to exist, and can only do so if their territories are recognized and protected.
Protecting uncontacted peoples means respecting their choice to remain uncontacted. Read and share the Jakarta Declaration. Stand for the protection of uncontacted peoples.
📢 New declaration on uncontacted peoples!
Indigenous leaders, orgs, and civil society from South America, Asia and the Pacific have come together in an international call to protect uncontacted peoples’ land: the Jakarta Declaration.
First Steps Nutrition is looking for up to **three new Trustees** to help guide and support us to diversify our income and secure the future of our small but mighty charity.
Learn more and apply: www.firststepsnutrition.org/vacancies
Deadline March 17th.
#Leadership #Trustee #EarlyYearsNutriti
glyphosate industry still attacking independent scientists, it would appear
www.thenewlede.org/2026/01/outr...
Writing with @rupertread.bsky.social about just how devastating the Government- suppressed security report is, particularly its conclusions about our food insecurity. Ministers should be helping to build our resilience to these threats, not burying the report that contains them 👇
that too
strong case for taxing dead animal flesh
www.theguardian.com/environment/...
* with the caveat that 'demise' may be too strong a word 😉
last week: a session at the oxford real farming conference on the "demise of plant-based foods" @rob-percival.bsky.social
this week: @nymag.com on how veganism "got cooked"
a few years ago the transition to more sustainable diets seemed inevitable. now it feels so far away
Abstract When we empathize with someone going through something, we often draw on our past experiences with the someone and the something. These kinds of experiences ground "thick empathy", a form of empathy that has been largely overlooked in the psychology and neuroscience literature. Consider how a mother, empathizing with her daughter about to give birth, can draw on her own experience of childbirth, and her relationship with her daughter, to deeply grasp what her daughter is going through in a way that others who lack those experiences cannot. I argue that thick empathy deserves more empirical attention because it is associated with well-being and helps us build networks of effective mutual social support. My analysis highlights novel risks and dilemmas posed by "empathy machines" that promise to enhance or even replace human empathy and are becoming increasingly popular as a potential solution to widespread loneliness. Even when empathy machines provide value to individuals, their widespread adoption risks imposing collective emotional and epistemic costs that ultimately make it harder for us to empathize well. Keywords: empathy, understanding, experience, thick description, ethnography, phenomenal knowledge, interpersonal knowledge, virtual reality, artificial intelligence, chatbots
New preprint: Empathy, Thick and Thin
papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
It is perhaps foolhardy to attempt to say something new about a topic as widely studied as empathy. I tried anyway! 1/
Good work G.
🔥 The fertiliser industry is the new Big Oil.
Our new report, #ExhaustedEarth, names and shames the villains behind the nitrogen crisis whose fertilisers are fuelling climate chaos, polluting soils and waters, and pushing us far beyond the planet’s limits.
foodrise.org.uk/exhausted-ea... (1/5)
New Report! The top ten beef companies in the world have an outsized impact on climate and nature. In our report we found that meat companies are refusing to address the cow in the room: methane.
Read more ➡️ https://mightyearth.org/article/cow-in-the-room-big-meat/
vegans are so annoying tho
faunalytics.org/global-anima...
This is worth a read. The meat industry, as has been documented, is involved in all sorts of disinfo campaigns, including online posting and trolling.
Of course, take this person's identity with a grain of salt since it's reddit, but I have met people who do this.
www.reddit.com/r/AMA/commen...
My @thesoilassociation.bsky.social comment on the extension of the Soft Drinks Industry Levy -
(TDLR: we need to talk about sweeteners...)
“Food systems have been erased from these negotiations. Not by accident. Industrial agriculture holds extraordinary power over this process, and it shows. This is not failure. This is capture. And until we name it for what it is – until governments choose people over corporate interests – these negotiations will continue to betray the very communities they claim to serve.” Raj Patel, IPES-Food
#COP30 has ended without recognising industrial #FoodSystems as a major driver of the climate crisis. Food is left out of the final deal.
“This is not failure. This is capture,” says our @rajpatel.org
Full statement: ipes-food.org/cop30-ends-w...
#COP30 #ClimateJustice #FoodSystems
I know I've said this already, but the UK ruminant herd, and beef consumption, have been in steady decline for the past two decades and are declining at a rate that exceeds the UK Climate Change Committee's pathway to net zero - I think you're conflating 'very difficult' with 'impossible'.. 🤷♂️
I don't think that's a view supported by evolutionary or anthropological evidence. Animal foods seem to be consistently highly prized/tabbooed, both across societies and human history, but there's no evidence that an ever-escalating appetite is hard-wired or innate..
I agree, not in an absolute sense. But its expression is socially constructed, its range and intensity. Which would suggest an intrinsic malleability. (Something for us climate mitigation folk to work with!)
(and of course there's an important psychological dimension - I can recommend you a book on that 😉)
Sure, I'm not proposing a plant-only baseline for any population. But there's a reason Americans are eating pigs and not dogs, cows and not horses, and why demand for beef is so persistently high - and that reason is entirely cultural and political. Not biological or intrinsic.
I guess one could argue that this "appetite" is socially constructed, and actively cultivated by industry, and can therefore be altered (as in Germany, for example). But I know, easier said than done...
UK ruminant populations 'peaked' a while back and have been in steady decline for years. Lots of reasons, good and bad, but declines are entirely feasible with the right political and economic incentives.
Sponge biodiversity and morphotypes at the lip the wall site in 60 feet of water. Included are the yellow tube sponge, Aplysina fistularis, the pink vase sponge, Niphates digitalis, the red encrusting sponge, Spiratrella coccinea, and the gray rope sponge, Callyspongia sp. Caribbean Sea, Cayman Islands. Date 23 May 2007 Source NOAA Photo Library: reef3859
Xestospongia testudinaria is a species of barrel sponge in the family Petrosiidae Nederlands: Vaassponzen (xestospongia testudinaria) Date 2 May 2007 (original upload date) Source Transferred from nl.wikipedia to Commons. Author Albert Kok at Dutch Wikipedia
This series of photographs represents the biodiversity found off the coast of Roscanvel, in the Fiistère, including several species of encrusting sponges, whose colours vary from whitish to orange. Date 2 December 2020 (upload date) Source Diverses éponges encroûtantes Author Olivier Dugornay
The freshwater sponge, Spongilla lacustris, in the Hanford Reach of the Columbia River in Washington State, USA. 15 August 2008 Author: Kirt L. Onthank
Every now and then I remember that sponges are ANIMALS — that these seeming hybrids of plant and rock; these sessile, porous, tissue-and-organ-less barrels, tubes, and blobs are just as much an animal as a falcon, wolf, or shark — and marvel once more at the wonderful weirdness of life on Earth.
One in every 25 participants at this year’s COP is believed to be a fossil fuel lobbyist, and the true number is probably far higher. Mad.
www.theguardian.com/environment/...
NEW: As COP30 unfolds in Brazil and deadlines for mandatory climate reporting rules loom, major meat and dairy companies are still falling short on transparent and reliable reporting of their climate risk and GHG emissions. www.iatp.org/introducing-...
JBS, the world's largest meat corporation, is leading a “food systems working group” at COP30 this week. Climate negotiations set to be buried in beef industry bullshit.
civileats.com/2025/11/12/a...
🔴 NEW: Intensive Livestock Farms Fail to Declare Climate Impacts in ‘Emissions Scandal’
Data by @sustainweb.org reveals how councils are giving green light to large-scale pig and poultry farms with patchy or non-existent climate data.
📝 @clarecarlile.bsky.social
www.desmog.com/2025/11/05/i...
