24 October 2025
Rethinking Highest Possible Ambition
States classify a large portion of agricultural emissions as “hard to abate”, framing them as residual emissions which must be compensated through removals. As other sectors decarbonise more rapidly, persistent agricultural emissions pose a significant obstacle to achieving the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C target, underscoring the growing importance of reducing emissions in this sector to restoring a pathway consistent with returning to 1.5°C as quickly as possible. Continue reading >>
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20 October 2025
The Case for a Global Ban on Industrial Animal Agriculture by 2050
We propose a global ban on industrial animal agriculture by 2050 because this food system causes massive, unnecessary, and transboundary harm to humans, animals, and the environment. Addressing these harms requires international coordination, inspired by successful efforts to regulate or ban other harmful products or processes, ranging from mercury and tobacco to child labor and torture of enemy combatants. This contribution summarizes the key legal rationale, precedents, and instruments for our proposed ban. Continue reading >>
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20 October 2025
Towards the True Price of Meat
Despite mounting scientific and ethical consensus about the multiple harms of meat production for animals, humans and the environment, current regulatory frameworks largely fail to internalise these costs. On the one hand, animal agriculture is resource-intensive, contributing significantly to climate change, deforestation, water pollution, and biodiversity loss. On the other, it entails systemic ethical issues with regard to the breeding, keeping and killing of animals. This contribution explores the legal feasibility of a cap-and-trade system for meat designed to address the multifaceted harms of animal agriculture and to push meat products closer to their true price. Continue reading >>
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10 October 2025
Transforming the Livestock Sector through Climate Change Mitigation Law
Increasingly, the climate impact of our diet is being recognised. The uncomfortable knowledge that the contents of our dinners can affect planetary health makes the issue of mitigating these emissions contentious, particularly with regard to our consumption of animal products. The role law has historically played and is still playing in creating the current levels of livestock production is often displaced in this debate – instead, we often focus on individual consumer choice or the perceived responsibility of farmers to consider sustainability in their farming practices. Continue reading >>
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09 October 2025
The Shape of Things to Come
While global meat governance currently faces significant political obstacles to transformative change, early signs point toward a shift toward a more sustainable and responsible global food system. The extension of legal principles such as the no-harm rule to climate change, the emergence of a global governance complex, normative frameworks like One Health, and the recent proliferation of policy initiatives may even signal the early formation of a new global food system architecture. Driven by bottom-up forces, these developments have the potential to reshape current practices and advance sustainable meat governance. Continue reading >>
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07 October 2025
Is Meat the New Oil?
For decades, the global community has grappled with the increasingly urgent need for an equitable transition away from fossil fuels – achieving some, but inadequate, progress. Today, there is growing recognition that meat and other animal products, particularly from the industrial systems that enable high levels of meat consumption, also have far-reaching environmental, public health, and social impacts. This industry will need to transform on a similar time frame in order to achieve climate and broader sustainable development goals. Continue reading >>
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07 October 2025
Exxon Knew. Did Big Beef, too?
Just like the fossil fuel industry, the meat industry teamed up with trade associations, public relations, and “merchants of doubt” to distribute disinformation, downplay their role in global warming, and influence climate policy. Our research showed that all of the 10 largest U.S. meat and dairy companies had directly contributed to efforts that minimized the link between animal agriculture and climate change. For eight of the 10 companies, we found evidence of lobbying on climate issues between 2000 and 2019.Just like the fossil fuel industry, the meat industry teamed up with trade associations, public relations, and “merchants of doubt” to distribute disinformation, downplay their role in global warming, and influence climate policy. Continue reading >>
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02 October 2025
The Environmental and Health Impacts of Animal Source Foods
It is now well-established that our diets and the food systems underpinning them have substantial impacts on both our health and the environment. What is also clear is that without dietary changes towards more balanced and predominantly plant-based diets, there is little chance of limiting global warming, biodiversity loss, and environmental resource use and pollution more generally. This contribution summarises research on the environmental, health, and social aspects related to changes in diets and food systems with a particular focus on the role of animal source foods. Continue reading >>
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01 October 2025
Defund Meat: A Call for Transformative Meat Governance
“Defund Meat” may be an unusual and perhaps provocative title for a critical interdisciplinary discussion around meat in the Anthropocene. At first blush, it may sound like a crude activist slogan, or a hopelessly idealistic call for abolishing the meat system. Upon closer examination, however, it turns out to be a sheep in wolf’s clothing. As I shall argue, defunding meat is a much more commonsensical, pragmatic, and mainstream(able) proposition than its radical overtone might initially suggest. Continue reading >>
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18 September 2025
The ECJ’s Opportunity to Address the EU’s Climate Mitigation Obligations
The pending EU-Mercosur Trade Agreement raises fundamental questions regarding the Union’s climate mitigation obligations under both EU and international law. Members of the European Parliament are considering a request for an opinion from the European Court of Justice (ECJ) on the agreement’s compatibility with EU law. Such a review is warranted, as the agreement appears incompatible with the EU’s mitigation duties. Continue reading >>
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