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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18 October 2025
Meat Consumption Corridors as Transformative Meat Governance
Meat consumption corridors are a tool for transforming the current meat system. In a fair and just manner, they are intended – both conceptually and in practice – to help bring high meat consumption down to levels that can be considered ecologically sustainable and socially acceptable. Accordingly, this tool also supports scaling down and moving away from industrial animal agriculture. Continue reading >>
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16 October 2025
Can Public Procurement Lead Us to a Meat-Free Future?
Public institutions, such as schools, hospitals, prisons, and military bases, serve millions of meals every day. This makes governments some of the largest food purchasers in the world. With such immense buying power, the question arises: could public procurement be used as a tool to promote more sustainable, plant-based diets and reduce meat consumption? The concept of leveraging public procurement law to encourage meat-free meals is gaining momentum. But while the potential is significant, the path forward is anything but simple. Continue reading >>
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15 October 2025
The Case for an Animal Welfare Levy
Meat consumption imposes externalities on farmed animals. According to basic economic principles, such negative externalities can be addressed through corrective measures, such as taxation, which align private costs with the broader social costs. This raises a novel policy question: should meat be taxed to account for its impact on animal welfare, and if so, what would be the appropriate level of taxation? Continue reading >>
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14 October 2025
Meat-Free Nudging
In the last decades, we have learned a great deal about how human beings think and act. We now know far more about our species than we ever did. What we have learned tells us what we might do to change current behavior. In particular, we know a lot about what we might do to nudge meat-free eating. Let’s start with people, and then turn to behavior change. Continue reading >>13 October 2025
Labour Entitlements for Labouring Farm Animals
Animal rights discourse involves a persistent tension between the welfare paradigm and the fundamental rights approach. As an alternative to both, I argue that labour entitlements offer a more promising and pragmatic path forward. This framework places the legal approach to animals within a framework that recognises both their economic contribution and their subordination to capital. Continue reading >>
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13 October 2025
Transforming the Meat and Dairy Industry through Environmental Litigation
In light of prevalent nationalist populism, what type of strategic litigation against the meat and dairy industry is likely to be most transformative? Activists formulating their strategy need to consider the interrelated questions of what interests to highlight, whom to sue, and what legal norms to invoke, whilst being aware that nationalist populists will try to use any judgement to their advantage. 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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