Rob Percival

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

Outrage at European science center as director ousted after study on glyphosate A leading European chemical safety institute has fired the director of its cancer research center after the director led an extensive testing program into the safety of the pesticide glyphosate, spark...

glyphosate industry still attacking independent scientists, it would appear

www.thenewlede.org/2026/01/outr...

It's ecological breakdown that should put us on a war-footing: official Admissions of extreme, eco-caused national security threats foreground importance of climate adaptation to bring much needed urgency and agency.

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

‘Meat tax’ could have significant impact on environmental footprint, study finds Full VAT on meat products could cost EU households as little as €26 a year but cut impact by 3-6%, says paper

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...

OHA Statement - Soft Drink Industry Levy Extended to Protect Children and Boost Nation’s Health - Obesity Health Alliance The government has today announced an expansion of the Soft Drinks Industry Levy (SDIL), widening it to include sugary milk-based drinks and lowering the lower threshold of the tax from 5g to 4.5g. Th...

More here -

obesityhealthalliance.org.uk/2025/11/25/o...

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.

Fossil fuel lobbyists outnumber all Cop30 delegations except Brazil, report says One in every 25 participants at 2025 UN climate summit is a fossil fuel lobbyist, according to Kick Big Polluters Out

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/...

Major meat and dairy companies fall short in reporting their climate emissions With COP30 underway in Belém, Brazil, global attention is turned toward national climate action. Few sectors of the economy sit more squarely at the crossroads of vulnerability and responsibility than...

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-...

At COP30, Brazilian Meat Giant JBS Recommends Climate Policy The world's biggest meat company, a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, is leading food-company efforts in global climate talks.

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...

Intensive Livestock Farms Fail to Declare Climate Impacts in ‘Emissions Scandal’ Plans for intensive livestock “megafarms” are omitting crucial climate impacts, it can be revealed. Campaigners last year celebrated a “beginning of the end” to polluting factory farming, after the la...

🔴 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...

New research on the associations between ideological orientations & commitment to eating animal products, incl dairy, eggs, & fish, not just meat, across dietary groups, incl omnis, flexis, pescis, & veggies
Maria Ioannidou et al
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
@gordonhodsonphd.bsky.social

Insider whistleblowers accuse industry of relentless drive towards cheap and processed meat The report claims public heath and the UK's food security have been 'deprioritised' as supermarkets go in pursuit of sales of 'cheaper and more highly processed' meat and dairy products

In a new report released today by @insidetrackuk.bsky.social, UK food industry insiders expose how companies’ and supermarkets’ commercial strategies on #MeatAndDairy are at odds with their public commitments on health, sustainability and animal welfare.
www.thegrocer.co.uk/news/insider...