BREAKING NEWS: In a bumper week for Animal Rebellion affiliated actions, student activists this morning dropped banners at three of London’s leading universities to raise awareness of the link between animal agriculture and the climate crisis as part of the Plant-based Universities campaign.

Food at COP26 might be labelled to show its carbon footprint, raising awareness of meat and dairy’s disproportionate impact compared to vegan alternatives, but why are politicians both local and national so averse to anything ‘plant-based’?

The 26th UN Climate Summit in Glasgow is in full swing and world leaders are attempting to hash out a climate action plan commensurate with the scale of the crisis the world faces. But campaigners and activists have warned that without prioritising the reform of food systems and particularly animal agriculture - a major global contributor to greenhouse gas emissions and habitat destruction - plans will inevitably fall short.

OPINION: At a time when campaigners and activists are looking for ever more impactful and imaginative types of action to get a message across, what place do marches still have? Surge writer Claire Hamlett shares her thoughts having attended her first animal rights march at the weekend.

Marking the release of our latest video - The Truth About Plant Milks: Displacement of Indigenous People, Destruction & Deforestation - we take a look at cell-cultivated milk technology, said to take cows and other animals, including humans, out of milk production. More sustainable it might be, but is it actually more ethical?

GUEST ARTICLE: A new initiative calling on the world’s governments to come together and take urgent action to address the climate crisis by shifting to a plant-based system has been launched. Anita Kranjc and Nicola Harris explain the principle behind the Plant Based Treaty campaign, which has received widespread support from high-profile campaigners.

Following the bombshell that was the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment report on the climate crisis, people have been reassured by the implication that giving up flying is more impactful than giving up meat. This could not be further from the truth, as Claire Hamlett explains.

The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has today released a landmark report identifying methane as a key greenhouse gas (GHG) to include in strategies tackling global warming ‘unequivocally’ caused by human activities, including livestock farming.

The climate is breaking down before our eyes. This year has seen extreme weather events around the world, from the catastrophic floods in northern Europe and China to raging wildfires in Turkey, Greece, and the US, that have even shocked climate scientists. The disasters have produced many casualties, both human and non-human, with farmed animals among them.

While the ‘beef’ industry is often thought of as one of the worst greenhouse gas emitters and contributors to rainforest destruction and the ensuing climate crisis, a new report reminds us that other agricultural sectors have a lot to answer for including, not least of all, the UK’s free-range egg producers.

Campaigners are standing at the precipice of what they believe will be a landmark first legal action against any government. We caught up with Humane Being and the Scrap campaign who, together with co-claimant veterinarian Dr Alice Borough and with the help of high-profile human rights lawyer Michael Mansfield QC, have just issued a ‘last chance’ warning prior to launching a case that will finally hold to account the UK Government for the grave threat posed by factory farming.

The discussion around the consumption of animal flesh and the climate has rather stepped up over the past week. From Joe Biden and Kwasi Kwarteng to Epicurious, we analyse several of the top stories highlighting the serious problem of animal agriculture and the environment.