NEWS: Three years after opening Unity Diner, Surge co-director Ed Winters has announced the launch of The No Catch Co. alongside Kevyn Bourke, the former head of sister restaurant Unity Diner.

SANCTUARIES: Claire Hamlett explains why she chose to join the Pigoneer 2000 Club, a crowdfunding initiative with practical funding of sanctuary pigs at its heart.

WEEKEND READ: The shooting of a rare white stag in Bootle near Liverpool, UK, was met with an outpouring of indignation across social media from animal activists and ‘animal lovers’ alike. The obvious questions arose about whether the police made the right call, but are we missing the real issue? With deer populations around urban areas on the rise, the next shooting is almost inevitable.

NEWS: A farmer in Yorkshire, UK, has killed hundreds of piglets because slaughterhouses aren’t killing adults fast enough due to worker shortages, while other reports warn that 120,000 pigs could be culled to avoid an “acute welfare disaster”.

The meat industry isn’t only guilty of humane washing when it comes to its treatment of non-human animals, but as Claire Hamlett explains, the truth about what's happening to workers is also being glossed over.

Universities and places of higher education have always been hotbeds of progressive thinking and a place where people of all ages can broaden their horizons. The Surge Campus Rep Programme supports students who want to reach out to their contemporaries and raise awareness of the reality of what humans do to animals.

At the weekend, the Observer published a feature by ‘nutrition expert’ Joanna Blythman in which she made some odd health statements comparing fruits and vegetables less favourably to meat, eggs and dairy. Claire Hamlett deconstructs some of Blythman’s bizarre claims.

In a hugely proud moment for everyone at Surge, co-founder and co-director Ed Winters AKA Earthling Ed has unveiled the cover and blurb for his new book - This Is Vegan Propaganda: (And Other Lies the Meat Industry Tells You) - out on January 6th and published by Penguin Books.

WEEKEND READ: Veganism has spread through the sports world. There are vegan athletes competing professionally in almost every sport you can think of. But it’s not just individual world-famous sports stars for whom veganism is a central part of their sporting lives. A growing number of teams and clubs are populated entirely by vegans.

In 2010, Catalonia banned bullfighting, an infamous and barbaric bloodsport that is still legal across most parts of Spain where it is deemed culturally important and protected as an ‘artform’. We travelled to La Monumental, Barcelona, the last bullfighting arena in commercial operation in the Catalan region, to tell the story.

A recent investigation by the Australian Farm Transparency Project (AFTP) has revealed that Hermes and other fashion houses including Louis Vuitton, Versace, and Gucci, source skins from crocodile factory farms in Australia’s Northern Territory.

The owner of the UK’s biggest poultry supplier, Bernard Matthews Foods, has made the absurd claim that a shortage of carbon dioxide gas, which is used to gas turkeys to death, means Christmas could be “cancelled”.