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Rob Percival

@rob-percival.bsky.social
6.2K followers 378 following 209 posts

Author of 'The Meat Paradox'. Head of Food Policy at the Soil Association www.soilassociation.org. Agroecology, Food Systems, Sustainable Diets. Views my own. linktr.ee/rob_percival_

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Reposted by Rob Percival
TABLE @tabledebates.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
If you eat meat, are you willing to eat the whole animal? 🥦 In #FoodTakes Ep 2, @rob-percival.bsky.social of @thesoilassociation.bsky.social makes a case for all-or-nothing meat eating--or just eat plant-based! 🌱 🎥 Filmed at ORFC, produced by @rebelwrit.bsky.social Watch: buff.ly/4hNrDIg
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Rob Percival @rob-percival.bsky.social · 14/05/2026
Yummy www.theguardian.com/environment/...
theguardian.com
Typical English roast dinner potentially ‘drenched’ in 102 pesticides, says report
Greenpeace finds cocktail of pesticides including seven banned in EU may have been used on seven vegetables and soft fruit categories
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Soil Association @thesoilassociation.bsky.social · 06/05/2026
📢 It’s time to cut the chemicals from our food and fields ✍️ PETITION - soilassociation.co/cutthechemsb... In the UK, just before harvest, some crops are sprayed with glyphosate to dry them out. It helps meet food system demands for speed and uniformity, letting farmers plan harvests in advance
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Zach Boren @zdboren.bsky.social · 02/04/2026
i'm building GRILLED, a new investigative journalism project focused on food systems and animal agriculture. if that sounds appetising, sign up and stay tuned grilledmedia.substack.com/welcome
grilledmedia.substack.com
Grilled | Substack
Investigating the meat industry. Coming soon. Click to read Grilled on Substack.
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Rob Percival @rob-percival.bsky.social · 31/03/2026
Glyphosate can cause genetic damage, oxidative stress and hormonal disruption, plus cancer. By the way. deohs.washington.edu/sgs/statement
deohs.washington.edu
Seattle Statement on Glyphosate and Public Health
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Rob Percival @rob-percival.bsky.social · 06/03/2026
Industry spin: "we produce pork via a variety of different welfare-based systems to cater for lots of ethical purchasing choices." Translation: yep, mostly low welfare intensive pig churn, but don't tell anyone. www.fwi.co.uk/livestock/pi...
fwi.co.uk
Pig industry responds to London Underground ad campaign - Farmers Weekly
The pig industry has expressed frustration over a two-week campaign by Animal Justice Project on the London underground, which has placed 22 large posters
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Survival International @survivalinternational.org · 03/03/2026
📢 New declaration on uncontacted peoples! Indigenous leaders, orgs, and civil society from South America, Asia and the Pacific have come together in an international call to protect uncontacted peoples’ land: the Jakarta Declaration.
Jakarta Declaration: 
An International Call to Protect Uncontacted Indigenous PeoplesWhat the declaration calls for:

Written and adopted collectively by Indigenous Peoples and civil society organizations from across the world, the Jakarta Declaration focuses on protecting uncontacted peoples. It calls on States and relevant actors to:

Recognize their rights over their territories, resources, and ways of life
Cease forced contact, violence, and exploitation
Guarantee full territorial protection and apply FPIC as non-intervention;
Establish No-Go Zones and halt extractive and infrastructure projects in their lands
Stop financing activities that threaten their survivalWhat Survival says:
This landmark declaration symbolizes how Indigenous Peoples worldwide are coming together to demand protection for their uncontacted and isolated relatives.

It affirms that extractive industries such as logging and mining must be banned on uncontacted Indigenous peoples' lands.

It also calls for anyone else seeking to exploit such peoples to be banned too, whether they're missionaries, adventure tourists or influencers.

Uncontacted peoples have the right to exist, and can only do so if their territories are recognized and protected.Protecting uncontacted peoples means respecting their choice to remain uncontacted.

Read and share the Jakarta Declaration.

 Stand for the protection of uncontacted peoples.
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First Steps Nutrition Trust @1stepsnutrition.bsky.social · 11/02/2026
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
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Rob Percival @rob-percival.bsky.social · 30/01/2026
glyphosate industry still attacking independent scientists, it would appear www.thenewlede.org/2026/01/outr...
thenewlede.org
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...
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Caroline Lucas @carolinelucas.bsky.social · 27/01/2026
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 👇
resilience.org
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.
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Rob Percival @rob-percival.bsky.social · 20/01/2026
that too
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Rob Percival @rob-percival.bsky.social · 20/01/2026
strong case for taxing dead animal flesh www.theguardian.com/environment/...
theguardian.com
‘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
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Rob Percival @rob-percival.bsky.social · 14/01/2026
* with the caveat that 'demise' may be too strong a word 😉
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Zach Boren @zdboren.bsky.social · 14/01/2026
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
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M.J. Crockett @mjcrockett.bsky.social · 11/12/2025
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/

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
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Rob Percival @rob-percival.bsky.social · 05/12/2025
Good work G.
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Foodrise @foodrise.bsky.social · 03/12/2025
🔥 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)
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Mighty Earth 🌍 @mightyearth.org · 03/12/2025
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 ➡️ mightyearth.org/article/cow-in-the-…
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Jan Dutkiewicz @jandutkiewicz.bsky.social · 01/12/2025
vegans are so annoying tho faunalytics.org/global-anima...
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Jan Dutkiewicz @jandutkiewicz.bsky.social · 28/11/2025
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...
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Rob Percival @rob-percival.bsky.social · 25/11/2025
More here - obesityhealthalliance.org.uk/2025/11/25/o...
obesityhealthalliance.org.uk
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...
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Rob Percival @rob-percival.bsky.social · 25/11/2025
My @thesoilassociation.bsky.social comment on the extension of the Soft Drinks Industry Levy - (TDLR: we need to talk about sweeteners...)
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IPES-Food @ipes-food.org · 22/11/2025
#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
“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
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Rob Percival @rob-percival.bsky.social · 21/11/2025
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'.. 🤷‍♂️
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Rob Percival @rob-percival.bsky.social · 21/11/2025
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..
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Rob Percival @rob-percival.bsky.social · 21/11/2025
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!)
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Rob Percival @rob-percival.bsky.social · 21/11/2025
(and of course there's an important psychological dimension - I can recommend you a book on that 😉)
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Rob Percival @rob-percival.bsky.social · 21/11/2025
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.
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Rob Percival @rob-percival.bsky.social · 21/11/2025
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...
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Rob Percival @rob-percival.bsky.social · 21/11/2025
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.
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Ferris Jabr @ferrisjabr.bsky.social · 14/11/2025
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.
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: reef3859Xestospongia 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 WikipediaThis 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 DugornayThe freshwater sponge, Spongilla lacustris, in the Hanford Reach of the Columbia River in Washington State, USA.
15 August 2008
Author: Kirt L. Onthank
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Rob Percival @rob-percival.bsky.social · 14/11/2025
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/...
theguardian.com
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
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Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy @iatp.bsky.social · 12/11/2025
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-...
iatp.org
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...
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Rob Percival @rob-percival.bsky.social · 12/11/2025
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...
civileats.com
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.
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DeSmog @desmog.com · 05/11/2025
🔴 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...
desmog.com
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...
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Kristof Dhont @kristofdhontphd.bsky.social · 04/11/2025
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
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Camille Perrin @perrincam.bsky.social · 03/11/2025
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...
thegrocer.co.uk
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
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Inside Track @insidetrackuk.bsky.social · 03/11/2025
Senior professionals have sounded the alarm. Food industry commercial plans are in direct conflict with environmental, health & welfare goals. Read the Insiders’ Guide to Meat & Dairy here: www.insidetrack.org.uk/meat-and-dairy #MeatAndDairy 🚨
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Rob Percival @rob-percival.bsky.social · 30/10/2025
Interesting take on the question of controlling for energy density here - www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1...
medrxiv.org
Is energy density an implicit part of the purpose behind ultra-processed food? A comparison of relative energy density across ultra-processed and minimally processed food
Introduction Diets high in ultra-processed food (UPF) are linked with greater energy intake and less favourable weight change than diets high in minimally processed food (MPF), as defined by the Nova ...
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Dr. Aaron Thierry @thierryaaron.bsky.social · 30/10/2025
“The prevailing assumption is that the world has closed off pathways above 3°C warming – but in fact we could be derailed by vicious cycles in societies & nature. Catastrophic environmental change is still very much on the table“ - @jamesgdyke.info Assistant Director of @gsiexeter.bsky.social
news.exeter.ac.uk
‘Derailment’ warning as world faces threats to its ability to act on climate change
The worsening consequences of the climate crisis could fatally “derail” climate action, researchers have warned. With global warming breaching 1.5°C – and Earth system tipping points, such as the wide...
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Annie Leymarie @annieleymarie.bsky.social · 29/10/2025
Whilst new reports on the urgency of shifting production & consumption away from animal- and towards more plant-based foods keep being published, both for the UK and globally, e.g. biologicalsciences.leeds.ac.uk/biological-s...
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Rob Percival @rob-percival.bsky.social · 29/10/2025
Confirmation that diet change (i.e. less meat and dairy, more beans and veg) plays no role in UK Gov's decarbonisation plan - they're opting instead for 'precision feeding', methane-suppressing supplements, and breeding programmes that aid intensification. Disappointing. www.gov.uk/government/p...
gov.uk
Carbon budget and growth delivery plan
The Carbon Budget and Growth Delivery Plan sets out how the government meets its statutory carbon budgets and secure the benefits of this transition for people and businesses.
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Survival International @survivalinternational.org · 28/10/2025
Have you heard that we’ve just published “Uncontacted Indigenous Peoples: at the edge of survival”? After years of careful research, Survival’s put together the world’s 1st comprehensive report about uncontacted peoples, and why it’s so important to support them. Learn more: uncontactedpeoples.org
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Rob Percival @rob-percival.bsky.social · 28/10/2025
this shit being re-tweeted by the shadow energy secretary ffs
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FoodFacts.org @foodfacts.org · 23/10/2025
Listening to a fascinating conversation with @rob-percival.bsky.social on Farm Gate podcast about his book "The Meat Paradox" open.spotify.com/episode/5fNz...
open.spotify.com
The meat paradox
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First Steps Nutrition Trust @1stepsnutrition.bsky.social · 16/10/2025
This year’s #WorldFoodDay theme is ‘Hand in Hand for Better Foods and a Better Future’. Here at First Steps, we want to ensure that everyone, including babies and children, has access to healthy food. Eating more minimally processed foods is good for the planet and people.  
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Zach Boren @zdboren.bsky.social · 15/10/2025
lol imagine being told you're not allowed to say 'farmed with care' www.theguardian.com/world/2025/o...
theguardian.com
Watchdog rules Red Tractor exaggerated its environmental standards
The Advertising Standards Authority agrees with River Action that the food safety body’s 2023 advert misled the public
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Nicola Cutcher @nicolacutcher.bsky.social · 15/10/2025
Huge news! Red Tractor = false advertising. I broke this original story in The Times over 2 years ago…. And River Action took it to the Advertising Standards Authority
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Rob Percival @rob-percival.bsky.social · 08/10/2025
obvs
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Caroline Cerny @carolinecerny.bsky.social · 08/10/2025
💯this
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