Reference
Glossary
The words that shape the debate on animals, food and the planet — defined plainly, so every story is easier to follow.
A
- Ag-gag law
- Legislation that criminalises undercover recording or employment at agricultural facilities, restricting the documentation of conditions inside them.
- Related stories →
- Antimicrobial resistance (AMR)
- Bacteria evolving to survive the drugs used to treat them. Routine antibiotic use in dense animal housing is a recognised driver of resistance that reaches humans.
- Related stories →
B
- Battery cage
- A wire cage housing several laying hens with less floor space per bird than a sheet of A4 paper. Conventional cages are banned across the EU and several US states.
- Related stories →
- Bycatch
- Marine animals caught unintentionally — dolphins, turtles, sharks, seabirds and non-target fish — and usually discarded dead or dying.
- Related stories →
C
- Calf separation
- The standard dairy practice of removing a calf from its mother within hours or days of birth so the milk can be sold. Male calves are typically raised for veal or beef, or killed early.
- Related stories →
- CO2e (carbon dioxide equivalent)
- A common unit that converts methane, nitrous oxide and other greenhouse gases into the amount of CO2 that would cause the same warming, so different food systems can be compared.
- Related stories →
- Complete protein
- A protein source containing all nine essential amino acids in useful amounts. Mixed plant diets supply them easily across the day; no single-meal combining is required.
- Related stories →
- Cultivated meat
- Meat grown from animal cells in a bioreactor rather than from a slaughtered animal. Approved for sale in a small number of markets and still scaling toward cost parity.
- Related stories →
E
- Enteric methane
- Methane produced by microbial fermentation in the digestive tracts of cattle, sheep and goats. It is the single biggest source of livestock greenhouse gas emissions.
- Related stories →
F
- Factory farm (CAFO)
- A concentrated animal feeding operation: a facility that confines large numbers of animals indoors at high stocking density, relying on imported feed rather than pasture.
- Related stories →
- Feed conversion ratio
- How many kilograms of feed an animal needs to gain one kilogram of body mass. High ratios mean most of the calories and protein grown are lost before they reach a plate.
- Related stories →
- Food desert
- An area where affordable, nutritious food is hard to reach. Any serious plant-based transition has to answer access and price, not just individual choice.
- Related stories →
G
- Gestation crate
- A metal stall roughly the size of a sow's body used during pregnancy. It prevents her from turning around and is banned or being phased out in a growing number of jurisdictions.
- Related stories →
- Greenwashing
- Presenting a product or company as more environmentally responsible than the evidence supports, often by highlighting one metric and omitting the rest.
- Related stories →
H
- Heme vs non-heme iron
- Heme iron comes from animal tissue and is absorbed more readily; non-heme iron from plants is absorbed better when paired with vitamin C and away from tea or coffee.
- Related stories →
- Humanewashing
- Marketing that implies high welfare — pastoral imagery, vague claims like 'natural' or 'farm fresh' — without an audited standard behind it.
- Related stories →
J
- Just transition
- Policy designed so that workers and communities dependent on an industry are supported as it changes — retraining, income support and regional investment.
- Related stories →
L
- Land-use change
- Conversion of forest, savannah or wetland into cropland or pasture. Most agricultural land-use change emissions worldwide are driven by grazing and feed crops.
- Related stories →
- Live export
- Shipping live animals across borders by sea or road for slaughter or fattening. Journeys can last weeks, with heat stress, injury and mortality documented throughout.
- Related stories →
P
- Precision fermentation
- Using microbes engineered to brew specific proteins — such as dairy whey or casein — without an animal. A core technology behind next-generation alternative products.
- Related stories →
R
- Regenerative grazing
- Rotational grazing intended to build soil carbon. Evidence shows real soil benefits on some land, but sequestration rarely offsets the herd's own methane emissions.
- Related stories →
S
- Sanctuary
- A facility that provides lifelong care to rescued animals and does not breed, sell or trade them. Accreditation bodies exist precisely because the word is unregulated.
- Related stories →
- Sentience
- The capacity to have subjective experiences such as pain, fear or pleasure. Sentience is the usual scientific threshold for saying an animal's interests matter morally.
- Related stories →
- Speciesism
- Treating an individual's interests as less important purely because of the species they belong to, rather than because of any morally relevant difference.
- Related stories →
- Stunning
- Rendering an animal unconscious before slaughter, usually with a captive bolt, electricity or gas. Failure rates and gas aversion are the two most-documented welfare problems.
- Related stories →
V
- Vitamin B12
- A bacterial vitamin absent from unfortified plant foods. Everyone on a vegan diet needs a supplement or fortified foods; farmed animals are routinely supplemented too.
- Related stories →
W
- Wet market
- A market selling fresh produce and, in some cases, live or freshly slaughtered animals. Disease risk is tied to the live-animal component, not to fresh markets in general.
- Related stories →
Z
- Zoonotic spillover
- A pathogen jumping from animals to humans. Intensive confinement, live-animal markets and wildlife trade all raise the number of contact events where spillover can occur.
- Related stories →