The European Parliament has voted to ban cages for farmed animals, including egg-laying hens, ducks, and rabbits, following huge public support for the proposed ECI ‘End the Cage Age’ legislation. It’s great news at first glance, but as with anything political, there are conditions.

Today is Ban Live Exports International Awareness Day. Now in its sixth year, having started after 13,000 sheep died after suffering a prolonged journey from Romania which finally ended in Somalia on 14 June 2015, it comes a week after the UK government introduced the Kept Animals Bill to Parliament, the second piece of animal welfare legislation introduced this year.

The UN’s recently launched ‘decade on ecosystem restoration’ project says that the world must restore and reforest an area equivalent in size to China to prevent ecosystem collapse. One of the challenges they say is finding the imagination to come up with solutions, yet from their own ideas, one source of land for rewilding is conspicuously absent: animal agriculture.

Next week, the leaders of the world’s seven biggest economies will gather in Cornwall for the G7 Summit. Animal activists will be there to greet them.

France - where eating animals is seen by many as essential to haute cuisine - is to end its love affair with meat should proposals for new climate legislation go through. Opposition is fierce but expected, yet the bill also has surprising support from younger voters.

Europe’s legislature has come to its senses and thrown out Amendment 171, a draft bill that would have effectively censored producers of vegan dairy alternatives at the behest of animal industry lobbyists.

Farmers in Australia are ‘uniting’ to demand that the government step in and stop vegan food brands from using terms like ‘meat’, ‘chicken’, ‘beef’ and so on with accusations of misleading marketing and a lack of transparency. They want people to know the truth about where their meat comes from, but not the whole truth.

Non-human animals are to be formally recognised as sentient beings by law, the UK Government has announced, as part of a range of new animal welfare measures including the ending of most forms of live animal export and a ban on the import of hunting trophies.

The discovery of 160 puppies and kittens being transported illegally through China’s postal service last week has thrown the country’s cruel ‘pet blind box’ craze into the spotlight.

What is animal labour? Do all animals work or only some? If we recognise them as workers, should they enjoy labour rights? These were some of the questions discussed at an online roundtable last weekend on May 1, the traditional day of remembrance for labour-related struggles.

The Animal Welfare (Sentencing) Bill has received the Royal Assent paving the way for tougher prison sentences of up to five years for those convicted of unnecessary animal cruelty. Seen by many as complementary to Finn’s Law, which protects service animals such as police dogs, such laws are great news for some animals but not for most others reminding us once again that society still has a long way to go to overcome its speciesism.

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.