Regular readers to this blog and its evil twin, the Grumpy Vegan, know that there exists a love-hate relationship with The Guardian whose coverage of animal rights and related issues, including vegan/veg, cruelty-free living is bizarre, to put it generously. Contempt, more like. Anyway, The Independent is fast becoming the newspaper of choice for consistent, intelligent coverage of animal-related issues as well as other important topics of concern to anyone who cares passionately about this world.

For example, today’s Indie‘s cover feature, Death Wish, reports on the link between farmers feeding antibiotic-laced feed to obese factory farmed animals and the impact that this has on human health and our ability to fight lethal strains of new infections (e.g., E.coli, MSRA). This article is accompanied by an excellent graphic charting the significant increase in antibiotics on British farms. There’s also two op eds, including one by Johann Hari, which concludes “Our demand for cheap meat turned us, in turn, into cheap meat.”

Although The Guardian publishes excellent investigative reports on the food industry by Felicity Lawrence, for example, it frequently fails to make the link between animal cruelty and the human condition and, when it does, often trivialises it at the expense of the animal. So, well done The Indie!