Legal Niches

Animal Law Symposium: The Impact On & Opportunities For Animals in the Current Political and Economic Climate

Posted on May 15, 2009
Call for Papers The Animal Law Section of the Maryland State Bar Association, in conjunction with the University Of Baltimore School Of Law and the University Of Pennsylvania School Of Law, will host the first-ever regional Mid-Atlantic symposium on animal law...

Vilsack Going South on Us

Posted on May 15, 2009
My low expectations for Secretary Vilsack (USDA) were briefly raised with Kathleen Merrigan’s appointment to the #2 spot over there (see post here).  Then I read stuff like this, where Vilsack tells Congress that the “vast, vast, vast majority of farmers who are raising livestock are very sensitive” to the need to be careful about [...

Great News for Farmed Animals from Both Sides of the Atlantic

Posted on May 14, 2009
On the US side, Maine has become the sixth U.S. state to ban extreme confinement of certain factory-farmed animals! It joins Florida, Arizona, Colorado, Oregon and California in what has become a massive and sustained push by people across the country to better the living conditions of animals in factory farms...

What Price Sushi? Tuna on the Brink

Posted on May 13, 2009
The bluefin tuna can go from 0 to 60 mph in 5 seconds. Underwater.  One of the top predators in the ocean, the fish can grow to 10 feet in length and weigh 1500 pounds.  It also makes really good sushi — dead bluefin can sell for over $100,000.  Consequently, it has been fished to [...

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Live Skinning Raccoon Dogs and Other Tales from the Fur Farm

Posted on May 13, 2009
Sometimes, information presents itself that is so stirring, so disturbing, so utterly inconceivable that even those of us paying attention to these issues are shaken to the core. Such was the case when I chose to view the undercover video of a Chinese fur farm taken by investigators of Care for the Wild, EAST International, and [...

Another Cool Animal Scholarship Opportunity

Posted on May 10, 2009
Call for papers: for the new multidisciplinary and international Journal of Animal Ethics to be published by the University of Illinois Press in partnership with the Ferrater Mora Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics in 2010. The Journal will be a journal of inquiry, argument, and exchange dedicated to exploring the moral dimension of our relations with animals...

Polar Bears, Secretary Salazar and Climate Change

Posted on May 09, 2009
Polar bears cannot catch a break.  The Bush Administration reluctantly declared the bear a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act (ESA)  a year or so ago.  The threat arose because of shrinking habitat caused by polar ice melting.  That ice melt is, of course, a result of climate change...

Animal Law as Masculine Sentimentalism?

Posted on May 07, 2009
That?s a possibility I hadn?t considered before.  But I think Susan Pearson (History, Northwestern University) is onto something.  On May 15, 2009, Dr. Pearson will present her paper ?The Dove Has Claws?: Anticruelty Reform and Masculine Sentimentalism in Gilded Age America at the Newberry Library in Chicago...

European Parliament Bans Trade in Seal Products

Posted on May 06, 2009
The European Parliament has banned all trade in seal pelts and seal products.  The move was strongly criticized by Canada and particularly by the Canadian Sealers Association, which insists that the Canadian method of clubbing young seals to death on the ice is humane...

Swine Flu: Born in North Carolina

Posted on May 06, 2009
So it turns out that the H1N1 or (let’s call it what it is:) SWINE Flu is a Tarheel.  This outstanding post in Daily Kos tells the story about how the genes of this most recent virus are traceable to a 1998 outbreak at a Sampson County, North Carolina industrial hog facility...

Pulled Pork Ad

Posted on May 06, 2009
Words fail me. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9K8jQQ8g3A&feature=player_embedded –dnc hat tip: Feminist Law Professors

Pete Seeger, Hope, & Animals

Posted on May 04, 2009
Yesterday, I attended Pete Seeger’s 90th birthday celebration (and benefit for the Clearwater) at Madison Square Garden.  The music and spirit of Seeger (and the Weavers) was a huge presence in my house during my childhood and remains so to this day...

U.S. Justice Dept Joins the Fight

Posted on May 03, 2009
The U.S. Justice Department has joined the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) in a lawsuit against Hallmark Meat Packing and Westland Meat Company, Inc. for defrauding the federal government. The Humane Society of the United States had filed a qui tam action in federal district court against the two companies following their abusive treatment [...

Babies and Pigs in Diapers

Posted on May 01, 2009
Nadya Suleman, the California mother of 14 children, has said in a recent news interview that she is considering adopting a pet pig and/or a small dog.  PETA is urging Ms. Suleman to refrain.  According to PETA, a representative of that organization sent Ms...

Veggie School Lunch Options

Posted on May 01, 2009
Wyntergrace Williams, the 14-year-old daughter of talk show host Montel Williams, is lobbying the U.S. Congress to reform the Child Nutrition Act to more accurately reflect the health benefits of vegetarian and vegan meals in public school lunches by offering more non-meat and non-dairy options...

The Politicization of Animal Use

Posted on May 01, 2009
 Conservative political radio talk show political host Rush Limbaugh has joined forces with the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) to support a U.S. crackdown on ?organized dog fighting and other animal cruelty crimes? according to the Washington Times...

PETA and . . . Michael Vick

Posted on May 01, 2009
PETA continues to break new ground in the unusual approach to animal advocacy sweepstakes.  Apparently, Micheal Vick is in talks with PETA to become a spokesperson for the organization.  We can interpret Vick’s motives in a number of ways.  Perhaps he has rehabilitated himself and developed a love (or at least respect) for animals while [...

CAFO Calumny

Posted on April 29, 2009
Today’s NYT reports that the pork industry is incensed at the public relations drubbing their industry has taken as a result of the swine flu outbreak.  Tom Harkin’s response is to call the virus the “so called” swine flu.  Yep, that ought to take care of it...

Hog CAFOs and the Swine Flu Outbreak ? You Do the Math

Posted on April 27, 2009
Flying below the media radar (at least in the United States) is an apparent link between a Smithfield Farms hog confinement facility in Veracruz, Mexico and the swine flu outbreak.  Although it has received little attention here, the issue has gotten significant coverage in the Mexican media...

Free Speech or Free Tyranny?

Posted on April 26, 2009
The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to finally determine whether selling videos depicting animal cruelty should be constitutionally-protected speech. This year, it will hear the case of United States of America v. Robert J. Stevens. The defendant, who sold dogfighting and hog-dog fighting videos, was the first person to be convicted under a 1999 federal law [...

Tail-Docking Goes the Way of the Dodo

Posted on April 22, 2009
In addition to ultimately being killed, and to (for most), being severely confined indoors, without fresh air, soil or trees, American factory-farmed animals are subjected to a horrifying line-up of painful physical mutilations. These are all a result of farmers’ desires to keep their work easy and predictable, and reflect the shift to factory-farming that [...

The Helmsley Controversy Continues?

Posted on April 22, 2009
This one’s for Professor Crawford… The Washington Times reports today that Leona Helmsley’s estate trustees have allocated $136 million of the trust’s first dole-out of $137 million (out of an estimated total of $5 billion) to medical charities rather than dog charities ? the latter being what some animal advocates feel her will indicated she wished...

Animal Terror(ists)

Posted on April 21, 2009
So, a few days after the administration gets roundly criticized for suggesting that former members of the military might be susceptible to right-wing extremism, we learn today that the FBI’s Most Wanted “Domestic Terrorist” is an animal rights activist who has allegedly bombed two offices in northern California...

Content Cows Come from Cariocas, not California

Posted on April 19, 2009
Whenever I talk to someone about becoming a vegetarian, I have to be very conscious of the argument I present. I usually start by letting people ask me questions about my own lifestyle, rather than come off as an agenda pusher.  But where we go from there is another matter...

Animal Scholarship Opportunity in Social Text

Posted on April 18, 2009
Call for Papers: Special Issue of Social Text SPECIES We are soliciting papers for a special issue of Social Text titled SPECIES.  The past decade has witnessed the emergence and crystallization of a field of scholarship hailed as “Animal Studies” or alternatively, the ?Post-human turn...

Fur Is Green?

Posted on April 17, 2009
Guest Blogger: Seth Victor Today I discovered the “Fur Is Green” campaign, sponsored by the Fur Council of Canada. I don’t think anyone who reads this blog will find this campaign anything less than absurd. While I could possibly see someone buying the “Respect for the Land” and “Respect for the People” prongs, I find immense [...

Wording Is Everything

Posted on April 16, 2009
I am delighted that my post has generated so much cogitation.  As the debate continues, though, I want my position clearly understood.  What I said was that vegans and omnivores alike must examine their roles in the industrial food apparatus and in that context stated that it is intellectually inconsistent to decry animal cruelty while [...

It Depends on the Cheeseburger

Posted on April 16, 2009
David’s post on the morality of food choices is generating an important debate. What spurred the discussion was David’s assertion that “[a]s a matter of intellectual consistency, it makes no more sense to decry animal cruelty while eating a cafeteria cheeseburger than to condemn racism while attending a lynching”...

Defending Diet Defensively

Posted on April 15, 2009
Interesting piece in today’s NYT about Jeffrey Masson and his path to veganism.  It’s heartening that in the space of a couple of weeks the Gray Lady featured Kristof’s piece (mentioned below) and this one, both of which deal with diet and animal rights...

Summer Grants for Law Students Interested In Animal Law

Posted on April 15, 2009
From the email: ALDF Summer Research Grants: Through the funding of the Animal Legal Defense Fund, the Animal Legal & Historical Center will be able to offer four $1,000 summer research grants. Under our grant program students are assigned topics and they draft a paper for posting on the website along with relevant primary legal materials...

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