Legal Niches

New York Animal Law in Perspective

Posted on July 06, 2009
Many believe that state animal cruelty laws are not tough enough and that states ought to implement an ?eye for an eye? approach.  Others believe such approaches would be no more effective for crimes against animals than for crimes against people.  In New York, laws are evolving but what’s going on elsewhere? Similar to [...

Sunstein Redux

Posted on July 02, 2009
Will Harvard’s Cass Sunstein become an animal advocate in the White House? If confirmed by the Senate as the Head of the Office of Management and Budget’s Office ofInformation & Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), Sunstein would be responsible for the office which reviews all regulatory proposals from the Administration...

GEIG ? A Coda

Posted on July 01, 2009
This was a very productive 5 day meeting of GEIG.  In addition to attending some fine discussions and papers over the last several days, I also officially joined the IUCN CEL Ethics Specialist Group, something I mistakenly thought I had done in Barcelona at the IUCN Congress back in the fall...

The Ethics of Culling Wildlife ? More News from GEIG

Posted on June 29, 2009
Dateline Florence (I just like saying that), where the Global Ecological Integrity Group Conference continues: One of today’s speakers — an ecologist from Australia — asked: When is it ethically appropriate to cull wildlife to reduce the disease threat to humans? While I am pleased that such questions get posed, they raise predicate questions which seldom get [...

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Taking Animal Advocacy Seriously (Part 2 of 3)

Posted on June 29, 2009
A couple of months ago I wrote a post on why it is that people fail to take animal advocacy seriously. Today I want to elaborate that claim by illustrating it with a recent example. As most readers of AnimalBlawg probably know, President Obama swatted a fly during an interview with John Hardwood several weeks [...

Talking Factory Farming and Vivisection in Florence

Posted on June 26, 2009
I’m in Florence at the moment and, when not gawking at the Duomo, am attending the annual conference of the Global Ecological Integrity Group (GEIG).  This conference offers a good venue to talk to my fellow enviros about animal issues.  The audience tends to be receptive, albeit sometimes skeptical — just the kind of folks [...

Proposed Ban on Exotic Animals in Westchester Hits Wall (of Legislators)

Posted on June 25, 2009
This past Monday, at the invitation of the Committee to Ban Wild and Exotic Animal Acts, Michelle Land and I attended a meeting of the Legislation Committee of the Westchester Board of Legislators.  We were there to testify in favor of proposed legislation banning USDA certified “dangerous” animals from county property...

Pennsylvania State Senator Fights for Animal Cruelty Bill

Posted on June 24, 2009
Thomas Caltagirone, Chair of the Judiciary Committee of the Pennsylvania State Senate, authored an animal cruelty bill that is currently languishing even though it passed the House unanimously in March.  The bill would outlaw ear cropping and “debarking” of dogs...

Geese and Airplanes ? Is Extermination the Answer?

Posted on June 22, 2009
Guest Blogger Alexandra Dapolito Dunn, Pace Law School.  June 22, 2009. This is my first contribution to the Animal Blawg.  I mentioned to my colleague, Prof. David Cassuto, that I was somewhat troubled by recent stories about how Canadian geese are being managed at LaGuardia Airport following the ?double bird strike? which [...

Antibiotics in Your Organic Lettuce and Other Tales from the Factory Farm

Posted on June 20, 2009
I’m writing a piece about CAFOs and climate change for the Animals & Society Institute, which, as you might imagine, is not a cheerful pursuit.  Still, even with all my carping about antibiotics in animal feed, I had not realized that vegetables like corn, potatoes and lettuce absorb antibiotics when fertilized with livestock manure...

Free Speech at the Margins ? ALDF and Animal Law Profs File Amicus Brief in U.S. v. Stevens

Posted on June 18, 2009
In U.S. v. Stevens, the Supreme Court will decide whether a federal law forbidding depictions of animal cruelty violates the First Amendment.  Suzanne first blogged about the case here.  ALDF and animal law professors from all over the country (of whom I am one) recently filed an amicus brief in this case...

Misplaced Activism?

Posted on June 17, 2009
I found the trailer for The Cove the other night while browsing the apple.com/trailers. You can find it here.  I?m encouraged that this is on the front page of the trailers page; it gives me hope that it might been seen by more people than it would if it were advertised only in independent movie [...

Duck Liver, Bob Herbert and the Plight of the American Worker

Posted on June 15, 2009
Zoe Weil does a fine job taking Bob Herbert to task for his cavalier dismissal of the plight of the ducks at an upstate NY foie gras facility.  Herbert concerns himself with the exploitation of the workers at the facility — which is all to the good...

Industrial Agriculture and What NOT to Read During Summer Vacation

Posted on June 14, 2009
Washington State University assigned Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma to all incoming freshmen as required summer reading.  The idea: to spur a debate about industrial agriculture and its impact on American society.  Great idea, right?  I guess not...

Agriculture Exempt from Carbon Caps Under Waxman-Markey

Posted on June 12, 2009
Anyone who was hoping that the climate change bill currently making its way through Congress would have any significant impact on global warming should read this post at Grist.  As the bill currently reads, agriculture is exempt from any carbon caps (despite a carbon footprint exceeding that of the transportation sector)...

New Peer Review Format at Pace Environmental Law Review

Posted on June 12, 2009
I have mentioned before that, in my view, environmental law and animal law are inseverably linked.  In the spirit of bridging the counter-productive gulf between between the two disciplines, I note the following announcement from the Pace Environmental Law Review: Pace Environmental Law Review is Raising the Bar with Peer Review As of August 1, 2009, Pace Environmental [...

Animal Law in New York

Posted on June 11, 2009
Guest Blogger: Stephen Iannocone It seems that animal law is beginning to evolve in the state of New York. While animal cruelty has not been on the same level as a mere traffic violation for quite some time, New York Law continues to move in the right direction...

What to do About our Non-Vegetarian (vegan) Loved Ones

Posted on June 09, 2009
I always struggle with how to deal with my non-vegetarian (vegan) loved ones. On the one hand, I love them to death and don’t want to alienate them by continuously explaining to them the immorality of some of their food choices. On the other hand, I feel that I have a moral obligation to let [...

The Underbelly of Horse Racing

Posted on June 07, 2009
Summer Bird won the Preakness yesterday.  So, perhaps now would be a good time to revisit the world of thoroughbred racing (Luis first posted about it here). A Few Basic facts: - Horse racing is a $4 Billion industry - racehorses weigh over 1000 pounds, but have been selectively bred to have smaller legs ? you do the [...

More on Cows and Climate

Posted on June 06, 2009
Following up on the post below, this article in the NYT bears a look.  Some in the dairy industry (e.g. Stonyfield Farms) are experimenting with feeding dairy cows plants instead of corn to see if it lowers their methane output.  Guess what?  It does...

Week-Long Series at Slate on ?Pepper the Stolen Dog Who Changed America

Posted on June 03, 2009
Slate features an important, fascinating and disturbing  tale of dog who was kidnapped from her home in Pennsylvania and made the subject of a grotesque series of experiments (which I will not dignify with the adjective “scientific”) by Ivan Pavlov (of “Pavlov’s dog” fame)...

Agriculture, Climate Change and the UNFCC

Posted on June 03, 2009
The International Federation of Agricultural Producers has produced a declaration addressing the role of agriculture in both causing and potentially mitigating climate change.  The document bears reading in its entirety both for what it says and for what it does not...

Fish Feel Pain; Now What?

Posted on June 02, 2009
Guest blogger: Elaine Hsaio One of the most common arguments for not eating meat is animal suffering, but this rationale all too often stops short at recognizing the pain of other beings.  Common example: pescatarianism.  Fish don’t feel pain or experience suffering, so we can continue to eat fish despite having given up [...

The Continuing Impact of Proposition 2

Posted on June 01, 2009
In the wake of Prop 2, lawmakers in California have apparently been bitten by the animal protection bug.  Legislation is working its way through both chambers that would ban tail-docking of dairy cows, ban importation of eggs from out-of-state facilities that use unacceptable battery cages, abolish large-scale puppy mills, and increase the penalties for poaching [...

Dolphin Slaughter in Denmark

Posted on May 29, 2009
From the email:  Thanks to Laura Westra for this translation of the Italian text: SHAME!  It is Incredible that it should exist! what todo? other than report it and offer these images as far as possible. DENMARK; A SHAME …pictures…. Although this appears incredible, every year in Denmark this brutal and bloody massacre happens in the [...

GRIDA in Rearview ? A Most Excellent Event

Posted on May 28, 2009
Only time for a brief word about the GRIDA conference b/c I?m now at a different conference, this time of the Rocky Mountain Mineral law Foundation.  The GRIDA event was outstanding.  Lecture topics ranged from animal behavior to AETA.  Among the highlights: David Favre advanced his vision of animals as living property; Steve Wise sketched [...

Some Thoughts On a Shelter Closing

Posted on May 23, 2009
Several posts on this blawg have commented on the troubling reality underlying the legal status of animals, which is that so long as animals remain property under the law, any legal advances are only made in terms of animals? relationships to humans, not for the sake of any inherent right to autonomy...

The Otter Hunt Reborn

Posted on May 20, 2009
En route to Montreal for the GRIDA Animal Law Conference (see post here), I picked up some Canadian newspapers.  From the NationalPost, I learn that aboriginals on Vancouver Island hope to kill 1% of the region?s sea otters per year for ?ceremonial reasons...

Animal Issues Front & Center at Sunstein Confirmation Hearings

Posted on May 18, 2009
Cass Sunstein, President Obama’s choice for administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (a sort of Administrative Law Czar), is a law academic (U of Chicago and now Harvard) and an advocate and scholar of animal law.  He supports (among other things) the creation of a private right of action for animal protection [...

Some Good News from the Courts

Posted on May 18, 2009
Hot off the email: Dear friends and colleagues, I?m happy to share with you that the story of Animal Legal Defense Fund  v. Woodley has been reported on with great care as a big feature story in the June issue of O, The Oprah Magazine. It?s a fantastic tribute to the huge team [...

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