Food, Inc.

Building on Professor Cassuto’s post below, I draw your attention to a new movie hitting documentary fim festivals:  Food, Inc. The movie claims to “[lift] the veil on our nation’s food industry, exposing the highly mechanized underbelly that’s been hidden from the American consumer with the consent of our government’s regulatory agencies, USDA and FDA.” Those [...]

Chipping Away at Big Food

This article declaring that red meat leads to a greater risk of death provides a glimpse of the problems the nation faces regarding its approach to food.  As an initial matter, the risk of death for each and every one of us is 100%.  The author obviously meant that meat consumption can lead to an [...]

Can Animals be Immoral?

Guest Blogger: John A. Humbach A few years ago a young patron at a municipal zoo climbed into the polar bear exhibit and was promptly attacked and killed. The newspapers reported talk of destroying the attacker, but many favored sparing him. As one observer put it: “He was just being a bear.” But was he? [...]

What Use Animal Law?

David Wolfson guest-taught my Animal Law class this evening and, as usual, his provocative, insightful views sent my thoughts spinning off in all directions.  For example, David observed that since 98% of animals in the United States are “farmed” animals and thus wholly lacking in legal protections, animal law, as commonly understood, is functionally irrelevant. [...]

Conference: The Animal Within the Sphere of Human Needs

Canada’s first International Conference on Animal Law will take place on May 21-22, 2009.   The International Research Group in Animal Law (French acronym GRIDA),  based out of the Department of Juridical Sciences at the University of Quebec at Montréal (UQAM) will host and it looks like a fantastic event.  It is titled “The Animal Within [...]

Even Your Pet’s Food Choices Matter

From Guest Blogger, Marnie Cox: The problem of overfishing throughout the world’s oceans is not a new one, but this Sunday’s New York Times added another dimension to the issue – the huge amount of wild fish that are used for the pet food industry (10% of the global supply).  There is no easy answer [...]

From the Kitschy Journalism Makes Me Want to Gag Desk…

This, from today’s NYT: Yes, Bacon Just Might Save Us Sunday, 5 p.m. It is a little-known fact that if bacon were provided free to every man, woman and child on the planet — not for a limited time, but in perpetuity —wars would stop, the global economic crisis would cease and the tragedy of [...]

Torture Hunting

Today on the ski lift, my seat mate told me about a hunting club that adjoins his property.  The club is comprised of people — all to the manner born — who get together to hunt animals and then not kill them.  For example, they “beagle,” which for them involves letting loose hunting beagles to [...]

Hoarding Babies, Hoarding Animals

Lolita Buckner Inniss (Cleveland-Marshall, Ain’t I a Feminist Legal Scholar, Too?, Visiting Prof at Pace Law School) and I have posted to SSRN our essay, Multiple Anxieties: Breaching Race, Class and Gender Norms With Assisted Reproduction.  The essay is about is about misplaced attention on women’s bodies.  Focusing on Nadya Suleman, the California woman who [...]

A Time for Every Purpose Under the Sun

September is Hispanic Heritage Month.  October is Gay and Lesbian History Month.  November is American Indian Heritage Month and Hire-a-Veteran Month (in Massachusetts). January is Cervical Health Awareness Month and Financial Wellness Month.  February is Black History Month and National Weddings Month.  March is Women’s History Month and Irish-American Heritage Month. May is Asian Pacific [...]

Large Eggs, Small Eggs, No Eggs

David Cassuto This article about how the British Free Range Egg Producers Association encourages consumers to eat smaller eggs has been getting a fair amount of play (including this post at Feminist Law Professors).  The producers note that (for obvious biological reasons) it is harder and more painful for a hen to lay a large [...]

Why is murdering a human being worse than wrongfully killing a nonhuman animal?

Killing an animal in violation of anti-cruelty statutes is universally punished less severely than murdering a human being. Is this practice morally justifiable? I believe it is. In order to understand why, we must transcend the “sentience argument”. Both animal welfare and animal rights advocates believe that the rights/interests of animals stem from the fact [...]

Simon B. Smith on “Constance May Bienvenue: Animal Welfare Activist to Vexatious Litigant”

Simon B. Smith (Monash – Australia) has posted to SSRN his 2007 article, “Constance May Bienvenue: Animal Welfare Activist to Vexatious Litigant.”  Here is the abstract: Constance May Bienvenu (1912-1995) was a passionate animal welfare activist. She was also the fifth person declared as a vexatious litigant by the Victorian Supreme Court (1969) and the [...]

From the Mailbag: An Action Alert

The New York League of Humane Voters will hold a press conference outside of Madison Square Garden (33rd and Seventh Avenue) on March 24th at 12pm.  The press conference will happen less than twelve hours after Ringling Brothers parades wild animals through the streets of Manhattan prior to their annual stay at Madison Square Garden. NYLHV’s [...]

What Third-Wave Feminism Brings to Animal Law

Third-wave feminists reject what they perceive as a perennial “victim” stance in feminist thinking.  (For more on third-wave wave feminism, see here).  More colloquially, third-wave feminists might say that (some) subordination is in the eyes of the beholder, not the beholden.  You may think that image/word/action is subordinating me but that doesn’t mean that I [...]

Wolf-delisting: The Politics of Blood

George Bush and his peeps thought gray wolves should be delisted as endangered species in Montana and Idaho.  So does Ken Salazar and, we must assume, Barack Obama.  Bush and peeps also thought it okay to ignore allies.  So, apparently, do Ken Salazar and Barack Obama.  But never mind politics. Wolves were hunted to near [...]

Thinking S-L-O-W-L-Y

Is it just me, or is there something a little odd about the similarity between the “slow-sex movement,” described here, and the slow-food movement?  (The latter is now organized into “Slow Food,” a non-profit that seeks “to counteract fast food and fast life, the disappearance of local food traditions and people’s dwindling interest in the [...]

Federal Ban on Consumption of Downed Cows

In his weekly address yesterday, President Obama declared a federal ban on the slaughter of “downed” cows (cows who are unable to walk or sometimes even stand on their own while being led slaughter) for food.   This is a great victory as downed cows are prevalent due to the negligible medical care they receive on [...]

Prop 2 and a Divided California

Today’s New York Times includes this article about a renewal of interest in a division of California into two states – coastal counties in one and inland counties in another. According to the Times article, this latest iteration of the state subdivision movement arises out of farmers’ angry responses to Proposition 2, a state ballot [...]

The Choice Quandary – A Response to Bridget Crawford

Imputing a lack of agency to sentient beings of whatever type makes for a difficult row to hoe.  In the animal advocacy community, there are many who feel strongly that domesticating animals is ethically wrong because it involves involuntary servitude.  Thus, the practice should be phased out.  Since most animals bred for a domestic existence [...]

False Consciousness Theory in Feminism and Anti-Speciesism

Both feminist legal theory and anti-speciesism make use of the concept of the Marxian false consciousness, described here by Engels in his 1893 Letter to Mehring: Ideology is a process accomplished by the so-called thinker consciously indeed but with a false consciousness. The real motives impelling him remain unknown to him, otherwise it would not [...]

Anthropornography

Animal Blawg is proud to present Bridget Crawford, our first guest blogger.  Professor Crawford blogs regularly at Feminist Law Professors. Anthropornography The design firm Süperfad has created an unusual ad for Durex condoms, a brand of SSL International plc.  The video – one of the “virals” on You Tube – shows pastel-colored condom balloon animals [...]

Handling Slow and Non-Ambulatory Pigs in U.S. Slaughterhouses

Last month, USDA’s Food Safety Inspection Service issued guidance for how its inspectors are to monitor the treatment and eventual location of fatigued or otherwise slow pigs during truck unloading and loading of stockyard pens at slaughterhouses. This is important, the advice states, for both animal welfare reasons as well as carcass health checks. The guidelines distinguish [...]

Green Ammo — So to Speak

There’s a piece on CNN online today about so-called “green ammo” for hunters.   It would appear that the lead in bullets poses a hazard — not just to those animals who get shot but also to scavenging animals, including California Condors, who eat the leavings of hunters.  The lead also is present in the meat [...]

HBO to Air Factory Farm Expose

On March 16, HBO will air the documentary Death on a Factory Farm – a compilation of footage taken in 2006 by an undercover investigator at an Ohio pig factory farm.  I don’t know what is more shocking: the cruelty captured in the footage, or Time Magazine’s story on the documentary, featuring an interview with the undercover investigator responsible. In addition [...]

Critical Animal Studies

Interesting opportunity for all you animal theory heads out there … CALL FOR PAPERS Special Issue of JAC Human-Animal Relation In the context of the widespread intoxication with digital technology, JAC plans a special issue that reconsiders what Jacques Derrida calls “the question of the animal.” As we become persuaded by the ways in which [...]

Give Michael Pollan Some Rules for Eating Well

Michael Pollan (of Omnivore’s Dilemma & In Defense of Food fame), is looking for rules for eating well.  He says: Will you send me a food rule you try to live by? Something perhaps passed down by your parents or grandparents? Or something you’ve come up with to tell your children – or yourself? I [...]

Spay/Neuter Redux

The spay/neuter question came up in my animal law class the other night and I continue to ponder its many facets.  Perhaps some more public wrestling is in order (I previously raised the issue here) . If forced to make a general distinction between animal and environmental advocates on questions relating to animals, I would [...]

And Now For A Brief Survey of the News…

First, I want to live in a world where no member of my species thinks the best way to relax a cat is to stuff it into a bong. Second, President Obama has re-empowered the Endangered Species Act (ESA).  One of our former president’s last minute parting gifts was to decree that federal agencies could [...]

Fish Pedicures — Who Knew?

The Florida Board of Cosmetology has taken a stand against fish pedicures.  Now, I know what you may be thinking — fish don’t have feet and even if they did, why would the Cosmetology Board want to prohibit their proper care and grooming?  Alas, fish pedicures are something different entirely.  They consist of humans sticking [...]