CAFO Calumny

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.  The pork industry insists that it should be called something else.  Tom Harkin has decided to call the virus the “so called” swine flu.  Meanwhile, a number of countries, [...]

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

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 Mexico. Initial reports linked the disease’s vector to flies that reproduce [...]

Free Speech or Free Tyranny?

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 [...]

Tail-Docking Goes the Way of the Dodo

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…

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 [...]

Animal Terror(ists)

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.  Nobody was hurt in either bombing. Without [...]

Content Cows Come from Cariocas, not California

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. We can talk about environmental [...]

Animal Scholarship Opportunity in Social Text

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.”  While this relatively novel formulation reflects a self-conscious interest in [...]

Fur Is Green?

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 [...]

Wording Is Everything

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

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”. I also find it problematic to [...]

Defending Diet Defensively

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.  Overall, I see articles like these as an enormous net positive [...]

Summer Grants for Law Students Interested In Animal Law

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 [...]

Citizen Suits and Cruelty Laws

One would not expect to find a progressive animal cruelty law in a state that leads the (un)civilized world in the factory farming of hogs.  Yet, North Carolina’s animal protection statute contains a citizen suit provision — which means that private citizens can bring suit against violators of the law.  This private right of action [...]

New York Leading Thoroughbred Racehorse Owner Charged With Animal Abuse

One of the big names in New York’s thoroughbred racing industry – Ernie Paragallo – was charged with 22 counts of animal cruelty involving more than 170 horses under his care. He allegedly failed to feed and take care of his horses in an adequate manner. This unfortunate development highlights some of the uncomfortable issues [...]

For All Your Vegan Needs

You learn something new every day, the saying goes. Well, today that “something” for me was that there are vegan condoms. What are vegan condoms? Those that are not tested on animals, that contain no animal-based ingredients and use no animal products in the processing. (Casein, a milk protein is used by many manufacturers at [...]

Kristof on Animal Rights

Yesterday’s New York Times featured an Op-Ed column by Nicholas Kristof on animal rights. The piece is titled “Humanity Even For Nonhumans”. Here’s an excerpt from the column: “In recent years, the issue [of animal rights] has entered the mainstream, but even for those who accept that we should try to reduce the suffering of [...]

The Vegetarian at Passover

What’s a vegetarian to do with a religious holiday ritual that involves a shank bone? There appears to be good authority that eating meat at Passover is not mandatory. According to Rabbi J. David Bleich, “Jewish tradition does not command carnivorous behavior…” See Vegetarianism and Judaism, TRADITION, Summer 1987, at 86. For further guidance from [...]

Taking Animal Advocacy Seriously (Part 1 of 3)

Why is it that serious people sometimes don’t take animal advocates seriously? I believe it has to do with the sort of claims that animal advocates sometimes advance. Take, for example, my post on the value of human and animal life. The position I defended there – that it is, all things being equal, more [...]

Harvard Law Review Student Note on Animal Rights

The February 2009 edition of the Harvard Law Review (here) includes a student-written section on “Developments in the Law – Access to Courts.”  One of the subsections entitled “Aesthetic Injuries, Animal Rights, and Anthropomorphism” explores the expansion of animal rights through a claim that injury to an animal is an “aesthetic injury” to a human [...]

Law Librarians of New England to Caucus on Animal Law

This is a great development and looks to be a very interesting meeting: LLNE Spring 2009 Meeting Hosted by Quinnipiac University School of Law Library Animal Law Who should attend? Academic, court, and firm librarians will benefit from learning about this emerging area of law.  Today, there are 104 law schools in the US and [...]

Foreskins vs. Lab Rats

You never know where you will encounter an ethical dilemma.  This article discusses how scientists are making significant progress toward phasing out animal experimentation by using cells from neonatal (human)  foreskins instead of animals in their research.   In many, if not most respects, this capability represents a tremendous leap forward.  Experimentation on animals results [...]