Where Have All The Rational People Gone?

[The following post is written by one my Animal Law students who prefers to remain anonymous --dnc]

I read an article recently that really offended me. The article was written on November 21, 2009 by Gary Steiner and was published in the New York Times Op-Ed section (Steiner’s piece has already been discussed  on this blog [...]

The Grey Lady’s Vegan Debate

David Cassuto
They NYT recently featured an op-ed by Gary Steiner that lays out the challenges of ethical veganism in contemporary society.  I have my issues with the piece, which suffers from a rigidity that can be off-putting to people of all stripes.  More interesting, though, are the letters it generated.  Amid a few thoughtful exceptions [...]

It’s a Girl!

Kate Blacker
 
Meet my new edition, Rhonda.  She was rescued by Farm Sanctuary and lives in upstate New York.  I think she has my eyes.  You, too, can sponsor a turkey just in time for the holidays.
I admit it is a bit cliché to talk about turkey cruelty on Thanksgiving.  But it is also quite an [...]

Some Further Thoughts on Gadhimai

Sandra Mekita
Tibetan Volunteers for Animals has joined forces with other animal rights activists to petition the Nepalese government to stop the slaughter of a half a million animals during a “Gadhimai” festival on November 24th and 25th.  This festival is considered the world’s largest animal sacrifice. The animals slaughtered are generally: goats, buffaloes, ducks, roosters [...]

More Human than Humans

Michael Friese
As the years go by mankind finds that it has more in common with its ape cousins than previously thought.  The ape that humans have the most in common with is the chimpanzee.  Emory University may have closed the gap even further with a new play entitled Hominids.  In this play humans enact a [...]

IUCN Academy Colloquium — No Animal Law Here…

David Cassuto
I’m currently in China having all kinds of interesting experiences.  For example, it was only in Shanghai a few days ago that I saw my first wheelchair-accessible urinal.  I’ve also seen more pictures of Chairman Mao in the last 2 days than I had seen in the previous . . .  well, ever.   I’m [...]

A Day of Reckoning

David Cassuto
Halloween is my birthday.  That fact alone likely would not merit the holiday’s mention here.  I note it because only this year – some forty-odd years into my marking of the day– did I stop to consider what makes this holiday unusual.  First, my son, Jesse, whose tastes seem to be rather typical for [...]

Animal Blawg Poll Redux

After reading the comments to the Animal Blawg poll that I posted on “Why is Veganism Morally Appealing” and thinking about what Brian Leiter and Michael Dorf had to say about the meaning of the poll’s results (here and here), I think it is worth conducting the poll again. This time, however, I will include [...]

A Goat in Sheep’s Clothing

Kate Blacker
The city of Euless, Texas outlaws killing four-legged animals.  Santeria priest Jose Merced was personally informed about this rule back in 2006 when police knocked on his door and prohibited him from ritually sacrificing a goat.
Speaking as an animal lover and as a vegan, I think this story sounds pretty good.  But there’s more.

You Would Never Raise Your Voice to Your Mother…

 Sandra Mekita
            Walking along a crowded Boston street, you can see people stopping abruptly in front of you – if you did not run into them first – glaring at the spectacle across the street in front of a McDonalds. There are five people with signs and bullhorns surrounding a person in a beakless chicken [...]

Oral Sex, Animals, and the Criminal Code

Is oral sex a crime?  Not necessarily, of course.  But absent consent, it sounds like a crime to me.
Not so if the mouth belongs to an animal, according to a Burlington County, New Jersey judge who dismissed charges against a police officer accused of putting his penis in the mouths of at least 5 calves [...]

Stores, Food, Dogs and Oregon

Apparently, folks in Portland like to bring companion animals into food stores, a predilection that the Oregon Agriculture Department (Food Safety Division) wishes to discourage.  The law states that only “service” animals may enter food stores.  However, enforcement of the rule is complicated by a Catch-22 created by the Americans with Disabilities Act.  The ADA [...]

Ted Kennedy & Animals

Ted Kennedy’s death is a great loss for all kinds of reasons but not much of the eulogizing has focused on his animal advocacy.  This piece does a nice job of summarizing the Senator’s long-time devotion to animal causes — from animal fighting, to factory farming, to seal hunting, he sometimes led, sometimes followed, but [...]

First Animal Blawg Poll – Why do you believe Veganism is Morally Appealing?

Given that polls about veganism seem to be the cool thing to do these days, here’s my first foray into the internet polling world. Check out the poll’s format. Isn’t it way cooler than the one used by Leiter for his veganism poll?
Luis Chiesa

Leiter Poll — The Sequel

Brian Leiter has reported the results of his poll here and contributed his own analysis of veganism, which he concludes to be a “kind of harmless and in many ways sweet eccentricity.”  I am omitting his preceding discussion, which is quite thoughtful and interesting and bears reading in its entirety.  However, in my view, his [...]

Journalists Argue that Criminalizing the Depiction of Animal Cruelty is Counterproductive

A respected association of journalists – the Radio-Television News Directors Association (RTNDA) – filed an amicus brief in the Supreme Court case dealing with whether it is a violation of the first amendment to criminalize the depiction of animal cruelty. David and Suzanne have blogged about the case here and here.
According to the RTNDA, the [...]

Sunstein Nomination Inches Forward

Cass Sunstein will meet with Senator Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) today in an effort to convince him (Chambliss) that Sunstein’s thoughtful and comparatively moderate positions on animal rights and welfare won’t result in him (Chambliss) and his constituents facing lawsuits from pigs and other confined animals.  Chambliss had earlier placed a hold on Sunstein’s nomination to [...]

GEIG – A Coda and a Step Forward for Animal Ethics

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 IUCN (International Union [...]

The Ethics of Culling Wildlife — More News from GEIG

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 [...]

Taking Animal Advocacy Seriously (Part 2 of 3)

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 [...]

Pennsylvania State Legislator Fights for Animal Cruelty Bill

Thomas Caltagirone, Chair of the Judiciary Committee of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, authored an animal cruelty bill that is currently languishing in the Senate even though it passed the House unanimously in March.  The bill would outlaw ear cropping and “debarking” of dogs.   Mr. Caltagirone is tired of waiting.   He has declared that [...]

GRIDA in Rearview — A Most Excellent Event

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

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. I return to [...]

Animal Issues Front & Center at Sunstein Confirmation Hearing

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 [...]

Live Skinning Raccoon Dogs and Other Tales from the Fur Farm

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

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.  Its [...]

Babies and Pigs in Diapers

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. Suleman an e-mail dated April 27, 2009 (this is a [...]

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 excusing [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]