Animal Law CLE Opportunity

David Cassuto

Some farm animal-related CLE from the good folks at the ABA.  Note the intriguing speaker lineup.

Farmed Animal Welfare and Consumer Labeling Issues

To Register:

http://www.abanet.org/tips/market/10SepAnimalLawWeb.html

Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=146567802042349&ref=mf

Increasingly, consumers concerned about the welfare of farm animals, and related health, food safety, and environmental issues, are seeking to purchase animal-derived foods that are labeled or advertised in a way that provides information regarding the treatment of the animals. Can this give rise to liability when those labels are out of sync with consumer perceptions?

Our panel of attorneys, professors and experts in the field will discuss:

Commercial speech and the role of liability for false advertising under Federal and State law in the labeling of food products.   

King of the…Burgers?

Seth Victor

It appears that not only do we have unicorn meat on the menu, but lion meat as well. Yahoo! Sports reported on this “adventurous” new treat offered by an Arizona restaurant as a way to celebrate the World Cup. Though I’m not surprised, I didn’t know that lions were farmed for meat. I thought they were raised as ill-advised exotic pets. Apparently they are free-range from Illinois.

Call me crazy, but I can think of better ways to celebrate the culture of host nation South Africa than by eating a critically threatened animal. Then again, maybe eating through the British Coat of Arms is a proper post-colonial salute to the former mother country.

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 egg than a small or medium sized one.

One could hardly quibble with the notion that laying large eggs causes more stress to the hen.  It bears emphasizing, however, that this recommendation comes from the British Free Range Egg Producers Association.  Whatever one thinks of the efficacy of free range (some varying views, here, here and here), both in the US and abroad, the practice has at its goal a less stressful environment for the hens (though it still involves the mass killing of male chicks).  If one is consuming factory farmed eggs, the size of the eggs doesn’t matter a whit.  The hens that lay the eggs live in battery cage hell for as long as it takes for them to become utterly spent, following which they get discarded like garbage (except that there are so many of them it has created a disposal problem).  Worrying about egg size when the animals endure conditions whose cruelty defies the imagination is like worrying about a blood blister on a sucking chest wound.