By Ann W. Parks

Rep. Ed Whitfield, R-Ky., Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., and Rep. Jim Moran, D-Va. speak at Georgetown Law’s animal law conference on March 27.

“Bart” looks on as his owner, Gillian Deegan, assistant commonwealth attorney in Botetourt County, Virginia, and other lawyers and investigators discuss the role of law enforcement officers in animal law.

It was, as Dean T. Alexander Aleinikoff put it, a conference unlike any ever held at Georgetown Law — or anywhere else, for that matter. Three members of Congress — Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., Rep. Jim Moran, D-Va., and Rep. Ed Whitfield, R-Ky. — spoke about animal protection legislation and barriers to it. Current and former officials of executive branch agencies discussed statutes relating to horses and burros. Two federal judges, Gladys Kessler of the District of Columbia and Lawrence Kahn of New York, spoke of cases involving white-tailed deer and livestock. A retired FBI agent discussed the practice of cockfighting. A veterinarian explored the topic of animal forensics. And sharing the limelight with some of the panelists was a dog named Bart.

Admittedly, Bart didn’t have much to say at Georgetown Law’s first-ever conference on animal law March 27, a collaboration between the Law Center and the Humane Society of the United States. The conference was made possible by contributions by Bob Barker, the Glaser Progress Foundation, and Hayward Richard Pressman (L’66) and his wife Donna Pressman.

But Bart’s owner, Gillian Deegan — an assistant commonwealth’s attorney in Botetourt County, Va. — did the talking for him, as did the many government officials, lawyers, scholars, veterinarians and even economists who filled Hart Auditorium on March 27 to discuss a field that has not always been taken as seriously as it should be.

“Normally, when there’s an animal law conference, you get a few lawyers together to talk about their cases,” Aleinikoff commented at the start of the day. “We’ve broken out of that.”

The day before the conference, Landrieu and Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., introduced bipartisan legislation to end the slaughter of horses for human consumption, which continues despite the fact that all U.S. slaughterhouses have now been closed by the courts. It is estimated that in 2006, more than 100,000 mostly healthy U.S. horses — many of them stolen or sold unknowingly to people in the business of killing them — were slaughtered, inhumanely, to supply European and Asian markets with food.

“It’s not just the slaughter of horses, it’s the transportation,” said Moran, who co-chairs a new Animal Protection Caucus with Rep. Elton Gallegy, R-Ca. “You have these double-decker vehicles where they can’t even stand up…the animals have these very destructive experiences that just should not be allowed to occur.”

Evolution of law

In a panel looking at the roles of administrative agencies in animal law, Georgetown Law Professor David Vladeck discussed three key cases, one brought by a circus worker alleging mistreatment of elephants; one urging the Department of Agriculture to fully implement the Horse Protection Act (prohibiting the intentional injuring, or soring, of a show horse to give it a high-stepping gait); and one seeking to enforce the Animal Welfare Act, requiring the Department to set forth requirements for the physical environment and psychological well-being of primates.

“These three cases encapsulate what has been a long evolution of law, providing courts authority to supervise the treatment of animals,” Vladeck said.

Local and federal prosecutors, as well as a retired FBI official, discussed some of the animal cases they’ve worked on — ranging from everything from the death of a puppy whose autopsy showed he was strangled to cockfighting to an allegedly neglected snake. From a panel of veterinarians, attendees learned several key principles that could be fairly applied to the legal profession as well: one, that it is never okay to hit your client, no matter how unruly he might be; and two, that a good expert witness can often tip the balance in a criminal prosecution in court.

“It is our job to be out there on the front lines,” said Dr. Holly Cheever of the New York State Humane Association, who discussed the pivotal role that veterinarians play in animal cruelty cases. “Who is better to determine what is neglect for each species? To determine the cause of a wound or disease?”

The price of eggs

And in case you’ve ever wondered what antitrust law has to do with the price of eggs, the answer is, more than you might think. A panel of economists who have evaluated the economic implications of humane public policies discussed an antitrust lawsuit recently filed in federal court in Pennsylvania, alleging that the egg industry engaged in an illegal plan to inflate prices and profits by implementing sham animal welfare guidelines to reduce the supply of eggs. The panel also discussed matters such as cage-free eggs (from chickens allowed to roam free).  

“When it comes to protecting animal welfare, what we hear is that if people care about this, then they will buy the products that are made in a less cruel way,” said Matt Newman, an economist with Blue Sky Consulting. Still, he noted that economists don’t have a way of placing a value on an animal who is treated well versus one that isn’t. “A happy cow is worth just as much as an unhappy cow, as long as it’s producing the same profit for the farmer.”

Jonathan Lovvorn, vice president and chief counsel of animal protection litigation and research at the Humane Society of the United States and an adjunct professor at the Law Center, said that the conference was the latest “piece of the puzzle” in raising awareness of these issues. Besides sponsoring a seminar in animal protection litigation, Georgetown Law also offers the only post-graduate animal law fellowship in the country, funding one graduate every year to work on animal protection matters.

“In actuality, animal law is extremely old,” he said, noting that protections relating to animals can be traced back to the book of Proverbs and also to the original legal code for the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Recent decades, however, have seen a huge increase in the number of statutes, cases and controversies over animals.

“It’s still one of the least understood areas of law,” he said. “Animals are everywhere, from what we wear to what we eat to who greets us when we get home at night…. Although the use of animals is pervasive in our society, there is also a universal ethic that animals should be protected from cruelty and abuse. ”

 

More information, including speaker biographies and course materials, may be found at https://www.law.georgetown.edu/cle/showEventDetail.cfm?ID=204

 

To learn more about the Humane Society of the United States, see http://www.hsus.org/.