This thought-provoking book examines the rise of animal welfare as a serious policy concern in the international trade law regime. The central focus is an in-depth study of the background and legal analysis of the landmark EC – Seal Products case, which confirmed the importance of animal welfare in WTO law. The book explores how the WTO handled the relationship between trade disciplines and animal welfare, including the particularly challenging questions around Indigenous seal hunting rights. It offers a detailed account of animal welfare and animal conservation commitments in new trade agreements, as well as mechanisms for enforcement, cooperation, and citizen participation.

At a time when the planet’s wildlife faces countless dangers, international environmental law continues to overlook its evolving welfare interests. This thought-provoking book provides a crucial exploration of how international environmental law must adapt to take account of the growing recognition of the intrinsic value of wildlife.

This book critically engages the emerging field of global animal law from the perspective of an intersectional ethical framework. Reconceptualising global animal law, this book argues that global animal law overrepresents views from the west as it does not sufficiently engage views from the Global South, as well as from Indigenous and other marginalised communities. Tracing this imbalance to the early development of animal law’s reaction to issues of international trade, the book elicits the anthropocentrism and colonialism that underpin this bias. In response, the book outlines a new, intersectional, second wave of animal ethics. Incorporating marginalised viewpoints, it elevates the field beyond the dominant concern with animal welfare and rights. And, drawing on aspects of decolonial thought, earth jurisprudence, intersectionality theory and posthumanism, it offers a fundamental rethinking of the very basis of global animal law. The book's critical, yet practical, new approach to global animal law will appeal to animal law and environmental law experts, legal theorists, and those working in the areas of animal studies and ecology.

This volume is an inspiring and breakthrough piece of academic scholarship and the first of its kind featuring a comprehensive reader-friendly approach to teach the intricacies of the various aspects of international farm animal, wildlife conservation, food safety and environmental protection law. The selected focus areas are grouped in sections, such as agrobiodiversity, fishing and aquaculture, pollinators and pesticides, soil management, industrial animal production and transportation, and international food trade. Farm animal welfare, environmental protection, biodiversity conservation, and food safety are the core of the selected chapters. Every chapter provides real-world examples to make the complex field easy to understand. With its systematic approach, this book is devoted to anyone interested in the subject, becomes a valuable resource for professionals working in food regulation, and provides a solid foundation for courses and master’s programs in animal law, environmental policy, food and agriculture law, and regulation of these subjects around the world. Through its emphasis on sustainable food production, this work offers a cutting-edge selection of evolving topics at the heart of the pertinent discourse. As one of its highlights, this books also provides “Tools for Change,” a unique compilation and analysis of laws from the major farm animal product trading nations. With these tools, practitioners, advocates, policy makers and other state-holders are equipped with information to start work toward improving farm animal welfare, wildlife conservation, and food safety through the use of law and policy.

This book introduces the various aspects of international farm animal protection and wildlife conservation through the lenses of food safety and environmental protection law. Bite-sized chapters focus on a wide range of topics from agrobiodiversity, fishing, and aquaculture to pollinators and pesticides, soil management, industrial animal production, and transportation, as well as international food trade. Animal welfare and biodiversity conservation sit at the core of the selected chapters, each one providing real-world examples to make the complex field easy to understand. Current developments including food safety modernization, blockchain, and COVID-19 considerations are addressed head-on. Farm Animal Welfare Law provides a primer for law school courses and masters’ programs, for practitioners, advocates, and animal enthusiasts alike. Through its emphasis on sustainable food production, this book offers a cutting-edge selection of evolving topics at the heart of the pertinent discourse.

In this objective, practical and authoritative introductory text the author reveals how the fundamental principles of the human-animal relationship drive the development of animal law. The book explains the criteria by which the lawful use of animals is determined, and how these criteria impact evolving standards of animal protection and define the responsibilities of people in their interactions with animals. The author identifies 29 key principles which constitute the core knowledge necessary for people involved in debating, assessing, and guiding the evolution of society’s national and international rulebook of animal welfare law. The book also considers animal welfare and law in the context of a global market through discussion of common issues such as climate change, biosecurity, food safety and food supply. Based on successful law courses run by the author and his own expertise as an animal law lecturer, prosecutor and specialist legal adviser, the book combines insights from science, ethics and law to provide an essential understanding of what informs society and the law with regards to animals and their welfare.

The plight of animal individuals and species inflicted on them by human activity is a global problem with detrimental repercussions for all humans and for the entire planet. This book gives an overview of the most important international legal regimes that directly address and indirectly affect animals. It covers species conservation treaties, notably the international whaling regime, the farm animal protection rules of the EU, international trade law and the international law of armed conflict. It also analyses the potential for an international regime of animal rights. Finding that international law creates more harm than good for animals, the auther suggests progressive treaty interpretation, treaty making and animal interest representation to close the animal welfare gap in international law. A body of global animal law needs to be developed, accompanied by critical global animal studies.

"The economic costs and benefits of farm animal production and sustainability versus improving climate change and animal welfare presents one of the most complex dilemmas in agriculture today. This book, by top global authors and experts, outlines the problem whilst making policy-relevant recommendations"--

This handbook explores, contextualises and critiques the relationship between anthropocentrism – the idea that human beings are socially and politically at the centre of the cosmos – and international law. While the critical study of anthropocentrism has been under way for several years, it has either focused on specific subfields of international law or emanated from two distinctive strands inspired by the animal rights movement and deep ecology. This handbook offers a broader study of anthropocentrism in international law as a global legal system and academic field. It assesses the extent to which current international law is anthropocentric, contextualises that claim in relation to broader critical theories of anthropocentrism, and explores alternative ways for international law to organise relations between humans and other living and non-living entities. This book will interest international lawyers, environmental lawyers, legal theorists, social theorists, and those concerned with the philosophy and ethics of ecology and the non-human realms.

The rise of the globalized economy has rendered an even more profound change in the relationship between humans and other animals than the ancient progression from huntergatherer to agricultural society. In today’s global markets, multinational corporations exploit the economic value of animals throughout the world on an unprecedented scale. The philosophical and legal notions that animals are mere unfeeling machines or pieces of property, although more or less taken for granted for centuries, has been challenged, if not burst asunder, in recent decades (in law, moral philosophy, and cognitive and other sciences), and regulation of the treatment of animals in agriculture, experimentation, entertainment and other areas has begun to make substantial inroads in national and international law. This book provides a detailed analysis of international and comparative animal law focusing on the impact of today’s globalized economy on animal law. Describing a wide range of domestic and international laws relating to the treatment of animals, the author explicates the sorts of legal rules which affect the global animal marketplace. Representative norms in existing animal protection laws are analyzed and critiqued, illustrating the diverse approaches taken by different countries and by the international community in regulating uses of animals. Among the issues covered are the following: - contemporary philosophical thought on the relationship between humans and animals; - recent scientific research relating to cognitive and other abilities of animals; - legal issues relating to factory farming and animal slaughter; - legal protection of animals during transport; - regulatory schemes on animal experimentation; - laws on the use of animals in entertainment; - laws on protection of companion animals; - regulation of trade in endangered species; - international trade issues relating to animals, including consideration of the provisions of GATT and the seminal WTO/GATT decisions in the Tuna/Dolphin, Shrimp/Turtle, Tuna Labeling and EU/Seal Products cases; - constitutional protection for the interests of animals; - intellectual property law issues relating to animals; - efforts to have the legal “personhood” of certain animals judicially recognized; and - what the future may hold for animal law in the global economy. To ensure the consideration of a full range of legal approaches, the laws analyzed come from a wide variety of countries and jurisdictions, including Australia, Austria, Brazil, Canada, the EU, Germany, India, Ireland, New Zealand, Switzerland, the UK, and state and federal laws of the US. Numerous international treaties and conventions relevant to animal treatment and animal law are also covered, including the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, the CITES Convention, the European Convention for the Protection of Animals Kept for Farming Purposes, the European Patent Convention, the GATT Treaty, the TRIPS Agreement and the Universal Copyright Convention. It is not difficult to grasp, given the continuing increases in production, consumption and use of animals and animal products worldwide, that legal initiatives in this often emotional and acrimonious area of law are frequently contentious and hard fought. But this is really just the dawn of animal law, which has only recently become recognized as an important cutting-edge topic, and this area of the law promises to develop rapidly in the future. This book is enormously valuable in contributing to the continuing development and understanding of this law, clearly laying out the contours and boundaries of existing animal laws in our global economy, and allowing legal educators, concerned lawyers and policymakers to teach, formulate proposals, argue cases and defenses, and secure a firm purchase on future trends and developments in animal law.