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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 hunter-gatherer to agricultural society. In today’s global
markets, multinational corporations exploit the economic value of animals
throughout the world on an unprecedented scale. Many humans today do not even
make their own choices about what they eat and buy; those choices are made by
the global marketing machine that “packages” their food and the other products
they purchase. 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 in recent decades (in law, moral
philosophy, and cognitive and other sciences), and regulation of the treatment
of animals in agriculture, experimentation, and entertainment has begun to
make substantial inroads in national and international law. To a large extent
this new found awareness comes from the moral repugnance we often experience
as we learn the facts of modern food production, experimentation and
entertainment practices involving animals – facts the popular media seldom
mention. This book provides the first analysis of international and
comparative animal law which focuses on the impact of today’s globalized
economy on animal law. Describing a wide range of individual domestic and
international laws relating to the treatment of animals, the author clearly
explicates the kinds of rules which affect the global animal marketplace.
Representative norms in existing animal protection laws are analyzed and
critiqued, along with laws that are illustrative of diverse approaches taken
by different countries and by the international community to regulate the 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 operations;
• legal protection of animals during transport;
• regulatory schemes on animal experimentation;
• laws on the use of animals in entertainment;
• regulation of trade in endangered species;
• international trade issues, including the provisions of GATT relevant to
animal protection and the seminal WTO/GATT decisions in the Tuna/Dolphin and
Shrimp/Turtle cases;
• constitutional protection for the interests of animals; 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, including the US, the UK, New
Zealand, Germany, Sweden, India, Canada, Australia, and Austria, as well as
the EU. Numerous international treaties and conventions relevant to animal
treatment are also covered, including the CITES Convention and the GATT
Treaty. 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 thisarea 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 opening the field for
concerned lawyers and policymakers to formulate proposals, cases, and
defenses, and secure a firm purchase on future trends and developments in
animal law.