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These are my notes of the "Civil Litigation for Farmed Animals" from EAGxBerkeley, given by Alene Anello, president of Legal Impact for Chickens (LIC).

It was an excellent talk, exploring a front of the animal welfare movement that, in my opinion, has the potential to be extremely effective, and is very much neglected. (Would love to hear if you agree/disagree on this).

LIC also is currently hiring lawyers, so if you know someone who might be interested, let them know. This is a rare opportunity for folks with legal training to get professionally involved in the movement (those paid positions are hard to come by).

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Talk Notes

Intro

  • Premise: improving conditions on factory farms will go a long way towards helping chickens suffering
  • The law prohibits animal cruelty (in theory)
    • (Gave an excerpt from the California Penal Code)
  • Yet undercover investigations in farms expose such cruelty on a regular basis
  • Footnote on criminal laws: there are some states that have exemptions for animal agriculture
    • But not in California
    • Even states that have exemptions – it’s not for *every* kind of abuse. There’s a lot of stuff that happens in the farms that isn’t technically exempted
  • But police and prosecutors don’t really enforce it
    • And even when they do – it’s against individual workers and not the company/CEOs
      • Why? Not sure. Perhaps because it’s easier to go after someone with less power.
      • Attorney generals are almost always politicians (elected / politically appointed), which means they have an interest in keeping powerful companies happy
    • Some reasons for not enforcing at all:
      • A reason they often officially give: those are misdemeanors, and they’re more interested in pursuing felonies (also for funding reasons)
      • Possibly: corruption
      • Possibly:  “soft corruption” like not wanting to make powerful people angry
      • Resources and priorities

 

LIC’s Solution: “Creative” Civil Litigation

  • Not how civil litigation is usually works
  • Animal cruelty is a crime, would more “naturally” be handled by the criminal system – but since the criminal system doesn’t do anything, LIC looks for ways to bring it to civil litigations
  • LIC sues companies and executives

 

Example Cases

Example 1: Costco

  • Costco is not only a store but also breeds, raises and slaughters chickens (and sells the meat)
  • Bred them so fast that they could not even stand, eat, drink. Starved to death
  • That’s against the law – you’re required to feed your animals
  • There are some fiduciary duties – which are on the executives, personally, towards the company
    • One of them: “don’t break the law”
    •  If the executives haven’t fulfilled the duties – the company can sue them
      • Which wouldn’t usually happen because the execs control the company
      • But! The company also has owners. In the case of a publicly traded company – share holders
      • So LIC found Costco shareholders to work with
      • (Q: do you have to find existing share holders or can you just buy shares and then sue? A: Alene doesn’t know, there isn’t really a precedent).
  • Result:
    • The good news: the judge did say that the company has a responsibility re animal cruelty. Which means LIC can bring more cases like that!
    • The bad new: had a different interpretation to the law re what happened at Costco, so dismissed the case

 

Example 2: “Case Farms” – KFC supplier

  • Treated chicks as “dispensible”. Let machine drive over them etc. Pretty harrowing.
  • Happened in North California. Has a law against animal cruelty, with an exemption for food/poultry.
    • That was what CF’s defense was based on. That thereby anything they do is exempt.
    • LIC disagrees. If you kill the chicks they’re not really used for food.
  • This was dismissed and LIC appealed. Currently in the NC court of appeals.

 

Example 3: Rhode Island Beef and Veal

  • LIC looks for any way to make cruelty a liability.
  • Judges have a *lot* of leeway in sentencing. Can give a stricter/lesser sentence based on judgement call.
  • A slaughterhouse was sentenced. Criminal case.
  • “amicus brief” = a way for someone who’s not on a part in the lawsuit can submit a brief to the court on a specific lawsuit. For example if they’re an expert on the subject.
  • LIC submitted such a brief. 
  • Result:
    • Good news: the judge let them submit it (so they can now do that again for other cases). 
    • Bad news: sentence was still shorter than LIC thinks it should be.

 

Q&A

What are LIC’s bottlenecks?

  • Concerned about lack of undercover investigations to expose cruelty
  • Surprised to find that people working in the meat and egg industry hate the companies they work for
    • Could potentially help, tell them about cruelty that’s been happening
    • Had such workers reach out to them
    • Had ads target such workers, to reach out to LIC if they want to expose such cases
    • Alene thinks this would have happened a lot more if the workers weren’t frightened of the companies
      • Especially since a lot of them are undocumented workers

Why the focus on chickens?

  • (Disclaimer: they focus on chickens but do aim to help all farmed animals, e.g. example case 3 mentioned above)
  • Three reasons for the focus:
    • Scale: there are so many chickens that are treated so badly. More so than cows/pigs
    • Birds are more neglected than mammals
    • While the scale of chickens in animal ag is smaller than sea animals and insects – it will be probably too hard to do anything for them in court right now, because:
      • State laws don’t necessarily apply to them
      • Harder to get judges to “feel bad” for fish (chickens are hard enough) 

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Sorted by Click to highlight new comments since: Today at 4:05 AM

Thank you for posting this, Noa!!!!! <3 <3 <3 

Thank you very much for the opportunity and I will participate in the Fast Forums.

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