Kangaroo courts are coming…

SAOVA Friends,

Steven L. Kopperud is executive vice president of Policy Directions Inc., a Washington, DC government affairs/specialty communications company specializing in animal production agriculture, nutrition, agribusiness, biotechnology, animal health and welfare, food, farm policy, trade and ag research and human health-related issues. As a recognized authority on activist assaults on animal agriculture and food technology, Mr. Kopperud has spoken to audiences in the U.S., Europe, Canada, China, Australia and Latin America on threats to food production.

Kopperud has long been one my favorite voices speaking out against the animal rights agenda and tactics. Never one to mince words, he tells his audience:  “You will never negotiate successfully with an animal rights group.”

Thanks for reading.  Cross posting is encouraged.

Susan Wolf
Sportsmen's & Animal Owners' Voting Alliance
Working to Identify and Elect Supportive Legislators


KANGAROO COURTS ARE COMING…
April 18, 2014 By Steve Kopperud

My opinion since moving to Washington, DC – where you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting a law school graduate – is the world has enough lawyers.  However, there are times when lawyers are welcome because they’re very necessary.  Today there’s an animal rights initiative just getting legs and its success or failure will likely hinge on whoever has the most – and best – lawyers.  I’m talking about the legal concept of animal “personhood.” Stick with me; this may be esoteric and sound comical, but the threat is nevertheless very real.

“Personhood” under law recognizes only a natural person or “legal personality” has rights, protections, privileges, responsibilities, and legal liability. “Personhood,” according to one legal journal, “continues to be a topic of international debate, and has been questioned during the abolition of slavery and the fight for women’s rights, in debates about abortion, fetal rights and reproductive rights (and) in animal rights activism…” (my emphasis).

In the 1980s-90s, we beat back an aggressive campaign by PETA and other animal rights groups to achieve “standing” in federal courts to sue on behalf of animals those who transgressed the animal rights philosophy, e.g. biomedical researchers, farmers and ranchers, zoos, rodeos and other legitimate users of animals. We watched class action suits filed on behalf of unnamed millions of consumers and lots of animals dismissed because the wannabe plaintiffs had no standing.

In the early 2000s, animal rights and real world lawyers sought to change companion animals’ legal status from property owned by someone to animals as semi-persons who enjoy not an owner but a “guardian.” Some California towns actually enshrined part of this philosophy in local law. The push was to allow owners who brought suit in cases of veterinary negligence or other wrongful acts to sue not just for the property value of the animal lost as is the case today, but for noneconomic damages, i.e. emotional distress, loss of companionship, etc. While pets don’t enjoy “personhood,” there is a trend in the courts to ignore the animals’ legal status and award non-economic damages.

The whole animal-as-person effort is the brainchild of Steven Wise. Wise, who’s practiced animal law for over 30 years, heads his own group called the Nonhuman Rights Project (http://www.nonhumanrightsproject.org/). In his own words:

“Our mission is to change the common law status of at least some nonhuman animals from mere ‘things,’ which lack the capacity to possess any legal right, to ‘persons,’ who possess such fundamental rights as bodily integrity and bodily liberty, and those other legal rights to which evolving standards of morality, scientific discovery, and human experience entitle them…The most powerful ram…is the litigating of the capacity for legal rights of those nonhuman animals who are both the most cognitively complex (they have extraordinary minds) and the most cognitively similar to humans. These include the four species of great apes, dolphins and whales, elephants, and African Grey parrots.”

Wise’s goal is to litigate state by state on behalf of “smart” animals, his targets chosen based on the evolution of common law in that state and whether there’s a “plaintiff” of sufficient standing. He’s filed three cases in New York, lost one on appeal and the other two appeals are pending. It will only take one or two successes for there to be sea change in the legal status animals, including those we raise for food, use in research to find cures and treatments or those who educate and entertain us.

Animal agriculture must pay attention to this legal threat now. This sounds fanciful, even ridiculous, but remember at least two European nations amended their national constitutions to recognize animals as “sentient creatures.” Remember there exists the Animal Legal Defense Fund (ALDF) to provide pro bono (free) legal assistance to animal rights groups, that HSUS and TV game show host Bob Barker have spent literally millions of dollars endowing “animal law” chairs at some of this country’s biggest and most prestigious law schools, and the American Bar Association (ABA) has an “animal law committee” and the majority of its members aren’t our industry’s best legal minds.

Which brings us back to lawyers, numbers and talent. We need to find working attorneys willing to donate – yes, I said donate – time and talent to help us prepare for this assault before someone files a personhood suit on behalf of pigs – deemed by those in the animal rights movement as one of the most intelligent animals we routinely kill and eat.

We need young attorneys and law school students to help us – and the rest of legal animal users – to maintain our legal rights and protections. We’re fortunate to have the National Agricultural Law Center at the University of Arkansas (http://nationalaglawcenter.org/). This is a group which needs our attention, our support and our donations. I have a feeling it may be our version of ALDF one day in the future.

Check out the websites I’ve listed; check the Internet and newsfeeds for “animal law” and “animal personhood.” It’s a serious issue – at least for the other side – and one that gives the term “kangaroo court” a whole new meaning.

Copyright 2014 Brownfield, All rights Reserved. Written For: Brownfield
Reprinted with Permission

http://brownfieldagnews.com/2014/04/18/kangaroo-courts-coming/
http://tinyurl.com/k69wg4b

HSUS, UEP: Strange bedfellows

July 8, 2011 By Steve Kopperud

When I first got wind of the July 7 United Egg Producers (UEP)-Humane Society of the U.S. (HSUS) agreement on “enriched cages,” egg carton labeling, euthanasia, molting, ammonia levels and so on, I was surprised, but not completely. UEP has been fighting a long, expensive and sometimes (often?) lonely battle to stop HSUS state-by-state, and it was expecting to do battle again in 2012 in Oregon.

I understand the industry’s frustrated desire to end the seemingly unending attack on how it does business, the crazy quilt of state laws that have evolved over the last few years governing how it raises birds, and I know the retailer pressure UEP has been under as company by company – albeit only a few of the truly unenlightened within the retailer community — announce plans to “go cage-free” at some undefined time in the future, honestly believing they’re doing the consumer some kind of favor.

What truly struck me dumb – and this is not generally an easy thing to do – was that part of the announcement where UEP and HSUS announced they would jointly seek federal legislation to enshrine their agreement. At this point my only reaction was: UEP has gone a step too far.

There are currently no federal laws governing how a U.S. farmer husbands animals for food. There are unending laws and regulations on how to make feed, how to practice animal health, how food safety is maintained, how animals are killed, but no federal regulation on husbandry practices per se. Why? Because there’s no reason to regulate how farmers farm or how ranchers ranch. There is no problem that must be solved by federal intervention. Animal ag has battled for 30 years to keep it this way. For 30 years, HSUS has tried to put Uncle Sam in the middle of every farm and ranch in America. For 30 years, Congress has sided with farmers and ranchers.

It’s clear had UEP been able to craft this “partnership” its way, it would have been an industry voluntary program of transition from conventional cages to enriched environment cages. But my guess is UEP couldn’t keep HSUS at the table if it only agreed to a voluntary transition. Full story