The Animal Law Podcast

Animal law attorney and activist Wayne Hsiung joins host Mariann Sullivan along with attorneys Chris Carraway and Steffen Seitz of the University of Denver’s Animal Activist Legal Defense Project to break down the California Court of Appeals decision in Hsiung’s criminal case—a pivotal ruling that overturned two of three trespass convictions stemming from actions at Sunrise Farms and R...

In this episode of the Animal Law Podcast, host Mariann Sullivan speaks with Amal Bouhabib, senior staff attorney at FarmSTAND, about a landmark federal lawsuit involving three young men from Guatemala who were recruited to the U.S. on J-1 cultural exchange visas and subjected to dangerous working conditions, fraudulent promises, substandard housing, and coercive threats at an industrial swine ope...

In a landmark ruling, a federal court in the Northern District of California struck down four of six challenged Trump administration regulations that had significantly weakened the Endangered Species Act’s core enforcement mechanisms. Host Mariann Sullivan speaks with Noah Greenwald, Endangered Species Program Director at the Center for Biological Diversity, about the case — what was challen...

When Canadian animal rights lawyer and Animal Justice Executive Director Camille Labchuk discovered that a Manitoba horse exporter had shipped 97 horses to Japan in December 2022 — on a rerouted flight projected to exceed Canada’s 28-hour transport limit and without a legally required contingency plan covering the full journey — she did something almost unheard of in Canadian animal law:&#82...

In this episode of the Animal Law Podcast, Mariann Sullivan sits down with Dr. Neil Dullaghan, political scientist and author of The Compassion Mandate: Remaking the European Union’s Leadership on Farmed Animal Welfare. Together, they explore the complexities and challenges of EU farmed animal policies. This episode explores: The historical progress and current state of farmed animal welfare...

In this compelling episode, Mariann Sullivan interviews Wayne Hsiung and attorney Steffen Seitz about Wayne’s conviction following animal rescues at factory farms in California. The case hinges on several groundbreaking legal arguments, including the judge’s refusal to allow a necessity defense for rescuing suffering animals, constitutional concerns about the treatment of veganism as a...

In a bold legal challenge that could redefine animal protection law, PETA is taking on the Maine Lobster Festival for steaming 16,000 lobsters alive on public parkland. The case hinges on Maine’s unique animal cruelty statute that protects “every living sentient creature” – a definition that evolves with scientific understanding. PETA’s Director of Litigation, Asher S...

In this intellectually stimulating episode of the Animal Law Podcast, Mariann Sullivan speaks with constitutional law expert Michael Dorf about his innovative course “Animals and the Constitution.” Dorf shares how fundamental legal principles intersect with animal protection, revealing both the limitations and opportunities within our constitutional framework for advancing animal right...

Attorneys Will Lowrey (Animal Partisan) and Jessica Blome (Greenfire Law) join Mariann to discuss their battle to use California’s century-old animal protection laws to help dairy calves confined in tiny hutches. Despite having clear evidence that a dairy farm was violating Penal Code Section 597t by denying calves adequate exercise, they encountered a frustrating maze of procedural obstacle...

In this thought-provoking episode of the Animal Law Podcast, we dive into a First Amendment case that cuts straight to the heart of animal advocacy: can the government prevent activists from showing the public what actually happens to animals in industrial agriculture? Mariann speaks with Sara Berinhout of FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression) and John Greil of the University&#823...

This episode of the Animal Law Podcast features Christopher Berry, Executive Director of the Nonhuman Rights Project, discussing a groundbreaking court case that recognizes companion animals as family members in certain legal contexts. Mariann and Christopher explore how this New York decision challenges decades of precedent that treated beloved pets as mere property rather than family, potentiall...

In this compelling episode, Mariann Sullivan speaks with Elise Bennett, Senior Attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, about the lawsuit challenging the controversial immigration detention facility in Florida’s Everglades. Bennett details how this hastily constructed center in Big Cypress National Preserve threatens endangered species, water quality, and the integrity of a crucial e...

In a groundbreaking episode of The Animal Law Podcast, we explored radical new concepts that could fundamentally transform how constitutional law treats animals. Host Mariann Sullivan welcomed Cambridge University’s Raffael Fasel and Queen Mary University’s John Adenitire to discuss their book “Animals and the Constitution: Towards Sentience-Based Constitutionalism” –...

In this episode of the Animal Law Podcast, Mariann Sullivan welcomes back Will Lowrey, legal counsel for Animal Partisan, alongside David Rosengard, managing attorney for the Animal Legal Defense Fund‘s Criminal Justice Program. They dive into an obscure but potentially game-changing legal tool: laws in certain states that allow private citizens to obtain search warrants when they have evide...

Alene Anello of Legal Impact for Chickens joins us once again, this time to talk, not about chickens, but about cows. Of course, the laws affecting farmed animals are often the same regardless of species and Legal Impact for Chickens thinks it would be great to see some of California’s rather good laws protecting farmed animals actually enforced. For that reason,…

FarmSTAND attorneys Kelsey Eberly and Skye Walker join us on this episode to discuss an absolutely infuriating case, Blumm v Northwest Natural Gas Company. They explain how an increasing number of dairy farms are more in the business of selling the methane being produced by their manure piles, or, as they call them, “lagoons,” than selling milk. Now, in Oregon, natural…

Edie Bowles, the Managing Director of UK law firm Advocates for Animals, joins us on this episode to help us understand what appears to be a groundbreaking decision in animal welfare law that involves one of the most widespread and egregious practices in industrial animal agriculture, the breeding of factory-farmed chickens raised for meat in ways that cause unbelievable suffering. At…

Chris Green and Rebecca Garverman join us this week to talk about a case that managed to catch the attention not only of the public at large but of a number of lawyers and, after a great deal of hard work, resulted in a historic victory. You may have heard about the plight of the Tule elk at Point Reyes National…

Paul Sherman, senior attorney with the public interest law firm The Institute for Justice, joins us this week to discuss the legal battle over cultivated meat in Florida. Paul is leading the landmark lawsuit brought by UPSIDE Foods, challenging Florida’s controversial statute that criminalizes (criminalizes!) the production and sale of USDA-approved cultivated meat products in the state. Thi...

Emily Miller of Food and Water Watch joins us to talk about Food and Water Watch v EPA, which involves the Clean Water Act and why, when it comes to one particular industry (guess which one!), it is so ineffective in guarding our water from being polluted with outright filth. Whether it comes to the failure to require factory farms to…

Wayne Hsiung and Justin Marceau are joining us on this episode to talk about the criminal prosecution of Tracy Murphy, founder and director of Asha’s Farm Sanctuary in Newfane, New York, for supposedly stealing two cows who wandered onto her property seeking, you guessed it, sanctuary. You have probably heard of this case, but maybe, like me, you don’t know much…

On this episode, I will be speaking about a topic that is crucial to the fight against factory farms, i.e., zoning. My guest is Holly Bainbridge, an attorney with FarmSTAND, a legal advocacy organization dedicated solely to taking on industrial animal agriculture.  She will be telling us about Daley Farm v. County of Winona, which involves an already huge Minnesota dairy…

Two lawyers who are at the forefront of some of the new directions in which animal law is developing join us once again on this episode. Will Lowrey of Animal Partisan and Chris Carraway of the University of Denver’s Animal Activist Legal Defense Project will join me to discuss another innovative and exciting chapter in the effort to use cruelty laws…

Laura Fox of the Farmed Animal Advocacy Clinic at Vermont Law and Graduate School and Stijn van Osch of the Humane Society of the United States join us to talk about cows, chickens, pigs, securities law, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Amazon rainforest and some very, very high stakes for animals and for the planet. We’ll be chatting with them…

Christopher Carraway and Steffen Seitz of the Animal Activist Legal Defense Project join us on this episode to talk about the case that didn’t happen. You may have heard about a criminal trial that was supposed to take place back in March in Wisconsin, where three activists affiliated with Direct Action Everywhere, Wayne Hsiung, Paul Picklesimer, and Eva Hamer, were charged…