Farm Animal Welfare Law

Not so long ago, one needed to integrate several separate spheres of concern simply to invent environmental law. This book goes further by expertly crossing several divides to give unity to the spheres that concern our growing problems of food, including flora and fauna, wild and farmed, international and domestic, social and material. The result is well worth the reading. The old adage that you are what you eat was often looked upon as referring to the materiality of food. By observing the social and economic costs of food, as well as legal attempts to address those costs, this book adds essential and significant dimensions to the adage. Editor Gabriela Steier continues to develop agroecology and remind readers in an urbanized world that if we are what we eat, then we face some enormous problems in what we are and what we will become. In addition to our increasing reliance upon food from the oceans, simply reading the labels in a grocery store will make obvious why food and animal welfare problems test the ramifications of globalization and require the comparative (Brazil, China, Europe, India and the USA) and international law approaches of this book. Each author writes from study and personal experience in government, industry, research or activism, making the chapters thoughtful, persuasive, provocative, and often, quite alarming for anyone who eats. Kirk W. Junker, Director, Environmental Law Center, University of Cologne, Germany