JUSTICE FOR ANIMAL
Although animal law is “a niche
market,” contentious issues such as raising animals for food and puppy
mills that mass produce pets are making it grow, said Margit Livingston,
an attorney who co-directs DePaul University's Center for Animal Law.
DePaul's law school houses the center that gives students the chance to study animal-welfare issues from a legal standpoint. The center, founded in 2002, focuses on education and research over advocacy. It also hosts an annual fall symposium on current issues, such as dog fighting and the treatment of circus animals.
In the conversation below, Livingston — who said she was interested in how the law deals with animals prior to joining the center — shared her thoughts on how animals are treated and how society views that treatment.
Q: What are the current biggest threats to animal welfare?
A: There are a number of issues at the forefront regarding animal welfare. There is continued concern about dog fighting and trying to get a handle on that. Puppy mills. The overbreeding of dogs and the less-than-desirable conditions that result for animals that are sick or have generally poor health. There’s a whole area of animals as food, the whole question of the conditions under which food animals are raised. That’s been on people’s minds lately.
Q: How do local animal welfare issues compare to the national ones?
A: There’s not really anything distinct from what’s going on in a lot of communities across the country. There is an effort by authorities to address those issues, but I don’t know if there are enough resources to put toward animal crimes. I would like to see the Illinois Department of Agriculture have a larger staff so that they could do more investigations and do them more thoroughly. They do the best they can with what they have, but they don’t have a lot of field agents anymore. They’re dealing with horses and cattle and even dogs and cats. It’s just a large territory they have to police.
Q: What about Chicago’s feral cat problem?
A: That’s a controversial issue. Some people desire to do TNR [trap-neuter-return]. Some people think that large colonies of feral cats result in the destruction of wildlife; birds in particular are a target. You have people pretty much divided down the middle on that. [Debate over whether cats should] live their lives normally versus control of the population.
Q: Why do Americans seem to put animal welfare on the back burner?
A: I think a lot of people feel that we have a lot of pressing issues in society regarding poverty, health care and now employment issues, with the economy being somewhat weak, and that if we’re going to try to spread limited resources to address societal problems, those resources should go toward things that benefit humans. [For instance], why are we so concerned about how chickens are raised when we still haven’t solved our human problems? People don’t want to be confronted with, for one thing, how their food is raised. You see the steak in the grocery store, and you don’t realize where that came from. And I don’t think people want to think about that — it’s kind of unpleasant. It puts people in a quandary. Do I really want to consume something that is not humanely raised?
Q: How does animal treatment relate to larger scientific issues? For example, cattle factories that raise cattle for meat release lots of methane, contributing to climate change.
A: I think that animal welfare can spread into the environment. We’re living as part of an ecosystem, and we need to be aware of what we’re doing to the environment and whether there are unintended consequences in our consumption of resources and how that affects animals living in the wild. There’s certainly a very integrated connection between humans and animals.
Q: Can animals feel psychological pain in addition to physical pain?
A: That debate has been going on since the 18th century and the philosopher Jeremy Bentham [an animal rights supporter]. Obviously, they do feel pain, and they feel fear, and there’s no question that they have a certain level of consciousness and awareness that makes them subject to suffering.
Q: Why do you think this is such a divisive topic?
A: It is a very polarizing topic, and there are just so many odd ways in which we relate to animals. Hunting is legal, killing certain animals for food is legal, and yet we’re very sentimental about our dogs and cats. I don’t know if we as a society have thought through all of this stuff. We just accept things as a given.
DePaul's law school houses the center that gives students the chance to study animal-welfare issues from a legal standpoint. The center, founded in 2002, focuses on education and research over advocacy. It also hosts an annual fall symposium on current issues, such as dog fighting and the treatment of circus animals.
In the conversation below, Livingston — who said she was interested in how the law deals with animals prior to joining the center — shared her thoughts on how animals are treated and how society views that treatment.
Q: What are the current biggest threats to animal welfare?
A: There are a number of issues at the forefront regarding animal welfare. There is continued concern about dog fighting and trying to get a handle on that. Puppy mills. The overbreeding of dogs and the less-than-desirable conditions that result for animals that are sick or have generally poor health. There’s a whole area of animals as food, the whole question of the conditions under which food animals are raised. That’s been on people’s minds lately.
Q: How do local animal welfare issues compare to the national ones?
A: There’s not really anything distinct from what’s going on in a lot of communities across the country. There is an effort by authorities to address those issues, but I don’t know if there are enough resources to put toward animal crimes. I would like to see the Illinois Department of Agriculture have a larger staff so that they could do more investigations and do them more thoroughly. They do the best they can with what they have, but they don’t have a lot of field agents anymore. They’re dealing with horses and cattle and even dogs and cats. It’s just a large territory they have to police.
Q: What about Chicago’s feral cat problem?
A: That’s a controversial issue. Some people desire to do TNR [trap-neuter-return]. Some people think that large colonies of feral cats result in the destruction of wildlife; birds in particular are a target. You have people pretty much divided down the middle on that. [Debate over whether cats should] live their lives normally versus control of the population.
Q: Why do Americans seem to put animal welfare on the back burner?
A: I think a lot of people feel that we have a lot of pressing issues in society regarding poverty, health care and now employment issues, with the economy being somewhat weak, and that if we’re going to try to spread limited resources to address societal problems, those resources should go toward things that benefit humans. [For instance], why are we so concerned about how chickens are raised when we still haven’t solved our human problems? People don’t want to be confronted with, for one thing, how their food is raised. You see the steak in the grocery store, and you don’t realize where that came from. And I don’t think people want to think about that — it’s kind of unpleasant. It puts people in a quandary. Do I really want to consume something that is not humanely raised?
Q: How does animal treatment relate to larger scientific issues? For example, cattle factories that raise cattle for meat release lots of methane, contributing to climate change.
A: I think that animal welfare can spread into the environment. We’re living as part of an ecosystem, and we need to be aware of what we’re doing to the environment and whether there are unintended consequences in our consumption of resources and how that affects animals living in the wild. There’s certainly a very integrated connection between humans and animals.
Q: Can animals feel psychological pain in addition to physical pain?
A: That debate has been going on since the 18th century and the philosopher Jeremy Bentham [an animal rights supporter]. Obviously, they do feel pain, and they feel fear, and there’s no question that they have a certain level of consciousness and awareness that makes them subject to suffering.
Q: Why do you think this is such a divisive topic?
A: It is a very polarizing topic, and there are just so many odd ways in which we relate to animals. Hunting is legal, killing certain animals for food is legal, and yet we’re very sentimental about our dogs and cats. I don’t know if we as a society have thought through all of this stuff. We just accept things as a given.
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