Humane Slaughter

Summary:

This note touches on the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act and the deficiencies in the current version that undermine the statute’s intended purpose of ensuring a humane slaughter for all animals. This note analyzes the statute, compares it to comparable statutes from around the world, and suggests alterations to ensure that the statue fulfills its goal. This note also includes proposed statutory language that implements suggested changes.

Summary:

This Article explores competitive injury as a basis for challenging the USDA's failure to enforce the HMSA and AWA. Part I.A provides background on claims that the Acts are both underenforced. Part I.B then introduces the problem of standing in the context of animal welfare lawsuits. Part II.A analyzes Article III standing requirements as applied to a competitively injured plaintiff. Part II.B then analyzes what the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) requires for an injured competitor to bring suit against the USDA for failure to enforce the HMSA and AWA. This Article concludes by suggesting that the HMSA provides the best vehicle for a competitive injury suit against the USDA because Congress has made abundantly clear its desire to see the HMSA fully enforced.

Summary:

In 1993, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a First Amendment religious free exercise challenge brought by a Florida Santerían church in Church of Lukumi Babalu Aye v. City of Hialeah. However, Lukumi may be the most misunderstood legal precedent in recent history. The decision is often cited for the proposition that religious practitioners have a constitutional right to engage in animal sacrifice. This is far from the truth. Lukumi was decided in a unique context, and its holding was not based on the merits of animal sacrifice. This article will demonstrate that Lukumi does not force government to acquiesce to animal sacrifice, or the “litter” it creates.

Summary:

This article describes the minimal state and federal laws relating to animals raised for food production, and outlines a path for reform.

Summary:

This article proposes federal legislation that would provide minimum standards for the daily living conditions of animals raised for food production.

Summary:

This article explores the legal issues surrounding animal sacrifice in the Afro-Caribbean Belief Systems (religions such as Cuban Santeria, Palo, and Haitian Voodoo). The author examines cases in Florida, Texas, Illinois, and Pennsylvania in making the argument that misconceptions concerning animal sacrifice and religious prejudice often fuels the controversies.

Summary:

Kosher slaughter, or shechita as it is called in biblical Hebrew, is so humane that when performed as intended by Jewish law, the animals don’t even feel the cut before dying. Even in modern times and by modern standards, experts have agreed that the shechita method as outlined in Jewish law is humane, and unconsciousness normally follows within seconds of the throat cutting. So how does one reconcile these truths with the video released by PETA of the practices occurring at the AgriProcessors plant in Postville, Iowa? What follows are my own conclusions to that troubling question, and my recommendations to improve the lives and deaths of cows at kosher slaughterhouses.

Summary:

This article looks at available legal protections for all farmed animals, and recommends that Congress enact stricter animal welfare laws.

Summary: This subchapter establishes humane standards for the humane raising, treatment, care, marketing, and sale of cattle, pursuant to the authority accorded by N.J.S.A. 4:22-16.1.

Summary:

The Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) is affirming, with changes, the interim final rule "Prohibition of the Use of Specified Risk Materials for Human Food and Requirements for the Disposition of Non-Ambulatory Cattle," which was published in the Federal Register on January 12, 2004. The Agency is also affirming the interim final rule "Prohibition of the Use of Certain Stunning Devices Used to Immobilize Cattle During Slaughter," also published on January 12, 2004. FSIS issued these interim final rules in response to the confirmation on December 23, 2003, of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in an imported dairy cow in Washington State. FSIS is taking this action to make permanent interim measures implemented by the Agency to minimize human exposure to cattle materials that could potentially contain the BSE agent.