Animal Law Podcast #10 — Getting Animals Out of Roadside Zoos With Jessica Blome and Jeff Pierce

Episode #10 of the Animal Law Podcast is up, and it’s an important one! This episode features the Animal Legal Defense Fund‘s Jessica Blome, Senior Staff Attorney, and Jeff Pierce, Litigation Fellow, and they will be telling us about their recent victory in their fight to get animals out of the Cricket Hollow Zoo, a roadside outfit in Iowa. Aside from the enormity of this victory for the animals directly involved, this case sets an important precedent for using the Endangered Species Act in the future to protect captive animals. Already, other efforts are under way to get these animals OUT! This case is one more piece of evidence that things are shifting for animals and attitudes are changing, in the courts and in society.

I’ll also be talking about how lawyers who aren’t litigators are working, or could be working, to help animals. The importance of transactional work and the need for lawyers to negotiate and advise in order to help animals is sometimes overlooked in the focus on litigation. I was reminded of this by the recent article in the Michigan State Law Review by the brilliant Professor Taimie Bryant, of UCLA Law School. If, as I have said about a million times, the single most important thing anyone can do to help animals is make delicious vegan food, then perhaps the single most important thing lawyers can do for animals is help people who are making that food negotiate regulations and get their products on the market.

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