The Animal Law Podcast
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Join animal law professor and longtime activist Mariann Sullivan as she explores groundbreaking legal cases shaping the future of animal protection. Each episode features in-depth discussions with leading attorneys, scholars, and advocates about critical developments in animal law—focusing on significant court decisions and their enforcement. Whether you’re a legal professional, animal advocate, or concerned citizen, discover how case law is evolving to recognize and protect animals. From landmark litigation to emerging legal theories, the Animal Law Podcast makes complex legal issues accessible while examining their impact on animals and society.
Location:
United States
Description:
Join animal law professor and longtime activist Mariann Sullivan as she explores groundbreaking legal cases shaping the future of animal protection. Each episode features in-depth discussions with leading attorneys, scholars, and advocates about critical developments in animal law—focusing on significant court decisions and their enforcement. Whether you’re a legal professional, animal advocate, or concerned citizen, discover how case law is evolving to recognize and protect animals. From landmark litigation to emerging legal theories, the Animal Law Podcast makes complex legal issues accessible while examining their impact on animals and society.
Twitter:
@ourhenhouse
Language:
English
Email:
info@ourhenhouse.org
Episodes
The Case of Banning the Truth in a Public Park | First Amendment, Animal Agriculture & Free Speech
9/26/2025
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…
Duración:01:10:50
Animal Law Breakthrough: Court Recognizes Dogs as Family Members with Christopher Berry
8/29/2025
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, potentially opening new doors for…
Duración:01:07:16
Challenging “Alligator Alcatraz”: The Legal Fight to Protect the Everglades with Elise Bennett
7/25/2025
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 ecosystem that has received billions in restoration funding…
Duración:00:55:19
Redefining Democracy: How Constitutional Law Could Embrace All Sentient Life
6/27/2025
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” – a work that challenges centuries of legal tradition by proposing constitutional frameworks…
Duración:01:02:25
Is Ventilation Shutdown Legal? Private Citizens Fighting Factory Farm Cruelty
5/23/2025
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 evidence of animal…
Duración:00:51:04
Can an S.P.C.A. Prevent Cruelty to Cows? with Alene Anello
4/30/2025
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,…
Duración:00:43:41
The Case of the Cows, the Gas, and the Money with Kelsey Eberly and Skye Walker
3/26/2025
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…
Duración:00:50:55
The Case of the Frankenchicken with Edie Bowles
2/26/2025
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…
Duración:00:38:05
The Case of the Thirsty Elk: Saving Point Reyes’ Tule Elk with Chris Green and Rebecca Garverman
1/29/2025
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…
Duración:01:10:56
The Case of the Cultivated Chicken with Paul Sherman
12/25/2024
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. This pivotal case examines…
Duración:01:05:17
Animal Law Podcast #114: The Case of the Not-So-Clean Water Act
11/27/2024
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…
Duración:01:00:53
Animal Law Podcast #113: The Case of the Cows Who Sought Sanctuary
10/30/2024
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…
Animal Law Podcast #112: The Case of the Monster Dairy
9/25/2024
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…
Duración:00:54:48
Animal Law Podcast #110: Will JBS Investors Get the Truth about Animals and Climate?
7/31/2024
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…
Duración:01:23:52
Animal Law Podcast #109: The Case That Didn’t Happen
6/26/2024
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…
Duración:00:53:23
Animal Law Podcast #108: The Case of Compelled Dairy Promotion
5/29/2024
Deborah Dubow Press, an attorney with the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, joins us to talk about Williamson v USDA. This case involves both the Los Angeles school system and the USDA’s school lunch program, which influences what kids are eating in virtually every school in the country. We will be looking at some of its insane rules regarding dairy, why…
Duración:00:42:48
Animal Law Podcast #107: Prosecuting Cruelty
4/24/2024
Jake Kamins joins us to talk about his groundbreaking work as an Animal Cruelty Resource Prosecutor in the Oregon Department of Justice. This position, which was created very recently, not only allows him to prosecute animal cruelty cases but, perhaps even more importantly, also allows him to act as a kind of roving resource, as his title indicates, to District Attorneys’…
Duración:00:56:22
Animal Law Podcast #106: A Case Farms Case of Cruelty
3/27/2024
Sarah Gold of Legal Impact for Chickens joins us to discuss litigation against giant poultry factory Case Farms. As you may know, I am a big fan of efforts to get anti-cruelty laws to do what they were meant to do, that is, protecting animals from cruelty. What a concept! Those efforts can be extraordinarily difficult to mount, and so I…
Duración:00:40:18
Animal Law Podcast #105: Breaking the Rules?: Taxpayer-Funded Animal Research Outside the US
2/28/2024
Vanessa Shakib joins me once again, and this time, we will be discussing litigation brought by her client, White Coat Waste Project, about a really extraordinary situation at the National Institutes of Health. As you probably know, the NIH funds massive, massive amounts of research on animals. What you may not know is that much of that research does not take…
Duración:00:40:38
Animal Law Podcast #104: The Biogas Nightmare
1/31/2024
Christine Ball-Blakely of the Animal Legal Defense Fund joins us to discuss the work of a coalition of organizations that has filed petitions for rulemaking regarding the unbelievable subsidization, with your tax money, of “biogas,” aka factory farm gas, which, as far as I am concerned, appears to be an out and out scam to prop up factory farming, hide its…
Duración:00:53:35