Comments - Transcript of Harold Brown's ARZone Guest Chat of 16/17 October 2010 - Animal Rights Zone2024-03-29T11:21:39Zhttps://arzone.ning.com/profiles/comment/feed?attachedTo=4715978%3ABlogPost%3A12745&xn_auth=noI enjoyed reading this.
I wa…tag:arzone.ning.com,2010-11-10:4715978:Comment:140622010-11-10T01:22:56.000ZMark Jordanhttps://arzone.ning.com/profile/MarkJordan
I enjoyed reading this.<br />
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I wanted to clarify one thing. Lee asked Harold about the ALDF and their Animal Bill of Rights and the rights for "farmed animals" in the document. In her question, Lee stated that ALDF was running a major animal law conference in Portland, OR. The conference is put together and run mainly by law students from the Student Animal Legal Defense Fund group at Lewis and Clark Law School with help from the Center for Animal Law Studies and support from ALDF. I am the…
I enjoyed reading this.<br />
<br />
I wanted to clarify one thing. Lee asked Harold about the ALDF and their Animal Bill of Rights and the rights for "farmed animals" in the document. In her question, Lee stated that ALDF was running a major animal law conference in Portland, OR. The conference is put together and run mainly by law students from the Student Animal Legal Defense Fund group at Lewis and Clark Law School with help from the Center for Animal Law Studies and support from ALDF. I am the Outreach Chair for the student group and was on the conference planning committee, which was comprised mostly of students, but included two professors and one ALDF employee. The theme, panels, guests, etc. were all decided by this mostly-student committee. For example, I was the point person on a panel I created and got approved by the committee - Animal Advocacy Approaches. This panel had Lee Hall from Friends of Animals and Paul Shapiro of HSUS discussing their respective group's approaches to animal advocacy.<br />
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While I am sure Harold could not have known that this conference was mainly student-driven and was probably assuming, since Lee said it was run by ALDF, that they chose the panels, speakers, etc. when he responded to Lee that, "This conference presupposes that there is a humane way to breed, raise, transport and kill them [animals on farms]," I wanted to clarify this. The panel I coordinated, for example, brought to the attendees two very different approaches, Friends of Animals (abolitionist) and HSUS (focused on regulation). This panel, that included a short Q & A at the end, was very popular and created much discussion in the hallways of my law school, and hopefully in the schools and offices of the other attendees, for weeks (and hopefully much longer) thereafter. That said, many of the panels and speakers did come from the regulatory approach Harold mentions, but this can not be attributed to ALDF being a sponsor. The students made most, if not all, of these decisions. The reason many of the panels and speakers at the conference come from the regulatory viewpoint Harold mentions is because this is the predominate focus in animal law and thereby in the students that created the conference. However, there are alternatives, and resistance to, this predominate view, evidenced by the panel I coordinated at the conference and Lee was kind enough to be a co-panelist on. I will post the podcast here when it comes out. It was interesting in many ways.