Heather C. McLeod-Kilmurray

Commoditizing Nonhuman Animals and Their Consumers: Industrial Livestock Production, Animal Welfare and Ecological Justice

There is increasing research on the effects of industrial livestock production on the environment and human health, but less on the effects this has on animal welfare and ecological justice. The concept of ecological justice as a tool for achieving sustainability is gaining traction in the legal world. Klaus Bosselman defines ecological justice as consisting of three elements: intragenerational justice, intergenerational justice, and interspecies justice. While the first two have been extensively discussed, interspecies justice has received less attention. It is argued that the neglect of interspecies justice in the practice of industrial livestock production leads to both intragenerational and intergenerational injustices. The article focuses primarily on an animal welfare perspective, addressing the extreme harm and oppression of animals entailed by their commoditization for industrial food production. The destructive impact of this mode of food production on environmental resources and its massive contributions to climate change also lead to the impoverishment of the food, environmental, social, and economic health of present and future generations. The article describes the legal mechanisms that have permitted, and indeed encouraged, the move to industrial livestock production, and suggests changes that could reduce the three kinds of ecological injustices which industrial livestock production produces.

Hoffman v. Monsanto: Courts, Class Actions, and Perceptions of the Problem of GM Drift

Hoffman v. Monsanto raises questions about the civil litigation system. Are courts appropriate institutions, and are class actions the appropriate procedure, for resolving disputes about genetically modified organisms (GMOs)? After addressing the institutional question, this article focuses on procedure. Although class actions are designed to empower group litigation, environmental class actions are rarely permitted. This is partly because their claims for private law actions seeking monetary compensation cause courts to focus on individual aspects of the problem, and the collective harm caused by widespread environmental effects is overlooked. Because most environmental lawsuits are prohibitively complex and expensive for individuals to litigate, this results in a denial of justice. It also prevents courts from playing their institutional role in the struggle to craft appropriate legal responses to GMOs. Greater focus on the role of groups and the collective nature of environmental harms would lead to different approaches to interpreting class action procedure.