Something to Celebrate?: Demoting Dairy in Canada\u27s National Food Guide

In early 2019, the Canadian Government released the much-anticipated new Canada Food Guide. It is a food guide that de-emphasizes dairy products and promotes plant-based eating. Notably, in the new version, milk and milk products are de-listed as one of the previously four essential food groups. On the surface, it seems that the federal government is promoting veganism and helping to bring about a friendlier future for animals and humans harmed by being producers and consumers of dairy, as the new Guide may seriously contract the currently robust Canadian dairy industry and its powerful lobby. On closer inspection, the messaging from Health Canada is easily overtaken by an administrative landscape that protects the dairy industry and markets dairy products to Canadians and abroad as well as a legal landscape that completely commodifies cows. Adopting a critical animal studies perspective, this paper situates Health Canada’s de-listing of dairy as a nutritionally foundational food source within a larger socio-legal Canadian regulatory landscape to assess the potential of the new Canada Food Guide to contest the entrenched legal and cultural norm of the dairy cow and her milk as products for human consumption

Fifty Years of Taking Exception to Human Exceptionalism: The Feminist-Inspired Theoretical Diversification of Animal Law Amidst Enduring Themes

In this article, I attend to the scholarly interventions over the last fifty years that engage with the question of what general subjectivity or protective model the law should apply to animals to combat anthropocentrism and effect widespread positive change for animals. I call this field “animal rights law.” The article demonstrates the theoretical diversity and related richness of this scholarship, making three contributions. Most notably, it highlights the prominence of feminist theory to the development of animal rights law. This more recent feminist-inspired work has attempted to bypass the personhood-property debate from earlier decades through theorizing alternative or supplementary animal-friendly frameworks less focused on rights and personhood. The article also shows that throughout the decades and the various legal reform models presented, we see sustained concern about sameness logic (arguments favouring reform for animals perceived to be “human-like”) and, at least over the last two decades, attention to the differences among animals themselves. Dans cet article, je me penche sur les interventions scientifiques des cinquante dernières années qui s’intéressent à la question de la subjectivité générale ou du modèle de protection que le droit devrait appliquer aux animaux pour lutter contre l’anthropocentrisme et provoquer un changement positif généralisé pour les animaux. J’appelle ce domaine le « droit des animaux ». L’article démontre la diversité théorique et la richesse de cette recherche, en apportant trois contributions. Tout d’abord, il souligne l’importance de la théorie féministe dans le développement du droit des animaux. Ces travaux plus récents d’inspiration féministe ont tenté de contourner le débat personne-propriété des décennies précédentes en théorisant des cadres alternatifs ou complémentaires respectueux des animaux, moins axés sur les droits et la personne. L’article montre également qu’au fil des décennies et des différents modèles de réforme juridique présentés, nous constatons une préoccupation constante à l’égard de la logique de similitude (arguments en faveur d’une réforme pour les animaux perçus comme « semblables à l’homme ») et, au moins au cours des deux dernières décennies, une attention portée aux différences entre les animaux eux-mêmes

The Salience of Species Difference for Feminist Theory

This Article assumes an intersectional and feminist perspective to argue that being human should not be the qualification for justice or legal personhood. Drawing from feminist analyses of animal theory, and various strands of critical theory, this Article argues that feminists and other advocates of human rights, for whom interrogating constructs of gender, race, culture, sexuality, etc., are important, must also attend to species difference and the treatment of nonhuman animals to be consistent and effective in their discursive critiques and legal interventions. It does so by examining species difference as a social construction and the similarities and interconnections in the logic supporting intra-human hierarchies with the discourses commonly adduced to exclude nonhuman animals from ethical and legal consideration

Reconciling autonomy and beneficence in treatment decision-making for animal patients

This article explores how the concept of consent to medical treatment applies in the veterinary context, and aims to evaluate normative justifications for owner consent to treatment of animal patients. We trace the evolution of the test for valid consent in human health decision-making, against a backdrop of increased recognition of the importance of patient rights and a gradual judicial espousal of a doctrine of informed consent grounded in a particular understanding of autonomy. We argue that, notwithstanding the adoption of a similar discourse of informed consent in professional veterinary codes, notions of autonomy and informed consent are not easily transferrable to the veterinary medicine context, given inter alia the tripartite relationship between veterinary professional, owner and animal patient. We suggest that a more appropriate, albeit inexact, analogy may be drawn with paediatric practice which is premised on a similarly tripartite relationship and where decisions must be reached in the best interests of the child. However, acknowledging the legal status of animals as property and how consent to veterinary treatment is predicated on the animal owner’s willingness and ability to pay, we propose that the appropriate response is for veterinary professionals generally to accept the client’s choice, provided this is informed. Yet such client autonomy must be limited where animal welfare concerns exist, so that beneficence continues to play an important role in the veterinary context. We suggest that this ‘middle road’ should be reflected in professional veterinary guidance

Animal Bodies, Technobodies: New Directions in Cultural Studies, Feminism, and Posthumanism.

As do most areas of critical literature, cultural studies usually takes the human subject as a given. Recently, however, calls to enrich the field through non-anthropocentric inquiry that extends beyond humanist parameters have become more frequent. These calls find a robust response in two recent anthologies: Animal Subjects: An Ethical Reader in a Posthuman World, edited by Jodey Castricano; and Bits of Life: Feminism at the Intersections of Media, Bioscience, and Technology, edited by Anneke Smelik and Nina Lykke. Both texts take cultural studies as their primary organizing anchor, taking care to highlight and appreciate the interdisciplinarity of the field and its relationship to feminist studies in excavating ideas and valuations of difference, alterity, and abject status

Personal Reflections on Being a Postcolonial Feminist Animal Law Professor

The author reflects on her experiences in the field of animal law. A recurring theme throughout the Article is that the author’s struggle to see herself being part of the animal law at all. This is because mainstream animal law writing has tended to take a liberal legal approach, while the author has focused her work around concepts of intersectionality, feminist, and postcolonial theory in a field she has self-described as “Philosophy, Critical Theory, and Animal Ethics.” Consistent with her intersectional approach, the author highlights how her experience being Canadian, being female, and being ‘radicalized’ have all intersected to shape her experiences and perceptions working in animal law. Her conclusion is that, fundamentally, the animal law movement is a women’s movement, given it is women who predominate in the membership and, as such, the success and future of animal law “depend on whether women’s voices on behalf of animals will be listened to and respected.

Critical Animal Studies and Animal Law

Law is anthropocentric. With the limited exception of its treatment of the corporation, law is a system of rules that privileges the concept of the human and ascribes reality through a human perspective. Appreciating this, it is truly impressive that animal issues in the law have become so prominent throughout the legal education system. With this increased exposure to posthumanist critiques of the legal system and its status for and treatment of animals, an increasing number of those involved in legal education are rethinking the law’s species-based hierarchy that places humans at the apex. This flourishing interest in animal law is paralleled by growth in the field of Critical Animal Studies (CAS). However, these two disciplines have developed independently of each other. Acknowledging this, animal law scholarship is currently poised to incorporate the insights of CAS. Integrating such insight into the analysis of animal issues in the law will rectify the speciesist and otherwise exclusionary formulations of the socially constructed differences between various species, which have so far been unquestioned assumptions. CAS offers an understanding of these socially constructed differences and advances a common mission between issues identified as animal injustices and those identified as human injustices. CAS stresses the interconnection between human and animal issues, not simply parallels. This important synthesis can subvert the confinement of animal issues in the legal sphere and is key to extending these essential issues into a more diverse community