On animal cloning, the FDA has issued a report that concludes that meat and milk from cow, pig and goat clones and the offspring of any animal clones, are safe.
The FDA has produced a report titled: Animal Cloning: A Risk Assessment. (This document is 968 pages long and may take several minutes to download.)
More information can be found on the FDA cloning web site here.
Posted by Jon Lutz
Kudos to the Michigan State University College of Law! They've created a terrific Website dedicated to current and historical Animal Law, both in the United States and around the world.
Federal and state statutes, and over 700 full-text cases are indexed by state, topic (e.g. Exotic pets, genetic engineering, vet malpractice), and animal species. The current month's new topics, cases and articles are highlighted and summarized on the home page. The Publications page links the user to a library of articles addressing various topics in Animal Law, and a section of Pleadings, Briefs & Jury Charges has examples of legal documents indexed by case name and issue topics. A smaller section offers a pull-down menu of country names offering links to information about Animal Law worldwide. There's a Multimedia Podcenter where the user can download & play a selection of Podcasts. MP3 files are available on a variety of topics, including "Can I put my pet in my will?" and "The police shot my dog...do I have any recourse?" Especially nifty is a list of topics (e.g. Dogfighting, Equine Activity Liability Laws, Pet Trusts), each accompanied by a map of the United States. Click on a state to view that state's laws on the selected topic.
With its attractive and easy to use design, the Animal Legal & Historical Web Center is a portal to a wealth of information for lay persons and law professionals alike. As we say in the library profession: check it out!
Posted by Patricia Bingham-Harper
In an opinion from the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit issued April 27th, the court refused to allow a relaxed standard for the "dolphin safe" tuna label. 
This case concerns the practice of catching yellowfin tuna by encircling dolphins with purse-seine nets. The dispute over whether tuna sellers may label tuna as dolphin-safe if caught with such nets has a long history that for us begins with Congress’s enactment of the International Dolphin Conservation Program Act (“IDCPA”) in 1997. 16 U.S.C. § 1385 (1997). The statute required the Secretary of Commerce through the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (“NOAA”), to conduct certain scientific studies and determine whether or not the tuna fishery is affecting the dolphin population. According to the bill’s proponents, Congress would weaken the then-strict tuna labeling requirements, and permit broader use of “dolphin-safe” labeling, only if the Secretary found that the fishery was not having a significant adverse impact on already depleted dolphin stocks.
Read the opinion here.
Posted by Jon Lutz
The New York Times has an article on the growth of companion animal lawyering.
[...] these lawyers say they are concerned primarily with getting the legal system to acknowledge that animals have an intrinsic value beyond mere property, because of the bond between pets and their owners.
That bond has changed over time, said Barbara J. Gislason, a Minneapolis animal lawyer, who helped found the American Bar Association committee on animal law, as pets have become more valued for their companionship than for their ability to work, on farms, for instance.
'Now people think of them as valuable in a way they never did before,' she said.
Animal lawyers argue that the law should reflect this change, especially in cases of negligence.
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American Bar Association's Animal Law Committee
Student Animal Legal Defense Fund (SALDF)
Posted by Toni Urquhart
For these and other books regarding our relationship to the other creatures with whom we share the earth, browse the shelves at KF390.5A5 and the HV4700's.
"We need another and a wiser concept of animals...We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate for having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein do we err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours, they move finished and complete, gifted with the extension of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not bretheren, they are not underlings: they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth."
-- from "The Outermost House" by Henry Beston
Posted by Patricia Bingham-Harper
Six Philadelphia-based animal rights activists went on trial this week in a federal courthouse in Trenton, N.J. for their alleged direct harassment of a contract research company with animal-testing labs in the state of New Jersey, Huntingdon Life Sciences.
The Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty campaign is based in the United Kingdom and manages a local and global mission to end the operations of Huntingdon Life Sciences. The activists claim that their website and other efforts to shutdown the company are exercises in free speech and are therefore legal.
John E. Lewis, from the F.B.I., gave testimony before the United States Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works on October 26, 2005. He discussed the threat animal rights activists pose to legitimate business and what constitutes not advocacy, but criminal activity.
Posted by Toni Urquhart
