University of Chicago Project on Animal Treatment Principles

January 8th, 2007

---

For several years, students and faculty at the University of Chicago Law School have participated in the Chicago Project on Animal Treatment Principles (CPAT), an interdisciplinary project that focuses on animal treatment in the food production industry and in medical and scientific experimentation. CPAT is one of several programs at the university, called Chicago Policy Initiatives, that create opportunities for students and professors to work together on policy issues and address social problems. The project’s agenda includes a review of current practices and future directions in animal husbandry and slaughter, labeling initiatives, and the incorporation of animal-welfare guidelines into the production process.

CPAT is led by University of Chicago law professors Cass Sunstein, Karl N. Llewellyn Distinguished Service Professor; Martha Nussbaum, Ernest Freund Distinguished Service Professor; Julie Roin, Seymour Logan Professor; and Jeff Leslie, Associate Clinical Professor of Law. Professor Leslie recently spoke with Encyclopaedia Britannica on behalf of CPAT.

What was the genesis of the Chicago Project on Animal Treatment Principles, and what is its overall purpose? Is there a point at which you would consider the project to be complete?
The Chicago Project on Animal Treatment Principles (CPAT) began as a way for the Law School to build on some of the recent scholarship of several faculty members who were writing about animal law, and as a way for the Law School to make a policy contribution in that field. The Project is one of a group of policy initiatives launched by the Law School in which faculty and students work to address specific social problems with the intent of providing potential solutions. One of our goals is to use animal policy as a vehicle for learning larger lessons about law and regulation – the efficacy and proper uses of disclosure as a regulatory tool, for instance – that transcend any particular policy area. CPAT will probably never be “complete,” but we are close to wrapping up the first phase of the Project’s work, dealing with use of animals for food production.

In recent years a number of programs related to animal law have started at law schools in the US and in Europe; what do you think accounts for this trend?
It’s difficult to point to any one thing. Programs in animal law are certainly not new; for example, Rutgers University Law School-Newark had a program on animal law from 1990 to 2000, which awarded students academic credit for classroom work and also contained a clinical component in which students and faculty worked on actual cases involving animal issues. But the recent growth that you are referring to is in part due to the work of a small number of very committed advocates who have labored in this field for a long time and kept it alive in the law school setting, and in part to some additional funding that has come in from outside the legal academy to endow animal law programs at some law schools.

How did you come to this field of study?
I have always had an affinity for animals and had companion animals growing up, and I have done work in applied ethics in other settings, which lent itself well to the kind of policy work that CPAT was created to do.

Can you summarize some of the principles you’ve developed thus far in this program? Are there any other accomplishments you would like to note?
Much of our work in CPAT to date has addressed the use of animals for food. Our basic argument is that the situation of farm animals could be greatly improved by focusing on an important area of consensus in the otherwise very acrimonious debates about animal rights and the status of animals: that animal suffering matters, and that it is legitimate to take steps to reduce it. A central problem is that most people know very little about how animals are treated in agriculture, and they end up supporting practices, like the worst kinds of factory farming, that they would (if fully informed) view as morally unacceptable. Many consumers would be stunned to see the magnitude of the suffering produced by current practices, but they lack the information to act in a way that accords with their moral views about how animals ought to be treated. Disclosure thus emerges as a tool for improving animal welfare by bringing practices in line with existing moral commitments. Food producers should make disclosures about their treatment of animals in a way that is genuinely useful to consumers, to allow consumers to express their moral commitments through their purchasing decisions.

The essential argument is set forth in an article I wrote with Cass Sunstein, forthcoming in the journal Law and Contemporary Problems. In addition, CPAT has developed a prototype for a broiler chicken label that demonstrates the kind of animal welfare disclosure that would be meaningful for consumers, which goes far beyond anything in the market today, and we are in communication with retailers and producers to explore a pilot project to test that label. [see below; click image for larger size.–Ed.]

Does CPAT have a relationship to the animal rights movement or with people in it? And has your work gotten any feedback from within the animal rights community?
We do not have a formal relationship, but we have consulted with a broad spectrum of people both in the animal rights movement and in industry in developing our disclosure argument and the specifics for how a meaningful disclosure regime might be implemented. These include intellectual leaders in the animal rights field, like Peter Singer and Tom Regan; major animal welfare organizations like the Humane Society of the United States and the RSPCA; and, on the industry side, Whole Foods and the leading trade association for grocery stores, the Food Marketing Institute.

Within the animal rights community, there are some who will say that any use of animals for human benefit is immoral, and that there is a moral obligation to be vegan. The CPAT disclosure approach will have little traction for them, though they may acknowledge that disclosure could lead to improvements in animal welfare. Others see great value in disclosure, but wonder whether industry will ever agree to a meaningful disclosure regime, or whether the political will can be mustered to impose such a regime. The idea of disclosure has momentum right now – witness the various animal welfare certification programs that Whole Foods and others are developing – and in the next few years we hope to see real gains in terms of making animal welfare information available to consumers. Our aim is for CPAT to play a role as a catalyst in making those gains happen.

Can you say something about the students’ involvement and experience with this program?
Student contributions are an extremely important and integral part of CPAT’s work. Law students working in the program helped to plan the CPAT conference on animals in food production and to recruit our panelists for that conference. The research assistance they have provided for the Leslie and Sunstein article coming out of that conference has been invaluable.

CPAT has begun to branch out to other animal policy issues as well, in particular medical and scientific experimentation on animals, and students have been instrumental in working with CPAT faculty to decide on new directions for CPAT to take. I have an article forthcoming about lay participation on review panels for animal experimentation, again with substantial input and assistance from our law students in the program.

Do you work with similar groups at other law schools, such as the Animal Law Project at the University of Pennsylvania?
We have not worked with groups at other law schools so far. We are perhaps a bit different from most animal law projects, both in terms of our greater faculty involvement and in our focus on policy initiatives rather than animal advocacy and litigation of individual cases.

Images: (top to bottom) Martha Nussbaum, Jeff Leslie, and Julie Roin; The University of Chicago Law School. Not pictured: Cass R. Sunstein.

To Learn More

• Chicago Project on Animal Treatment Principles
• Whole Foods Market Web page on animal welfare standards
• Animal Law page at Rutgers University School of Law-Newark

How Can I Help?

• Contact the Food Marketing Institute in support of animal-welfare labeling