This exploration of the newly emerging, diverse, and controversial area of animal lawpresents a basic survey of the laws designed to protect animals, analyzing and critiquing them, and proposing a future where the legal regime properly recognizes and protects the inherent worth of all animals.

In this objective, practical and authoritative introductory text the author reveals how the fundamental principles of the human-animal relationship drive the development of animal law. The book explains the criteria by which the lawful use of animals is determined, and how these criteria impact evolving standards of animal protection and define the responsibilities of people in their interactions with animals. The author identifies 29 key principles which constitute the core knowledge necessary for people involved in debating, assessing, and guiding the evolution of society’s national and international rulebook of animal welfare law. The book also considers animal welfare and law in the context of a global market through discussion of common issues such as climate change, biosecurity, food safety and food supply. Based on successful law courses run by the author and his own expertise as an animal law lecturer, prosecutor and specialist legal adviser, the book combines insights from science, ethics and law to provide an essential understanding of what informs society and the law with regards to animals and their welfare.

Argues that the way humans treat animals results from the contradiction between the ideas that animals have some rights, but that they are also property, and offers ways to resolve the conflict.

Legislation relating to animals has ancient origins and in many civilizations certain species have held particular significance, be it religious, cultural, nutritional, or sporting. As a general rule, the law was primarily concerned with animals as property, rather than in need of protection, until the 19th century. Since the 1970s animal law has proved to be a growth area in the production and enforcement of both national and international legislation. This has been particularly so in the areas of conservation and welfare and there has been extensive legal and philosophical consideration of the status of animals.This book is not intended to be a standard text, but rather a handbook in the true sense, a guide for the lay person--namely, to help the non-lawyer to understand the basic concepts of animal law and to provide the lawyer (who is the lay person in the world of animal science) with an introduction to relevant concepts and literature which are not normally found in the conventional legal texts.

The field requires both learning and unlearning to develop forms of critical thinking that are scientifically informed and ethically sensitive.

Sonia S. Waisman is an Adjunct Professor of Law, California Western School of Law, Of Counsel, Morrison & Foerster, LLP.