Careers in Animal Law
From combat boots to wellingtons
In January 2005 I got the job as military legal adviser to the very top of the Danish army, The Danish Army Operational Command (DAOC). Having obtained my law degree only a few months before, this was a drastic and exciting beginning of my academic career. The military world was however not new to me as I had worked as an army infantry officer since 1995: full time for two years and in the reserve during my studies. But my lack of practical legal experience at the time combined with
Regulating animal welfare (Australia)
Australian lawyer Geoff Bloom wrote a paper for the AAWS International Animal Welfare Conference (2008) which applied "general thinking and practices about regulation within Western liberal democracies to the subject of regulating animal welfare." The abstract of that paper states that the paper "focuses on how animal welfare might be regulated to promote and protect improved animal welfare outcomes consistent with the Australian Animal Welfare Strategy. Specific features of animal welfare must be understood in order to regulate it, like the inability of animals to represent...more >>
Morality may not be enough: Animal welfare meets International Trade Law
Under European Union regulations that were promulgated with overwhelming popular support, seal products may neither be placed on the European market internally nor imported into the EU. As seal hunting occurs primarily outside the EU, three seal product exporting states, Canada, Norway, and Iceland, complained to the World Trade Organization that the EU’s actions were contrary to its commitments to free trade under international trade agreements. Many animal advocates hope that this will be the first WTO case to establish that the General Exception found in Article XX(a) of...more >>
Why is animal welfare of any importance?
The new ‘Ask Philip’ section of my blog is a place for you to ask any questions you like, on any farm animal related topic. I’ll do my best to answer them. Many people are worried about asking ‘basic’ questions. But often these are the very ones that are on many people’s minds. So, having a place where they can be aired and discussed, I hope, is valuable. I also encourage questions that do not have ‘obvious’ answers. I hope that the blog will help engage and promote a greater understanding of the issues.
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Ethical Analysis of the Use of GM Fish: Emerging Issues for Aquaculture Development
Saving Our Bacon: Immunology Lessons from the Red Queen
"You have to run faster and faster just to stay in the same place!"
The Red Queen to Alice, from Alice in Wonderland
The "Red Queen effect" is a metaphor used by biologists to describe the effect of coevolution, in which pathogens and the immune system are in a continuous race against each other to survive. By Kent W Deitemeyer
[pdf made available with the kind permission of Veterinary Forum at ...more >>
Applied Principles of Immunology in Companion Animal Vaccination
Radical change has arrived in the implementation of companion animal vaccination strategies. Accompanying these changes is the adoption of evidenced-based veterinary medicine practices (FBVM), new vaccine technologies, and major advances in our understanding of immunology. In veterinary immunology, we have moved to an enlightened view of how we prudently use the immune system in companion animals. We have become more discerning in opting for vaccines that elicit the most appropriate, reliable and enduring immune response against disease with the least physiological cost and risk to the...more >>
Applying Principles of Immunology for Sustainable Dairy Production
When we have textbooks devoted to the 'production diseases' in farm animals, the time as come for deeper introspection and to reassess how we are caring for our animals today and whether the increased dependency on 'immunological fixes' we are embracing are actually papering over the deficits of husbandry.
by Kent W. Deitemeyer
To view the article click here:
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Cognitive ability and awareness in domestic animals and decisions about obligations to animals
Abstract:
Observation of behaviour, especially social behaviour, and experimental studies of learning and brain function give us information about the complexity of concepts that animals have. In order to learn to obtain a resource or carry out an action, domestic animals may: relate stimuli such as human words to the reward, perform sequences of actions including navigation or detours, discriminate amongst other individuals, copy the actions of other individuals, distinguish between individuals who do or do not have information, or communicate so as to cause humans or other animals...more >>
Oct 2010
Animal Welfare: An Aspect of Care, Sustainability, and Food Quality Required by the Public
Abstract:
People feel that they have obligations to the animals that they use and show some degree of care behavior toward them. In addition, animal welfare is an aspect of our decisions about whether animal-usage systems are sustainable. A system that results in poor welfare is unsustainable because it is unacceptable to many people. The quality of animal products is now judged in relation to the ethics of production, including impact on the animal’s welfare on immediate features and on consequences for consumers. Because genetic selection and management for high productivity...more >>