Leading the Legal Fight for Animals
Animal rights are the next frontier of civil rights. Jeff Kerr, PETA’s longtime Chief Legal Officer, leads the organization’s bold, precedent-setting legal strategy. From the “monkey selfie” case to freeing animals from experimentation and exploitative entertainment to exposing agribusiness humane-washing, Jeff fights to secure legal recognition of animals as beings with inviolable rights. Highlights include:
How Jeff was inspired to get involved in animal law and become a lifelong vegan after attending an accidental lecture on animal rights;
Why PETA’s legal strategy rejects timidity and instead boldly confronts the legal system’s speciesist hypocrisy head-on;
How PETA uses bold, precedent-setting cases, like orcas at SeaWorld and a monkey’s selfie copyright, to challenge the boundaries of animal personhood;
How PETA has won cases against animal cruelty in factory farming and freed thousands of animals from exotic animal dealers;
How PETA exposes humane-washing and fights ag-gag laws that conceal the violence of industrial animal agriculture;
How PETA’s advocacy helped end the use of elephants, big cats, and other animals in circuses and petting zoos;
How PETA invokes free speech law to defend its right to communicate with monkeys tortured in laboratories;
Why the foundation of animal rights lies in rejecting the notion that animal “otherness” justifies human domination.
MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:
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Jeff Kerr (00:00):
The only mistake we can ever make truly in our work for animals is to do nothing or to be timid. They need us desperately. They're being horribly abused and exploited for food, used in entertainment, being experimented on in so many other ways. So we've got to first and foremost be bold. We've got to also hold up a mirror to our legal system to expose the hypocrisy, the double standard, the speciesism, and argue for appropriate fundamental rights for animals in their own right - a right of autonomy in their homes, a right to be free from suffering and exploitation. Again, the fundamental things that we hold sacrosanct for ourselves, that's what we're wanting to extend to the animals.
Alan Ware (00:46):
That was Jeff Kerr, Chief Legal Officer and Chief Operating Officer at PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. In this episode of OVERSHOOT, we talk with Jeff about his experience leading the world's largest animal rights law team and the groundbreaking legal victories that PETA has achieved in advancing animal liberation.
Nandita Bajaj (01:15):
Welcome to OVERSHOOT, where we tackle today's interlocking social and ecological crises driven by humanity's excessive population and consumption. On this podcast, we explore needed narrative, behavioral, and system shifts for recreating human life in balance with all life on Earth. I'm Nandita Bajaj, co-host of the podcast and executive director of Population Balance.
Alan Ware (01:40):
I'm Alan Ware, co-host of the podcast and researcher with Population Balance. With expert guests covering a range of topics, we examine the forces underlying overshoot - the patriarchal pronatalism that fuels overpopulation, the growth-obsessed economic systems that drive consumerism and social injustice, and the dominant worldview of human supremacy that subjugates animals and nature. Our vision of shrinking toward abundance inspires us to seek pathways of transformation that go beyond technological fixes toward a new humanity that honors our interconnectedness with all of life. And now on to today's guest.
(02:18):
As Chief Legal Officer to PETA and other PETA entities for nearly 30 years, Jeff Kerr is the longest tenured legal head of any animal protection organization. In addition to his role as chief legal counsel, Jeff recently assumed the position of PETA's first ever Chief Operating Officer. He built and leads the world's largest legal team working for animal liberation, which was named Corporate Counsel Magazine's best legal department in 2017, the first animal protection group and only the second nonprofit to receive that honor. Kerr is a graduate of the University of Virginia School of Law, which recognized his public service work with the prestigious Shaping Justice Award for extraordinary achievement and George Mason University where he was a Weber scholar. His high profile cases have made headlines around the world and sparked a global conversation about the legal rights of animals. And now on to today's interview.
Nandita Bajaj (03:14):
Hi, Jeff. It's terrific having you on the show. Thank you so much for joining us today.
Jeff Kerr (03:19):
It's my pleasure. Thanks very much for having me.
Nandita Bajaj (03:22):
Yes. And PETA's work has been so critical in transforming the animal liberation advocacy landscape over the past several decades. Our work strongly overlaps with PETA's in upending systems of human domination and exploitation over animals. And we had an enlightening interview last year with Peter's founder and now former President Ingrid Newkirk. And it's just so great to have an opportunity to hear more today from you about the urgent and visionary legal work being done there under your leadership. And congratulations. You recently assumed the role of PETA's Chief Operating Officer in addition to your role as Chief Legal Counsel. You've got a full plate.
Jeff Kerr (04:12):
Thank you. As has always been the case at PETA, everybody wears many hats and it's never going to be our answer that it's not in my job description. So whatever skills and experience I can bring to help our fight for the animals, I'm happy to do it.
Nandita Bajaj (04:26):
Incredible. So Jeff, we can jump right into the start of your work at PETA. As general counsel to PETA and international PETA entities for over 27 years, you've built and led the world's largest legal team working for animal rights. First, what inspired you to get involved in animal law?
Jeff Kerr (04:50):
I wish I could say it was a cunning plan that I had all along, but it really wasn't. I think like a lot of things that change one's life for me, animal law was kind of serendipitous. I was always interested in social justice issues. I'd been out of law school for about six years, this is in the early nineties, and I went to hear a social justice lecture about non-violence. And the person who was supposed to give the lecture, this is just outside of Washington DC, got stuck in one of DC's infamous beltway traffic jams and couldn't make it to the lecture. So his teaching assistant had to give the lecture, and she just happened to be an animal rights activist. And so the only lecture she was prepared to give on the spur of the moment was the animal rights portion of the course that wasn't supposed to be given for about another five or six weeks.
(05:39):
And so I sat there and she put the title of her lecture up on slides. Her first slide was, did your food have a face? And it was the bloodied skull of a slaughtered cow. And I was 30 years old, and I'm embarrassed to say now that I'd never thought of animal rights really. And it hit me right between the eyes. I went home that night, I threw every animal product out of my kitchen. I've been vegan since that night, and I started researching everything I possibly could about animal rights and PETA. PETA was the foremost, still is the foremost animal rights organization in the world. So I spent the next several months going to the Montgomery County Maryland Public Library, pulling out microfiche, remember those too, and all the articles I could find about PETA and animal rights? I read Animal Liberation. I read the monkey business about the Silver Spring Monkeys case that founded PETA. And then just by happenstance, I saw an ad in the Washington Post when it used to be an actual newspaper, and the entire ad was staff attorney, peta phone number, because remember, you had to pay by the size of the want ad, right. And PETA was very frugal even then. So to try to make a little bit of a long story short, I ended up getting a job at PETA as a staff attorney and been there ever since. This is my 30th year.
Nandita Bajaj (07:04):
Happy anniversary. What a great story. And it's funny, you said you were embarrassed that you didn't know about animal law, but animal law wasn't really around in college and university programs as a possible major?
Jeff Kerr (07:19):
But that's right. I graduated from law school in the later eighties and animal law was just not a thing. So that's been one of the big thrills of my legal career is to have a small part in building the practice of animal law, both domestically and internationally. There are a lot of people who are doing it, but it's really been a terrific thing to watch the practice of animal law expand and become one of the fastest growing areas of the law. And most especially because every day it's about trying to advocate for an end to abuse and exploitation of animals. And I'm privileged to be able to do the work.
Nandita Bajaj (07:57):
And like you said, it's amazing that you've watched some of this path into animal law grow, but you've also led a lot of the efforts in helping to grow it. What is it like to lead the world's largest animal rights legal team and now also taking on the role of COO at PETA?
Jeff Kerr (08:19):
The first word that always comes to mind when I think about the job I have is just the privilege that it is. Our donors and supporters very graciously make it possible for us to get up every day and go to work, to do the work that they wish they could do themselves to try to end animal abuse and exploitation. And so first and foremost, it's really a privilege to be able to do that. It's also incredibly inspiring and hopeful and a different kind of privilege to lead the team of lawyers and other folks that we have in our legal department at the PETA Foundation and helping them grow as animal lawyers and just being inspired and amazed by the creativity, the dedication, the fortitude they have every single day of fighting the fight, rolling up our sleeves and trying to use the law wherever and however we can to make this a better world for animals. So privilege, inspiring, and it's also a big responsibility. I take the responsibility very seriously, and I'm also very cognizant of the fact that I get the benefit of being able to come on shows like yours and talk about the great work that our legal team is doing. But I'm just one of, at current I think 22 lawyers on our team, plus outside law firms and counsel around the world who help in our cases. So it does take all of us, and I'm really proud of the role I've had in growing that team.
Alan Ware (09:42):
That's now the largest animal rights legal team in the world. Right?
Jeff Kerr (09:47):
That's right.
Alan Ware (09:47):
Yeah, that is impressive. And civil rights and environmental movements have used litigation on not just to change laws, but also to expand who society recognizes as having rights. Do you see PETA's legal work as part of that tradition?
Jeff Kerr (10:03):
Without a doubt. In fact, animal rights is the next frontier of civil rights. And it's interesting you bring up human civil rights because PETA's longtime outside trial counsel was Phil Hirschkop, who as a third year lawyer in the late sixties, argued and won the Loving versus Virginia case that declared unconstitutional laws prohibiting interracial marriage. And so Phil, as much as anybody, has been my mentor. He's recently retired, but it was a privilege working with him for the better part of 25 years and speaking to him several times a day and watching him litigate some of our cases, working with him in putting together some of our cases, and throughout my entire animal law career, the analog, the comparison to human civil rights litigation and work generally has been a profound guidepost for what we try to do and how we try to do it.
Alan Ware (10:55):
Right. I saw a video talking about how you were inspired to get into law from Thurgood Marshall who was the lead lawyer in Brown v Board of Education.
Jeff Kerr (11:04):
That's right. Yeah. I was kind of a nerdy kid, as you can tell. I mean most people's heroes were Mickey Mantle and Jim Brown and people like that, and mine was Thurgood Marshall. But yeah, I knew from a young age that I wanted to be a lawyer and wanted to try to do something about justice but didn't really know what, so it was a great accident that I found animal law, but to the point of not having been aware of it before, and I say this to everybody that I talk to about becoming vegan or being an animal activist, it doesn't matter where you've come from, it just matters what you do when you become aware of an issue. And so as embarrassed as I am now to think, wow, I was so clueless until I was 30 years old about the plight of animals. It's okay. It's what you do once you become aware and focus on what you can do rather than what you haven't done so far.
Alan Ware (11:53):
Right. And you've advanced animal law in so many ways, and we're not very familiar with legal strategy per se, of what you might adopt and when you might choose to take cases on or not take them on. So what are the principles or considerations that guide those decisions on the legal team?
Jeff Kerr (12:11):
There are several, and they vary depending upon the case as you would imagine. First and foremost, and this is one of the great things about working for and with Ingrid Newkirk, but our marching orders every day very simply are be bold. The only mistake we can ever make truly in our work for animals is to do nothing or to be timid. They need us desperately. They're being horribly abused and exploited for food, used in entertainment, being experimented on and so many other ways. So we've got to first and foremost be bold. We've got to also hold up a mirror to our legal system to expose the hypocrisy, the double standard, the speciesism that is embodied in our legal system and legal systems around the world, to expose the plight of the animals and argue for appropriate fundamental rights for animals in their own right, not in relation to how they can be exploited or abused by human beings.
(13:09):
Beyond that, we look very carefully at the impact some of our cases may have on the broader animal law movement. We're cognizant of not wanting to do harm, but at the same time, we realize there may be cases that we're going to lose, but we have an obligation to try and we have an obligation to challenge the legal system. And so we're going to do that every way we possibly can, whether it's through litigation, whether it's through complaints to law enforcement, whether it's talking to regulators and government agencies at the state or federal level, whatever it may be. And so that's broadly how we go about deciding what we do and how we do it. So we will use every possible avenue we can with the law to try to affect positive change.
Nandita Bajaj (13:57):
And a part of that positive change is also not simply what you're doing behind closed doors in courts, but also to shift public consciousness, right? So I've heard you talk about how regardless of whether or not you win cases, getting people's attention to some of these egregious cases is a second prong of the work you're doing is just helping people understand what's happening.
Jeff Kerr (14:23):
That's absolutely right. That's one of the most fundamental things we can and have to do as animal law attorneys and especially as attorneys for PETA. If you don't get the court's attention, if you don't get society's attention, they're not going to think about the issue. And we are front and center. We are forcing them to deal with these issues. That's why we've brought cases like our 13th amendment lawsuit against SeaWorld, where we sued SeaWorld, San Diego, claiming that the wild captured orcas there were being held as slaves in violation of the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution. It was the first case ever seeking to apply constitutional protections to non-human animals. And our argument was very simple. And again, this is about holding the mirror up to our legal community in our legal system. They were torn away from their families. They were held against their will, they're confined, they are subjected to forced breeding.
(15:20):
They were forced to perform every single day, and they're denied everything that's natural to them. Those are the hallmarks of the badges of slavery as everybody knows them. So our argument quite simply was if they're subjected to the conditions that constitute enslavement, then they should be entitled to the corresponding protections from that enslavement, namely the 13th Amendment. Of course, the historical context in which that amendment came about is undeniable. It was to end African slavery in this country. But of course, it's been interpreted rightly so beyond African slavery alone to prohibit all forms of enslavement. And our argument simply was that should carry on to these incredibly sophisticated, complex beings - these orcas who have their own language, their own cultures, their own dialects, their own set of laws, if you will, in the way in which they teach their young how to be, how to survive, how to act within their social group. So by those terms, they're not any different than us, and so they should be entitled to the same protection against being enslaved. And that's an example of what you were talking about.
Nandita Bajaj (16:33):
Totally. And we're seeing something similar happening in, and I'm sure you've heard of this in Ontario with Marineland as I think it's in terrible financial state, and they've got 30 beluga whales captive there. And I think there's been talk of possibly euthanizing them because they can't continue to care for them. And there's been a lot of outcry from the animal rights community, the animal lawyers here trying to find a sanctuary for these whales. And speaking of cases and lawsuits, one of PETA's most well-known cases was the monkey selfie lawsuit. How did that come about and what did it expose about the concept of legal personhood for animals?
Jeff Kerr (17:20):
It's a fascinating case, and just for some background for your listeners about what the case is about, a British photographer was walking through the jungle in Indonesia where this group of macaques lives and it's equatorial, it's very hot. So he'd been walking around for a few hours following them, taking photographs and video, got tired, sat down for a rest, put his equipment down. And very quickly, one of the macaques came up and picked up his camera and made the connection. This is by the photographer's own description, by the way, made the connection between pushing the shutter release and the change to his reflection in the lens every time he pushed the shutter release. Now, the macaque didn't know he was making the photograph, but that's irrelevant, and so proceeded to continually hit the shutter release and made a series of photographs, and they're very much like mine, probably your vacation photographs too.
(18:10):
Some are of the sky, some are of the ground, some are out of focus. But the iconic monkey selfie photograph was perfectly centered, perfectly focused, and had what to us is a grin on the monkey's face. So that's the photograph we're talking about. We have regular brainstorming sessions. We literally at the time, sitting around a conference room table talking about different ideas, and one of the lawyers came into the meeting one morning and had a newspaper article about the dispute between the photographer whose camera was used by the macaque to take the photograph. And Wikimedia, the photographer released it internationally, and Wikimedia put the photograph up on their free to use or public domain website and the photographer complained and said, Hey, that's my photograph. I own the copyright. You can't do that. And that's what the article was about that the lawyer brought to our brainstorming.
(19:08):
And Wikimedia had two responses. They said, first of all, you can't own the copyright because you didn't take the photograph, the monkey did. They're a hundred percent right about that. The copyright vests in the one who causes the item to come into being, what's called in the law the author. Undeniably that was the macaque Naruto, a young male at the time. But then Wikimedia said, and a monkey can't own a copyright, therefore nobody owns it. So it's in the public domain. And we looked at that and said, asked this very simple but profound question, why can't an animal own a copyright? So we started doing the research about that and found that in fact, the case law was, in our view, supportive of the idea that a macaque, a monkey, could in fact own the copyright. So we went to federal court and sued for the monkey, sued on behalf of Naruto for him to be awarded the copyright in the photograph that he undeniably made. And we were asking the court for the permission to be able to administer the copyright for the benefit of him and his community of macaques. They're critically endangered on the island of Sulawesi in Indonesia, and that's what the case was about. We wanted no compensation whatsoever. Every penny that would be realized from the use of the copyright for the macaques would go to protect him or their habitat.
Nandita Bajaj (20:34):
And what ended up happening with the case?
Jeff Kerr (20:36):
Well, we lost the case in what I will forever believe was just a simple wrong prejudice decision. I mean, quite simply, the court of appeals ultimately essentially said, look, animals can't own copyrights. But there was no, in my view, legitimate justifiable reason for that decision. However, the nicer part of that was before that decision came down we actually were able to enter into a settlement with the photographer in which the photographer agreed to donate 25% of the gross proceeds that he will make forever from those photographs to donate that to organizations, charities that exist to help protect the habitat or the community of macaques that Naruto was a part of in Indonesia. And so as a result of our case, for the first time in history, an animal was going to benefit financially and directly from the intellectual property of his own creation. I mean, think of that. I mean, that's a massive sea change. And I think it was a clear indication that monkeys and other animals can create intellectual property, and they should be entitled again to the legal rights and benefits of being able to do that. The only reason that he was denied that right is because he simply happened not to be human. And that's nothing more than the same kind of prejudice that we found in our legal system in prior generations against racial and ethnic minorities against women, et cetera.
Nandita Bajaj (22:09):
Right. And on the one hand, whether or not you won the case, it brought about so much public attention to the idea of legal personhood and authorship to an animal. And as you're saying, the concept of legal personhood has been so problematic because it's always been this slow addition of bringing in this layer of people and then this layer. But the benchmark has always been the way it was first created. That was very exclusionary. So how does the concept of legal personhood in your work, specifically in this case apply? And what does it expose really about that concept?
Jeff Kerr (22:54):
Well, there's so much hypocrisy involved in our legal system in relation to how animals are treated. You've got to start first and foremost from the notion that animals have no representation in our legal system at all. And so by the laws created by humans for the benefit of humans, animals really have no rights. The so-called animal protection laws or animal laws are really laws about how many bad things and how much you can do to exploit animals, essentially. We try to work around the edges where there are some protections. But as a general matter, I like to say there's no such thing as animal protection laws, really animal exploitation law. And so we give them no voice in the process. We claim that their property. Then when we bring cases, challenging their property status and saying, no, they should be recognized as persons as well.
(23:48):
The courts say, well, law says they're not persons. They're property. So wait a minute. So by the laws of our own creation in which we give them no voice, we call them property. And then when it's challenged, the courts look back at those laws and say, well, no, the law says they're property. Sorry, no help here. That's just ridiculous. It's an absurd tautology. So that's exactly what we're fighting for. And it's been termed different things, whether it's personhood or legal beingness, the idea behind it is the same. It's the notion that we are fighting to have animals identified as what I would term a juridical being. And all that is, is a being recognized in the law as a holder of rights and protections essentially. And those are the most fundamental rights and privileges that we demand for ourselves, we demand for our corporations that aren't even human. Sips have rights and are protected by law more than animals.
(24:47):
And so that's essentially what the idea of personhood is. So personhood just means being able to be recognized in the law and be a holder of rights, that they can also be represented in courts of law to be able to enforce those rights and protections. So again, whether it's beingness or personhood or juridical beings, it's trying to fight for the recognition of fundamental rights for animals in their own right. And we're not talking about giving animals the right to drive a car or apply for a credit card or those other silly things that some of our opponents and critics will try to claim. It's about appropriate rights for their purposes, for their needs, a right of autonomy in their homes, a right to be free from suffering and exploitation. Again, the fundamental things that we hold sacrosanct for ourselves, that's what we're wanting to extend to the animals.
Alan Ware (25:42):
And one major area that animals rights are routinely violated with cruelties and death is animal agriculture, factory farming, which PETA has worked hard against for decades now. Which legal cases stand out to you as breakthroughs in that area, and what are some of the ongoing challenges that you still face?
Jeff Kerr (26:03):
Some of the cases that have been hallmarks where we got the first conviction of cruelty to animals against workers in a factory farm against pigs done in North Carolina, cruelty to animal statutes. We got the first convictions for cruelty to animals against birds on a factory farm in a similar way. We've used the law to go after wildlife traffickers and wildlife abusers in the pet trade and got what was at the time, I think it still may be the single largest rescue of 26,000 animals from an exotic animal dealer in Houston, Texas. So we're fighting what's called humane washing right now by sending letters to companies that are making these ridiculous humane washing claims. In other words, like chickens that are 'humanely' raised or that milk and dairy products are the result of 'the love for their animals' or 'highest standards in the industry' and bunk like that.
(26:58):
And so we're having great effect in sending letters to those companies, threatening them with potential legal action if they don't stop. And so we're getting those claims taken down. The biggest challenges that we face, other than very insufficient state cruelty laws, there are no laws that actually protect the animals on factory farms. Even some of the state laws, the state cruelty laws have specific exemptions for the raising of animals to be used for food. So that's the biggest issue that we face. There are organizations like the Global Animal Partnership or GAP, which is this humane certification that you see in Whole Foods stores, and it's just a complete joke. They try to mislead consumers into believing that the animals somehow are treated better than animals in other standard factory farming situations, and it's simply not the case. So we've also had successes. We had a great case against Organic Valley that had on its packaging some of these ridiculous claims, and they had claims that they were offering the high or highest standards of animal care that cows were raised with love and that they're happy or social, and of course the use of the word humane while they were prematurely ripping babies away from their mothers and housing the babies by themselves.
(28:21):
No socialization at all. Well, of course, the PETA Foundation lawyers were part of a lawsuit representing a consumer who was alleging she'd been defrauded by that, she'd been misled by those claims on their packaging. When they tried to have that lawsuit dismissed, a federal judge in the first of its kind decision said, no, no, no. Those are objectively factual claims that can be challenged in a lawsuit like this. And so as a result, fortunately the case was settled, and while we were waiting for that decision, Organic Valley actually were removed many of those claims I just talked about. So it's not just about fighting the practices. It's also about stopping retailers and others from lying about or misrepresenting what's behind the products, because I think by and large, most people support the idea of being kind to animals, of being humane. And of course the factory farming industry wants to hide from the consumers what actually happens to animals there.
(29:17):
We found with GAP, for example, PETA did investigations, undercover investigations of some facilities that were GAP-certified suppliers, including a turkey operation in Pennsylvania where we found workers even sexually abusing turkeys, picking them up by the neck, kicking them like they were footballs. And this is the kind of stuff that goes on at these so-called certified humane facilities, and it's just a sham so that Alan is part of the fights we have against factory farming. And of course, the biggest issue we have, and this isn't legal at all, it's just encouraging everybody to pursue a vegan diet. It's healthier for the individuals, it's healthier for the planet. Factory farming is a major contributor of greenhouse gases, I think the single largest contributor of greenhouse gases, and of course it's much better for the animals. So that's another daily grassroots fight, just encouraging everybody to be part of the battle.
(30:10):
There are more and more people every day who are deciding - whether it's for their own personal health, whether it's for the environmental reasons or whether it's for the animals or some combination of all of it - they're swearing off animal-based products because of organizations like PETA being around now, we're in our 45th year. We now have generations of younger people who have grown up with the concept of animal rights, and that's translating into their purchasing decisions. And so we're very hopeful of that. The work's never going to be done. We've got to continue to fight and do the hard work. But if you want to see how far things have come, go to a major grocery store chain and just walk down the aisles and look at all of the plant-based options. Look at, I remember when I first went vegan back in the early nineties, it was rice milk, and I think that was the only non-dairy alternative and soy milk, and they were in the aisles with baby food because that's what mothers who had kids who were lactose intolerant gave them as part of their formula. I don't know there were any mock meats available, but now you just go down and it's aisle after aisle, and that's a very, very good indication of how far we've come, but still a lot of work to do for sure.
Alan Ware (31:22):
And the industry is so politically and economically powerful that they've been successful in these ag gag laws that prevent exposes and investigation. And you have challenged some of those in court. How are those going?
Jeff Kerr (31:36):
At latest count, we've defeated, I think eight state ag ag laws getting them declared unconstitutional as a violation of free speech in one way or another. We've also, in state legislatures, we've been able to stop 19 separate bills from getting to the governor's desk for signature. A couple of governors have actually vetoed bills when they've been passed. But you're right, the reach of the factory farming industry is very extensive, and they're the ones, their interests, their lobbyists are the ones who are writing these bills and they're pedaling them from state to state. So the fight's not over. We have to comply with laws in the states where we are doing investigations, but we're fighting those laws. And when we get 'em struck down, we're still doing investigations in those states. But it also goes to show you the extent to which the factory farming industry will go to hide their practices. If they truly had nothing to hide, they should be putting cameras in factory farms to show people exactly where their food comes from and exactly what happens to these animals from birth to slaughter. And they don't want people to see it. That's why they're trying to gag organizations like PETA and others.
Nandita Bajaj (32:42):
And I appreciated you drew attention to the humane washing that goes on, and the creep of welfarism within animal rights work. And I think as PETA and animal liberation movement has been growing, what's been disheartening is seeing this parallel movement of welfarism growing under the billionaire money of Effective Altruism. They're really shifting the landscape away from liberation, away from upending these systems to maintaining these systems. They're the systems that got them the billions that they have. And I think from what we've seen, I think PETA's taken a pretty hard stand against this kind of utilitarianism or appeals to who's kind of more sentient and who's less sentient and worthy of concern.
Jeff Kerr (33:32):
In fact, in that regard, we were talking about GAP earlier, Global Animal Partnership and the humane washing, the Humane World for Animals. And the ASPCA are part of GAP, actually have representatives who sit on the board of that, and it's outrageous. And so what you were talking about, about animal liberation, animal rights, that's what differentiates PETA. And PETA is always going to be in that space of arguing for not bigger cages but no cages. So PETA is always going to be, okay, what's next? What do we need to stop next? And we've got to stop it, not just give them bigger cages, get 'em out of them entirely.
Nandita Bajaj (34:10):
Yeah, truly admire that. And Jeff, you and the PETA team have also been involved in holding to account the industries that exploit animals for entertainment. What are a few cases that stand out in that field?
Jeff Kerr (34:26):
The first one that has to come to mind is the 40 year battle we had against Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus, the so-called just completely mislabeled 'greatest show on Earth', their exploitation of elephants and big cats and other animals for decades. And of course, we finally won that and they went out of business. And so the animals were no longer being exploited in the circus. That was a huge sea change. They've since come back, but as human-based performers only, and it was demonstrations, it was grassroots, encouraging people not to go there. It was getting venues to stop hosting them from one year to the other. It was also some lawsuits and complaints to agencies. We exposed them lying to the USDA about circumstances in which animals died. Elephants and lions died in their care, and we got the largest fine against them in USDA history, and it was just a couple of years after that that they finally threw in the towel and stopped abusing animals.
(35:25):
That's got to be a big one. The other ones that come to mind relate to some of the more recent documentaries that we've seen. The Tiger King documentary that came out during COVID, we were able to eviscerate what's called the big cat cub petting industry. This was the industry at the seedy roadside zoos where they were breeding lions and tigers and similar animals who were protected by the Endangered Species Act, and immediately tearing the babies away from their mothers so that they could be used in photo ops and charge hundreds of dollars to have your photograph taken with a tiger cub or something like that. And as a result of several lawsuits as seen in Tiger King, we were able to expose that, sue effectively for that, and shut these places down and led to the enactment of the federal Big Cat Public Safety Act, which outlaws that kind of conduct.
(36:19):
So setting precedents and getting laws passed for that, that's another area of entertainment. And then some of the other cases that come to mind has been our case more recently against Tonia Haddix that was portrayed in the Chimp Crazy documentary that you probably saw on HBO. She owned a facility misleadingly named the Missouri Primate Foundation, where she kept seven chimpanzees imprisoned in horrible conditions. We sued under the Endangered Species Act, and as a result of that case, the court allowed us to rescue those animals and get them to sanctuary. She tried to hide one chimpanzee in particular named Tonka and lied to the court, said that he had died swore under oath to this several times that he had died and that her husband had burned his body in a backyard fire pit. We just knew she was lying. And after a nationwide search, we were able to find Tonka that she kept in the basement of a house. She was living in the Ozarks in Missouri and expose that, and we were able to get Tonka rescued as well. And as a result of her perjury and obstruction, she was just recently sentenced to just under four years in federal prison. And so we've eviscerated the private ownership of chimpanzees and the exploitation of chimpanzees in this country as well. So those are some of the more notable victories we've had on the entertainment side.
Alan Ware (37:38):
Right. There was an example that you mentioned about it kind of blurs the line between entertainment and agriculture is this Maine lobster festival, this party of boiling 16,000 lobsters alive.
Jeff Kerr (37:55):
They steam them, actually. They steam them alive, which is even worse than boiling because it prolongs their suffering. And so yeah, we recently filed a lawsuit on behalf of a woman who lives up there who wants to enjoy the park where this happens. This is on public property, this festival each year. So we've sued on her behalf to try to stop this what's mass murder of 16,000 lobsters in some perverse idea of fun and celebration. So we're hopeful of that case. It's early days. That case is just getting started. Just the idea behind, like you said, the combination of entertainment and factory farming, the notion that anybody would have a celebration around the steaming alive of 16,000 sentient beings, and the science is now clear. Lobsters are undoubtedly sentient. They have the ability to feel, they know what's going on. The idea that anybody would create a festival around that in 2025 is medieval in our view.
Nandita Bajaj (38:53):
Yeah, and it's interesting you talk about the science of sentience as well, because so much of this moral appeal for sentience is kind of what keeps these humane washers from continuing on their kind of welfarist tactics. Open Philanthropy, for example, that is the biggest Effective Altruism funder, they recently ended their animal welfare program for invertebrates because 'the optics are bad', supporting crayfish, insects, lobsters. So we appreciate that you're not drawing some kind of this morally ambiguous line of who sentient and who's not.
Jeff Kerr (39:35):
The underlying idea of all of that and all animal exploitation is this notion of otherness and by being other than it equates in their minds to lesser than. It's the same from many of the forms of exploitation throughout our history that we've talked about, and it's certainly the case with animals. And so you're right, we don't differentiate. Any animal can and is the subject of exploitation and abuse and therefore should be the subject of protection. We were talking about the 13th Amendment case against SeaWorld. One of the things that we liked most about that case was that these were orcas. And from an animal rights perspective, they have no semblance at all to human being. They are the apex predator in the ecosystem that covers 70% of the Earth's surface. They swim a hundred miles a day in the open ocean. They see in three dimensions through echolocation.
(40:28):
Human beings can't do any of that. They have brains that are bigger than ours relative to body size. They're incredibly complex and bright creatures. But because they're not us, they're somehow not deserving of appropriate consideration and protection. And we just fundamentally reject that idea. It's the idea of not only just otherness, but human exceptionalism or human superiority. And there are a lot of things humans can do that other animals can't, but there's a whole lot of things like some of those things I just talked about that other animals can do that humans can't. As much as I wish I could, I can't fly. I can't breathe water. Any number of things just miraculous and mind boggling attributes, skills, personalities that so many non-human animals have. It's just wondrous. And they all need to have that kind of protection. And the other thing that's part and parcel of that is in the otherness is human being's unwillingness to remember that we're just animals too. We're all animals. It's prejudice, pure and simple. It's prejudice. We call it speciesism, treating others lesser simply because you happen to be of a different species, but it all stems from that kind of inequality.
Alan Ware (41:40):
And you've also won key court decisions that have imposed penalties on animal testing labs, and you've helped limit the animal testing lab secrecy. Can you walk us through a very important recent PETA case, a groundbreaking lawsuit involving the macaque monkeys and what PETA was seeking in that case and how did you use first amendment free speech rights in that?
Jeff Kerr (42:03):
Thank you for raising that. I'm very excited about this case. PETA's lawsuit centers on PETA's first amendment right to listen, and that's a right to receive communications from willing speakers. And so in a first of its kind lawsuit, PETA is alleging that the macaques that are imprisoned in the NIH laboratory of a horrible experimenter named Elisabeth Murray are willing speakers that we have a right to receive communications from because they're undoubtedly communicating and trying to tell us about their plight as they're being tortured in her laboratory. Most people understand the idea behind the right to free speech, pretty straightforward, but what most people don't understand is that there's a corresponding right to listen. Think about it. My right to free speech isn't worth much if you don't have a right to hear me if I want to speak to you. And so that's the underlying basis in this lawsuit.
(43:01):
And the legal cases come out of primarily the prison context where prisoners want to be able to talk about the conditions of their confinement. And the courts have definitely held, yeah, the press and others in our society have a right to receive those communications. Well, the macaques are no different. They communicate the same way we do - vocalizations, facial expressions, body posture, movements, you name it. And so they're undoubtedly communicating all the time about what's going on, what's happening with them, what they're being subjected to. And we've gotten some limited videos from their experiments through the Freedom of Information Act. And so our primate experts and in-house and also independent primatologists have looked at these video snippets that we have, and they're already able to see and translate the communications that they're expressing stress and fear. And so what we're saying to the court is, we need to see these communications all the time, not just the limited times they're being videoed by Murray and her other experimenters in these horrific experiments so that they can tell us what's going on with them and the things that are being done to them.
(44:14):
You can well understand why these macaques want to communicate to us. These experimenters in Murray's laboratory are cutting open their skulls, suctioning out parts of their brains, injecting toxins into the brains to cause permanent brain damage so they can see how they react once they're brain damaged. And some of them even have testing equipment screwed into their skulls. These are vice-like devices that hold their heads still while their brains are being damaged. And so they often suffer from repeated infections from those devices that have been implanted into their skulls, and then they've put them in these small dark boxes with a guillotine door, raise the door and frighten them to see their reactions.
(44:58):
Again, it's medieval junk. There's no way it's science at all. And so we asked NIH, we said, look, we'd like to have a 24/7 live audio video feed so that we can see what they're doing. We don't care about the other stuff. We don't care about who's in there and that we just want to receive those macaques' communications. They told us, it was ironic, they said, well, we only video them during the experiments, the short times that they're, well, it's not short if you're one of the macaques, but relative to the entire day during the time they're being experimented on. So you can just continue to use the Freedom of Information Act to get those videos. And we said, wait a minute. So you want us to submit FOIA requests for video that you acknowledge you don't make in the first place because you're not recording them through all the other times that they're in their cages, where they're housed, when they're on their way to being tortured. That's government censorship. That's the government telling you what speech and communication they will allow you to receive. That's unconstitutional. So we're asking the court to allow a 24/7 live audio visual feed so that we can receive the communications so we can listen to the willing speakers, the macaques, who are undoubtedly talking to us about what's going on to them.
Nandita Bajaj (46:15):
And because you've been working on kind of upending this really awful experimentation industry for a long time, and yet this unique way of addressing it, it's a pretty remarkable approach. Is this one of those brainstorming sessions you were having with your team that you came up with the right to listen approach because it's quite brilliant.
Jeff Kerr (46:38):
It is. And it was one of the lawyers on our team and exactly that, it was at a brainstorming session. And one of the things that's really neat when you get 22 activist lawyers or a group of them in a room together, they bring their varied experiences, backgrounds, interests, whatever it may be. And the person who came up with this idea had a pretty strong first amendment, free speech legal background, and came up with the argument and we started researching it and led to the case. But that's exactly how it comes about. And this lawsuit and others that we will try to bring is just one of the prongs that PETA uses to try to end experimentation on animals. And quite frankly, we're starting now to see the benefits of that. I mean, there are these ridiculous experiments of all types that we're getting canceled, one of which is called the forced swim test, in which a mouse is dropped into a smooth cylinder filled with water just to see if the mouse will drown.
(47:38):
And of course, the mouse very quickly learns that they can tread water, learns that they can float. That's the extent of the experiment. And for decades and to the tune of wasted millions of dollars in government laboratories, private laboratories, experimenters were engaging in this conduct to try to suggest that said something about fear or how people relate to stressful situations or something absurd. And all it tested was the ability of a mouse to realize that he or she can tread water ultimately and they're not going to drown. Stupid, stupid. But again, it's hundreds of millions of dollars of our taxpayer dollars being wasted by NIH. NIH is the largest funder of animal experimentation. Half their annual budgets, something in the neighborhood of $250 million annually, goes to ridiculous animal experiments. And so we're before Congress, we're talking to the agencies, we're talking to universities to try to get them to stop all of this.
(48:35):
And fortunately, NIH is starting to shift away from some of these cruel and outdated experiments on animals. In fact, they've adopted several recommendations from PETA's Research Modernization Now Plan to transition all animal experiments to human relevant science. And so they're starting to, in a much bigger way, embrace cutting edge methods like organs on chips and 3D tissue models. And these are all technologies that really have hope for real breakthroughs and not these ridiculous experiments on animals that don't translate in any way to human beings. They've also agreed to stop offering funding opportunities for studies that only use animals. So hopefully that will lead to more alternatives as well. And these are just some of the massive sea changes. Meanwhile, we're working on an individual experimenter basis. We recently at Harvard University, we were able to stop longtime experimenter Margaret Livingstone. She tore baby monkeys away from their mothers and forced them to wear goggles that simulated strobe lights or actually sewed their eyes shut before killing and dissecting many of them to talk about the effects of separation from mother and blindness. I mean, that's just sadistic. And so following a relentless PETA campaign, including complaints to federal authorities like we've talked about, critiques from primatologists, and 700,000 emails from PETA supporters, those federal grants have been canceled. So Margaret Livingstone is out of business and her years of tormenting animals are over. But these people are at this for decades. Elizabeth Murray that we talked about in relation to the right to listen case, she's been torturing animals for 40 years to the tune of more than 50 million, five zero, $50 million of wasted taxpayer monies without any treatments resulting from.
Alan Ware (50:37):
Yeah. And as we've learned from other guests that the models between animals and humans often don't translate. Right. They're not very efficacious.
Jeff Kerr (50:48):
I think it's 97% of anything that got through animal tests failed in humans. So tell me, in what business, in what world, if you engaged in conduct that failed 97% of the time, you wouldn't be thrown out the door on your ear immediately, but somehow it's the treadmill. It's the funding revolving door of people just putting in grant applications and getting millions upon millions upon millions of dollars to engage in useless experiments.
Alan Ware (51:19):
Yeah. Now, you and PETA now have decades under your belt advancing animal law, animal rights. Looking ahead to the coming decades, what do you see as some of the biggest legal challenges and opportunities for the animal rights movement?
Jeff Kerr (51:35):
The biggest one is getting that recognition of animals as holders of fundamental rights so that we can go to court on their behalf and enforce those protections and have them let them have the benefit of real, meaningful, fundamental protections in their own right for their own purposes, and no longer being considered simply property for exploitation and abuse by human beings. That's clearly the biggest thing. An analog of that is what's known in the law as standing, and that's just the legal right to be able to bring a case. It's an ever-evolving area of the law, especially at the state level. But fighting for organizations like PETA and other animal advocates to be able to go into court and have the legal standing to represent animal interests, that's another big deal. But those are clearly the two biggest issues and have been in animal law since I've been practicing it.
(52:30):
But the good news is there are changes coming, sea changes that are. In New Zealand a river has been recognized as a legal person, given legal rights. In Argentina an orangutan was granted habeas corpus and identified as a person. In Ecuador and other countries, Germany I believe is another one, that actually identifies animal protection and protection of nature in their constitutions. So things are absolutely going in the right direction. The law is a notoriously slow moving and conservative industry and profession, but we're going to be there every step of the way, pushing the envelope, as I like to say, trying to kick open the doors of the courthouse to argue for the animals' rights.
Nandita Bajaj (53:12):
Right. And also win over the court of public opinion. Right. So much of your work, does that quite admirably? Well, Jeff, this has been a really remarkable interview. We are really grateful for, well your 30 years of work with PETA and ongoing, and also the rest of your team for being this force of change for animals when there's so little awareness about these incredible beings, and we truly appreciate the time that you've given us today and the incredible fight that you're fighting. Thank you so much.
Alan Ware (53:47):
Thanks, Jeff.
Jeff Kerr (53:48):
You're very welcome. Thank you both very much for having me on. It's always a pleasure to see you and always a privilege to be able to talk about our work, and I'm just so grateful for the dedication of everybody at PETA and the PETA organization around the world that every day put on the suits of armor and go to battle for the animals in so many different ways, and just the gratitude we have to our members and supporters who make our work possible. It's a privilege that we take very seriously. We won't waiver ever.
Alan Ware (54:17):
That's all for this edition of OVERSHOOT. Visit Populationbalance.org to learn more. To share feedback or guest recommendations, write to us using the contact form on our site or by emailing us at podcast@populationbalance.org. If you enjoyed this podcast, please rate us on your favorite podcast platform and share it widely. We couldn't do this work without the support of listeners like you and hope that you'll consider a one-time or recurring donation.
Nandita Bajaj (54:45):
Until next time, I'm Nandita Bajaj thanking you for your interest in our work and for helping to advance our vision of shrinking toward abundance.
