MASS MEAT CONSUMPTION, HUMAN RIGHTS, AND ANIMAL WELFARE: AN ALTERNATIVE APPEAL TO LIMITATIVE FEDERAL LEGISLATION

摘要

Alice Walker's quote reflects the heart of a sensitive issue behind humankind's presumptuous entitlement to unbridled access to animals for meat. Historically, arguments against the mass consumption of meat have typically focused on animal cruelty orhuman health risks. Lately, however, researchers have begun to acknowledge negative effects of large-scale meat production on human rights and the environment Unfortunately, these findings lack legal force for curbing meat production and importation, which consumption necessarily entails. Since Congress, along with the vast majority of state and local governments, has failed to limit mass meat production and importation—which involves what some might arguably define as animal torture on several levels— for the sake of animal welfare, perhaps this Comment's human-rights approach may better prompt federal legislative action.