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.

See episode website for show notes, links, and transcript:

https://www.populationbalance.org/podcast/jeff-kerr

OVERSHOOT | Shrink Toward Abundance

OVERSHOOT tackles today's interlocked social and ecological crises driven by humanity's excessive population and consumption. The podcast explores needed narrative, behavioral, and system shifts for recreating human life in balance with all life on Earth. With expert guests from wide-ranging disciplines, we examine the forces underlying overshoot: from patriarchal pronatalism that is fueling overpopulation, to growth-biased economic systems that lead to consumerism and social injustice, to 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 beings.

Hosted by Nandita Bajaj and Alan Ware. Brought to you by Population Balance.

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