20 October 2025
Towards the True Price of Meat
Despite mounting scientific and ethical consensus about the multiple harms of meat production for animals, humans and the environment, current regulatory frameworks largely fail to internalise these costs. On the one hand, animal agriculture is resource-intensive, contributing significantly to climate change, deforestation, water pollution, and biodiversity loss. On the other, it entails systemic ethical issues with regard to the breeding, keeping and killing of animals. This contribution explores the legal feasibility of a cap-and-trade system for meat designed to address the multifaceted harms of animal agriculture and to push meat products closer to their true price. Continue reading >>
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15 October 2025
The Case for an Animal Welfare Levy
Meat consumption imposes externalities on farmed animals. According to basic economic principles, such negative externalities can be addressed through corrective measures, such as taxation, which align private costs with the broader social costs. This raises a novel policy question: should meat be taxed to account for its impact on animal welfare, and if so, what would be the appropriate level of taxation? Continue reading >>
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13 October 2025
Labour Entitlements for Labouring Farm Animals
Animal rights discourse involves a persistent tension between the welfare paradigm and the fundamental rights approach. As an alternative to both, I argue that labour entitlements offer a more promising and pragmatic path forward. This framework places the legal approach to animals within a framework that recognises both their economic contribution and their subordination to capital. Continue reading >>
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11 July 2025
Vet Bills and the EU Charter
Over the past decade, concerns about rising veterinary costs and their impact on animal welfare have sparked growing debate across Europe and North America. In the EU, veterinary pricing is largely unregulated, leading to significant variation in costs and transparency across Member States – prompting scrutiny from competition authorities in countries like the UK, the Netherlands, and Sweden. If Charter rights, particularly Article 37 on sustainability, are to carry real weight in relation to animals, the current state of the veterinary market in Europe warrants closer examination. Continue reading >>04 July 2025
The “Best Available Science”
Two recent fisheries disputes reveal that the “best available science” standard is neither singular nor straightforward. Instead, science emerges as contested terrain, shaped by power, uncertainty, and competing truths. These cases could have important implications for the future application of the EU’s Charter of Fundamental Rights and its growing relevance for biodiversity and animal protection. Continue reading >>
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03 July 2025
Rights for Non-Humans in EU Law
The recognition of animals and nature as potential rights holders has long been a controversial proposition within European legal discourse. However, we believe that the EU legal order is more hospitable to such recognition than one might expect. In a recent article, we argued for a rights-based reinterpretation of EU animal welfare and environmental protection laws. EU constitutional and secondary laws can be construed as entailing legal rights for non-human entities – even if these rights are not explicit the texts. We consider how the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights and other EU legal acts may support a post-anthropocentric vision of Union law. Continue reading >>
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02 July 2025
Animals and the EU Charter
The EU Charter of Fundamental Rights remains silent on animal rights, even as a growing number of constitutions worldwide now explicitly protect animals. While the EU already recognises animals as sentient beings under Article 13 TFEU, this recognition has yet to translate into meaningful constitutional safeguards. Embedding animal welfare into the Charter would align the Union with global developments and help move its integration project beyond an overly anthropocentric model. Continue reading >>
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02 July 2025
A Wolf’s Right to the Surface of the Earth
The European Union recently changed the legal status of the wolf from “strictly protected” to “protected”. In this contribution, I advocate a different response to the problem that wolves prey on animals kept by humans: the further development of the European ecological network called Natura 2000. The premise of my argument, based on animal rights theory and Kant’s philosophy of law, is that wolves have the right to be on Earth. In the past, humans have tried to eradicate wolves, which is a clear violation of this right. I argue that this historical injustice generates the duty to restore the habitats and natural infrastructure used by wolves. Continue reading >>
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01 July 2025
A Child’s Right to Non-Anthropocentric Education
The European Charter on Fundamental Human Rights is not concerned about animal rights. Although the Charter is silent about animals, it is possible to connect certain human rights it enshrines to animals in a manner that can foment animal rights. The protection of a healthy environment in Article 37 is an obvious choice. A lesser theorized human right in the Charter similarly has considerable potential to benefit animals: the right to education under Article 14. Continue reading >>
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01 July 2025
The Legal Form of Animals in Global Value Chain Law
The Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union makes no mention of animals—a silence that reflects a broader pattern across EU law, including in Global Value Chain Law (GVC Law), which governs the legal infrastructures of global economic activity. Animals hold no particular legal status in this domain, revealing striking parallels in how law has historically shaped and domesticated both human and animal life. Rethinking this shared legal trajectory sheds new light on the social condition underpinning the fundamental values of EU law. Continue reading >>
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