On this episode of the Animal Law Podcast, I speak with Cristina Kladis and Professor Delcianna Winders of the Lewis and Clark Law School Animal Law Litigation Clinic about the very first case filed by the clinic, Farm Sanctuary v USDA. This very important lawsuit seeks to invalidate the agency’s new rules eliminating line speed limits for pig slaughter, thereby putting pigs, workers and the environment at even greater risk from the horrors perpetrated in these slaughterhouses. If that were not enough, these rules also delegate much of the responsibility for oversight of the slaughter process from USDA inspectors to untrained slaughterhouse workers. Then, in addition to this groundbreaking lawsuit, we discuss the formation of this brand new clinic, which is devoted to litigation regarding farmed animals.
Cristina Kladis is a third-year law student at Lewis and Clark Law School in Portland, Oregon, where she lives with her dog, Nyx. She came to law school with a plan to specialize in environmental and animal law, hoping to fight factory farming and other forms of environmental injustice. In addition to environmental and animal law, Cristina is interested in prisoners’ rights and free speech protections for protestors and media. After graduating from law school, she will be a litigation fellow at the Animal Legal Defense Fund.
Delcianna J. Winders is a clinical professor of law and the director of the Animal Law Litigation Clinic at Lewis & Clark Law School, the world’s only law school clinic dedicated to farmed animal advocacy. Her scholarship has appeared in numerous law reviews, and she has also published extensively in the popular media. Prior to joining the Lewis & Clark faculty, Professor Winders was vice president and deputy general counsel for the PETA Foundation, the first academic fellow of the Harvard Animal Law & Policy Program, and a visiting scholar at the Elisabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University. She has also taught animal law at Tulane University School of Law and Loyola University New Orleans College of Law. She frequently gives talks on animal law subjects, has been interviewed by major national and international news outlets, and was featured in O, The Oprah Magazine as one of “Six Women Who Dare.” Winders received her BA in Legal Studies with highest honors from the University California at Santa Cruz, and her JD from NYU School of Law. Following law school, she clerked for the Hon. Martha Craig Daughtrey on the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.
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