Peter Brandt is the Senior Attorney for Farm Animal Litigation with the Humane Society of the United States’ Animal Protection Litigation (APL) section. APL conducts precedent-setting legal campaigns on behalf of animals in state and federal courts around the country. With a staff of 15 lawyers and a network of over 1,000 pro bono lawyers, APL is the largest Animal Protection Litigation program in the country. Peter has been involved in animal protection issues for over a decade, and currently oversees the entire farm animal litigation docket for The HSUS. He received his J.D. from Lewis & Clark Law School and he holds a B.A. from Whitman College.

In 2005, Peter served as the lead attorney for The HSUS when the group joined with Compassion Over Killing, Farm Sanctuary, and Animals' Angels, to file a legal petition for rulemaking with the United States Department of Agriculture (“USDA”), asking the agency to close the Twenty-Eight Hour Law loophole in the interest of safeguarding animal welfare and public health. The Twenty-Eight Hour Law, enacted in 1873, generally requires that for every 28 hours of interstate transport, farm animals must be offloaded, provided food and water, and given at least five hours of rest. However because USDA interpreted the law to exclude trucks—the method used to transport more than 95 percent of all farm animals—it effectively rendered the law meaningless. The petition argued that the law could not be properly limited to trains, and in 2006 USDA responded reversing its prior position and acknowledging that the law governs the truck transport of farm animals.

In 2008 Peter led The HSUS’ legal team during the aftermath of an HSUS undercover investigation exposing systematic abuse of “downer” cows at the now infamous Hallmark/Westland slaughterhouse in Chino, California. HSUS’s legal team worked closely with the San Bernardino County District Attorney’s office to ensure a vigorous criminal prosecution of those responsible. The result was a precedent-setting prosecution and conviction of two slaughterhouse workers for torturing cows too sick or injured to walk to slaughter—all for the purpose of selling low-grade meat to the federal school lunch program.

Also in 2008, Peter oversaw extensive HSUS litigation efforts in support of California’s Proposition 2, a ballot measure which requires the phase-out of battery cages, and veal and gestation crates in California. The measure passed passed with 63% of the vote. The Proposition 2 litigation embraces many diverse areas of law.  The projects range from a pending environmental lawsuit against a large egg farm emitting massive amounts of ammonia, to petitioning the U.S. Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission seeking an investigation of what evidence suggests to be an extensive price fixing conspiracy in the U.S. egg industry. Immediately after HSUS filed its price fixing petitions, the first of 20 class action price-fixing cases against the egg industry was filed in federal court, with the help of HSUS’s lawyers.  The now consolidated class action litigation—“In Re Egg Producers”—seeks hundreds of millions in damages from the nation’s top egg companies. In the weeks before the fall election, HSUS’s legal work uncovering the price fixing scandal, and the resulting litigation and DOJ criminal investigation, were featured on the front page of the Wall Street Journal, in Business Week magazine, and hundreds of other media outlets.

Peter lives in Sacramento California and works from home with the assistance of two cats, B-Man and Olive. 

Our interview with Peter Brandt

1.   How did you become an animal protection lawyer?
I went vegetarian in College for ethical reasons and then when I graduated in the mid 1990’s and moved from my small hometown to Los Angeles where someone took a chance on me and gave me a job in the animal protection movement in 1997. I spent a year working on a California ballot measure to ban the use of certain wildlife traps and poisons. It was a formative and inspiring experience. The campaign was successful, but my job also disappeared at the end of the campaign trail. As much as I had enjoyed the campaign work, I also felt that if I went back to school I could probably do more for animals. So I began to think about law school, and as I careened between short stints working as an activist and working at soul-crushing temporary office jobs, I began to think that no matter how painful law school might be it would probably be better. As if to encourage me to get the applications in, the office jobs got steadily more embarrassing and pointless as I began applying to law schools. One job required only that I press a single button every 15 minutes—and there where two of us on this duty every shift. So I felt I was giving a little bet less than all I had to offer. This is a long way of saying: I went to law school because I was a committed animal activist and I hoped that I could put a law degree to use helping animals, and I’ve been very fortunate to see that happen.


2.   Why did you decide to focus your practice on farm animals?
I began at HSUS in 2005 and at that point there were a total of four attorneys in the litigation section. So for the first couple of years we really did not have the staff to have attorneys specialize exclusively in wildlife, farm animal, or other types of law. As we’ve grown it has become possible to specialize, and we’ve found it advantageous to do so, in part because the applicable laws vary widely depending on the animal’s situation, e.g. wild, companion animal, farm animal. Although I have worked on wildlife cases and puppy mill cases, I came to The HSUS primarily interested in farm animal protection because farm animals are of course the single largest population of animals humans interact with, and their current legal situation in the U.S. is abysmal.


3.   What kind of cases are you working on at the moment?
We are litigating a wide variety of cases. To take a few examples, we have a pending environmental suit against an egg factory farm, petitions seeking U.S. Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission action against an egg industry cartel for illegally conspiring to fix the price of eggs in violation of antitrust laws. We undertook both of these matters in support of the California Yes on Proposition 2 campaign. In addition we have a pending federal Clean Water Act case against a New York state foie gras factory farm based on unlawful discharges to a river. We also are litigating an appeal before the Ninth Circuit challenging the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s determination that the federal Humane Methods of Slaughter Act does not apply to chickens and other birds. Birds, of course comprise 98 percent of the more than 9 billion animals slaughtered for human consumption. So USDA’s exclusion of birds from the humane slaughter regulations essentially renders those regulations a dead letter.



4.   In 2006, litigation by HSUS resulted in the USDA conceding that ‘The Twenty Eight Hour Law’ should apply to the road transport of animals. Does the work stop there or will HSUS be making further submissions about the adequacy of that law?
The HSUS believes that 28 hours is far too long for animals to be locked in crowded trucks, exposed to the elements, and denied food, water and rest. The 28 hour time period was settled on in 1873 when the Twenty Eight Hour law was enacted, and of course our understanding of animals and of the effects of transport on different animal species has hugely involved in the intervening 136 years, yet the law lags more than a century behind the science. The Twenty Eight Hour Law was enacted primarily to protect animals from the horrors of long distance transport, which lawmakers at the time knew regularly killed, injured and sickened animals, and this in turn posed a threat to those who ate the animals. All of these concerns remain today, and the stakes are arguably higher now, given the emergence of avian influenza and other highly contagious diseases that can be quickly spread over vast distances simply by transporting live farm animals. My colleagues and I at The HSUS are committed to both enforcing the Twenty Eight Hour Law while also improving the law to better protect animals and safeguard the public health.

5.   Can you outline some of the links between the Proposition 2 Ballot Initiative and the litigation efforts undertaken by HSUS. How integral do you think the cases were to success of the campaign?
Those involved in managing the Yes on Proposition 2 campaign credit HSUS’s litigation support as playing a major role in the measure’s landslide victory. It was an incredibly busy summer for APL attorneys as we prepared and filed numerous cases, and petitions related to Proposition 2. Five APL attorneys worked full time on Proposition 2 projects, and others offered invaluable assistance as we worked on antitrust, false advertising, and federal and state environmental law matters. When Proposition 2 opponents claimed that they represented local family farmers, we responded with multiple complaints to the California Fair Political Practices Commission showing that the opponents were illegally laundering more than $4.5 million in tainted out-of-state agribusiness money through an unregistered ballot committee—which appears to be the largest campaign finance violation in California history. We followed this up with a federal court suit exposing an illegal plan to misappropriate $3 million dollars of federal funds to the opposition. Although federal law specifically prohibits the quasi-governmental American Egg Board involvement in political contests, public records we obtained contained smoking gun statements from U.S.D.A. confirmed that the Board was planning to infuse $3 million into the Proposition 2 Opposition campaign. At the first hearing in the case, APL lawyer Ralph Henry was less than 15 minutes into his argument when judge Marilyn Hall Patel enjoined the entire scheme from the bench.

As I mentioned before, in California’s Eastern District we have a pending federal court action, Avila et al. v. Olivera Egg Ranch Inc. (Case no. 2:08-cv-02488-JAM-KJM) against a massive battery cage egg facility for violations of two federal environmental statutes Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act, and the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act. The complaint alleges that the facility has been emitting massive amounts of ammonia and illegally failing to report such emissions. In addition the suit alleges that Olivera’s emission of ammonia and other pollutants has made the neighboring individual plaintiffs sick, miserable and unable to use and enjoy their property. This suit arose as part of our litigation efforts in support of California’s Proposition 2, which California voters overwhelmingly passed in November. During the campaign against the measure the egg industry made the ludicrous claim that cramming hens into tiny cages by the hundreds of thousands at factory farms is somehow good for the environment. So we looked into that, and we found that Olivera—a major donor to the Prop 2 opposition—was in fact maintaining a massive 16.5 acre lake of liquid manure right next to residential neighbors. As a result of exposure to ammonia and other pollutants these neighbors suffer constantly from, upper respiratory infections, headaches, and other maladies.

As a final example, with the help of HSUS Chief Economist Jennifer Fearing, APL lawyers investigated the egg industry’s claim that providing more humane care for farm animals would increase consumer egg prices. What we discovered was a massive price-fixing scheme by the country’s major egg producers—which had raised egg prices more than 40 percent. In August, as the November vote drew near we filed petitions with the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission. Also, with the help of HSUS’s lawyers, the first of 20 class action price-fixing cases against the egg industry was filed in federal court the next day.  The now consolidated class action litigation—“In Re Egg Producers”—seeks hundreds of millions in damages from the nation’s top egg companies. In the weeks before the fall election, HSUS’s legal work uncovering the price fixing scandal, and the resulting litigation and DOJ criminal investigation, were featured on the front page of the Wall Street Journal, in Business Week magazine, and hundreds of other media outlets.


6.   A number of HSUS’s cases appear to be focussed in California. Is that because California is seen as a relatively progressive jurisdiction in terms of animal protection? What kind of precedential value (if any) does success in California have for other jurisdictions?
Proposition 2 is a large part of why we’ve been so active in California as is the fact that California’s animal cruelty penal laws do not exclude farm animals, as do the laws in many U.S. states. Our California state court actions are not binding precedents on other states, but our California federal court actions can be. In both arenas though, we are always mindful that creating any precedent on animal law, whether binding or not, is both risky yet critically important. What happens in California state courts, although not binding on other state courts can have a huge impact on the industries that trade in animals and animal products.  Our Hallmark slaughterhouse prosecution in Chino California is a good example of this. The scandal surrounding the conviction of two slaughterhouse employees at Hallmark for abusing nonambulatory cows has had policy and market reprecussions throughout the United States. That case arose largely by chance. Our investigator was in California and looking for farm animal abuse when he happened upon and took a job at Hallmark. Fortuitously Hallmark was located in a county where I just happened to know a very animal friendly prosecutor. When the investigator first called me to tell me about his employment at Hallmark (at the end of his time there) I remember asking him, “Please tell me this place is in San Bernardino County,” and fortunately for the animals it was.
 
7.   Over the last few years, HSUS has many strategic litigation cases. Which do you think was the most significant and why?
Our Horse slaughter cases, which I was only very peripherally involved with. These cases culminated in two Federal Appellate level rulings which establish the precedent that states may prohibit the slaughter of certain animals for humane reasons. In 2006, more than 100,000 horses a year were being slaughtered in the United States for food.  On September 21, 2007, that number dropped to zero when the last slaughterhouse door was shut. The road to this extraordinary victory was long and difficult, involving three different lawsuits. Things came to a head in January of 2007, when two of the country’s three horse slaughterhouses were abruptly silenced by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in Texas. Next, a lower court enjoined enforcement of a Texas state law banning the sale of horsemeat. But with amicus support from The HSUS, the State prevailed in its appeal. That left only the Cavel plant in Illinois. But that plant's operations came to a halt two months later, when The HSUS won its lawsuit to stop all U.S. Department of Agriculture inspection of horses destined for slaughter. That ruling was put on hold a month later, allowing Cavel to temporarily reopen. But in the meantime, the Illinois legislature passed a new law banning horse slaughter, which was promptly challenged in court. After several more months of litigation, the Seventh Circuit issued a pivotal ruling in September closing Cavel for good, thus ending horse slaughter in the United States. Both the Fifth and Seventh Circuit Appellate decisions recognized that states have a protectable interest in prohibiting the slaughter of certain animals in order to minimize or eliminate animal cruelty.
Unfortunately a great number of horses are shipped out of the U.S. for slaughter. A bill currently pending in Congress would end this grizzly trade.


8.   What do you think is the biggest obstacle facing the animal protection movement today?
First and foremost I think there are simply just not enough animal protection lawyers. For example up and down the entire West Coast of the U.S., to my knowledge there are less than 10 full time animal protection lawyers, including myself and another HSUS litigator—and that number does not increase by much when you look at the entire country. There is certainly an ever-growing pool of fantastic pro bono attorneys, and law school students devoting time and resources to advocating for animals, but there just are not that many people spending all their working hours focused on helping animals within the legal system.


9.   Do you have any words of wisdom to share with Australia's budding animal lawyers?
If you’re in school and you’d like to pursue animal law as a career do whatever you need to do to get relevant work experience. That need not be animal law necessarily; it could also be environmental law, prosecution experience, or work with a government agency. One thing that surprised me as I left law school and began to work full time as animal lawyer, was just how much has yet to be tried. As I mentioned earlier, there really are very few animal lawyers now, but there are more now than ever before! So there are a lot of viable litigation projects that simply have not been pursued because the movement has not had the attorney resources to do so. So if you ever find yourself thinking “Oh if this case was viable someone would have brought it years ago” remind yourself that although the world is seemingly awash in lawyers, lawyers that advocate for animals are exceedingly rare.

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