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WITH SLAUGHTERHOUSES NOW IDENTIFIED AS COVID-19 HOTSPOTS, WHAT CAN BE DONE TO PREVENT A NEW CRISIS? 

PETA Lawyer is Suing Over Safety Concerns and Joining Call for Food Safety Oversight

Jeff Kerr

General Counsel to PETA

There is growing concern factory farms and slaughterhouses, where COVID-19 has run rampant, will pose a risk to the future health of Americans without the right safety measures. The call for transparency is essential not only to prevent a potential spike in new COVID-19 cases, but to hold facilities accountable for practices that are cruel to animals and are on health officials’ radar as having the potential to be the breeding grounds for the next pandemic.

On June 23, General Counsel to PETA Jeff Kerr is available to share their efforts toward transparency. He can discuss how ‘ag-gag’ whistleblower laws are detrimental to worker safety and animal well being and why PETA is pushing to keep factory farms and slaughterhouses accountable for cruelty violations.

DID YOU KNOW?

• ‘Ag-gag’ laws prevent whistleblowers from effectively reporting hazardous conditions for workers or cruelty to animals and ban the sharing of photos or videos taken at factory farms or slaughterhouses, locking out the public.
• Animal advocates, including PETA, have prevented ‘ag-gag’ bills from becoming law in 23 states.
• There are currently no government inspections of factory farms and feed lots for cruelty violations, and workers who report abuse and hazardous conditions are commonly ignored.

For more information please visit www.peta.org

MORE ABOUT JEFF KERR:

As general counsel to PETA and its international affiliates for nearly 25 years, Jeff Kerr built and leads the world’s largest legal team working for animal rights. His team was named Corporate Counsel magazine’s 2017 Best Legal Department, and his high-profile cases—including the 13th Amendment case Tilikum v. SeaWorld, the first three successful constitutional challenges to “ag-gag” laws, and the “Monkey Selfie” copyright case—have made headlines around the world and sparked a global conversation about the legal rights of animals. Kerr graduated from the University of Virginia School of Law and George Mason University, where he was a Weber scholar, and he lectures about animal law at law schools around the country.