International Law and the Agony of Animals in Industrial Meat Production

Abstract International law leaves states and meat-producing corporations full freedom to annually subject billions of animals to extreme suffering during intensive meat production. In the last two decades, the World Organisation for Animal Health (WOAH) has taken the lead in developing international standards for animal welfare. WOAH alone will not be able to restrict the liberty of international law, given the fact that demanding legal standards may hinder the push to provide nutrients to a growing world population and given global diversity in socio-economic situations, consumer preferences for meat products and cultural values. However, the push to regulate meat production has received new impulses from international institutions that seek to address adverse impacts of industrial animal farming on human interests – in particular, global health, climate change and biodiversity. As yet, this has done little to restrain the freedom under international law to subject farm animals to suffering, but it has expanded the grounds for future global agreements to regulate industrial farming as well as the range of principles and institutions that together constitute the framework within which decisions on industrial meat production that may benefit animal welfare have to be taken.