Wiki Doc Gonzaga RD 1 AFF v Georgetown

CM
1AC
1AC---CAFO’s
 1AC---Plan
Plan: The United States should vest in non-human animal species legal claim-rights on
Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations.
 1AC---Concentration ADV
Advantage 1 is Concentration:

Scenario 1 is Disease:

Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFO’s) devastate resilience and makes

animals easily susceptible to infectious disease.
Prescott 16, *Nathalie N. Prescott, Associate at Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP; graduate of
Georgetown University Law Center, 2016; (2016, “ARTICLE: AGROTERRORISM, RESILIENCE, AND INDOOR
FARMING”, 23 Animal L. 103, LexisNexis)
1. Changes to the Agricultural Sector

Beginning in the mid-1900s, agricultural productivity in the United States skyrocketed - between 1948 and
2011, crop and livestock productivity grew by 163% and 130%, respectively. 115 As part of this boost, farms scaled up and
consolidated . The agricultural work force halved and the number of individual farms dropped from a peak of around 6.8 million in 1935 to
around 2 million by the 1970s, where it [*118] has generally remained. 116 Farming operations now average 430 acres, about three times
larger than farms in 1935. 117 In 2007, 9% of U.S. farms accounted for 80% of total sales. 118

This surge in productivity and scale has been attributed mainly to industrialization stemming from electrification,
improved machinery, chemical inputs, plant and animal breeding, and governmental agricultural policies. 119 As a result, the American
agricultural sector has become considerably more concentrated and connected , and much less
biodiverse over the past sixty years or so. 120 These changes have contributed to declines in agricultural
resilience , defined as "the ability of a social or ecological system to absorb disturbances while retaining the same
basic structure and ways of functioning, ... and the capacity to adapt to stress and change ." 121

2. Livestock

Today, the traditionally small, family-owned animal farms have largely been replaced with enormous livestock
production facilities called Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) . 122 These feedlots contain
hundreds, thousands, or hundreds of thousands of animals that live in crowded warehouses and are bred
almost exclusively for rapid and extreme growth. 123 CAFOs developed because their economies of scale and closer, formal
links between livestock providers and processors increase productivity and lower costs for consumers. 124 In [*119] 2005, for instance, dairy
farms with 1,000 cows or more had average costs 15% below dairy farms with 500-900 cows, and 35% below those with 100-199 cows. 125

Because CAFOs are often overcrowded, dirty, and poorly ventilated, the animals raised in them are more
vulnerable to disease . 126 To remedy the issue, farmers enrich animal feed with a cocktail of hormones,
additives, and low-level doses of antibiotics to keep livestock from getting sick. 127 Consistent low-level antibiotic
use is viewed as economical: farmers do not have to make expensive improvements to CAFO conditions, and its use increases an animal's
weight gain per unit of feed. 128 However, it also allows animals with weaker immune systems to live, pass these
weak traits on to their offspring , which eventually increases the susceptibility of entire herds of animals
to a variety of diseases . 129
Another industrial practice, selective
breeding, also maximizes livestock productivity by concentrating on production features
rather than improving animal health. For instance, hens can now produce around 300 eggs per year, cows deliver more than
10,000 liters of milk in a single lactation period, and chickens reach slaughtering weight after just five weeks of intensive raising. 130
Enhanced performance is targeted towards increasing salable parts of the animal such as muscle size or milk
production, and minimizing energy consumption of other bodily functions, such as the immune system . 131

As a result, animals are highly reliant on specific environments, cannot easily fight infections, and are
increasingly genetically homogeneous . 132

Livestock farming sectors tend to concentrate in specific locations around the United States. Cattle are mostly
located in the middle of [*120] the country and California. 133 Hog production is clustered in North Carolina, Iowa, and several other
Midwestern states. 134 Chicken farming is located in the South and California, and dairy is produced around the edges of the country, but
especially in California and Wisconsin. 135

They’re a breeding ground for novel pandemics and amplify existing diseases---
countless vectors for transmission to humans exist.
Masiello 22, *Helena Masiello, J.D. 2022, University of Miami School of Law; B.A. 2019, Georgetown
University (June 7th, 2022, “CAFO’s are a Public Health Crisis: The Creation of COVID-19”, 76 U. MIA L.
Rev. 900 (), https://repository.law.miami.edu/umlr/vol76/iss3/8)
I. A MASSIVE PROBLEM: THE SCOPE OF THE HEALTH THREAT

The large populations and densities of animals on factory farms, known as CAFOs, facilitate greater
transmission of diseases in animals as well as recurrent infections.11 These large facilities provide a
unique breeding ground for new infectious diseases because they “provide an unnaturally high
concentration of animals with limited air space , and waste removal, which allows for the rapid selection
of, amplification , and with the rapid transportation of animals from one site to another, and results in never
before spread of zoonotic pathogens on such a large scale .”12 When animals are confined in circumstances that are
different from their natural behavior, viruses can mutate and become novel strains that can survive in other hosts, like
humans .13

There are thousands of CAFOs in the United States, and each farm has the potential to breed zoonotic
diseases.14 CAFOs in the United States are statutorily defined as a Large Concentrated Ani- mal Feeding Operation (CAFO), a facility that
meets at least one of these categories: 700 dairy cows, 1,000 veal calves, 2,500 swine, 500 horses, 10,000 sheep or lambs, 30,000 laying hens or
broilers, 125,000 chickens, or 30,000 ducks.15 Medium CAFOs are defined as factory farms with about half those numbers of animals, and Small
CAFOs are factory farms that have fewer number of animals than those designated as medium.16 These numbers put into perspective the
scope of the zoonotic disease threat.

A. Unsanitary Conditions of CAFOS

CAFOs are unsanitary and create a breeding ground for disease.17 CAFOs are industrial facilities that by definition, raise huge
numbers of farm animals in intensive confinement.18 In CAFOs, animals are confined to cages, crates, or crowded pens and common
conditions include: overcrowding , rough or abusive handling by workers, indoor confinement with poor
air and light, inability to engage in natural behaviors , illness and injuries left untreated , and an
overreliance on antibiotics.19 It is common to rely on antibiotics to compensate for stressful and unsanitary conditions, and this
practice has a direct and harmful impact not only on animal health, but also on human health.20
There are approximately 25,000 CAFOs in the United States,21 and in 2019, the USDA collected data and found that 99% of US
farmed animals live in CAFOs.22 The scope of the risk of infectious disease outbreaks from CAFOs is massive ,
America’s factory farms currently contain 1.6 billion animals.23 Notably, government agencies have not published an up
to date count on exactly how many CAFOs exist nationwide.24 Since 2012, CAFOs have increased by fourteen percent, adding 190 million
animals to factory farms.25 In contrast, smaller-run farming operations have decreased by fifteen percent throughout that same period.26

A high output of industrial production within CAFOs has created a continually renewing supply of diseases
at regional levels and within farms.27 Housing lots of animals together actually rewards strains of diseases
that can burn through the animals fastest .28 Since humans are animals as well, we are creating conditions for
pathogens that will burn through us the fastest.29 Unlike smaller farms, CAFOs usually slaughter chickens at only six
weeks of age.30 As a result, pathogens created in CAFOs are more able to survive in robust young immune systems, because they spread in
younger and healthier chickens.31

The more animals that are held together in close quarters, the
higher the chance that infectious diseases will spread
through them and spread to the human workers who handle them; on average, about twenty-five million farm animals are
slaughtered every day in the United States.32 Every day, thousands of farm animals are packed together spreading diseases, but the
diseases don’t die with their slaughtering , because there is a constant supply of new hosts as animals
are continually funneled through factory farms. In CAFOs, with every daily mass slaughter of animals, new
diseases are spreading and jumping from one animal to another, like the H1N1 outbreak, and we are creating
a world more deadly to humans . Zoonotic diseases are more likely to spread through livestock than wild animals because of the
high concentration of animals in a closed space, and human workers interact with them.33

CAFOs provide a massive infectious threat, and COVID-19 has demonstrated that such a threat should not be underestimated or ignored.

B. How CAFOs Can Spread Infectious Diseases

Currently, livestock species take up more biomass than all the other wild animals combined, creating a
much larger potential for dangerous animal viruses to spread to humans .34 There are about 1.7 million
undiscovered viruses in animals.35 Research suggests that: (1) novel infectious diseases created in CAFOs can spread to the
workers; (2) in a process called amplification, CAFOs can make existing infectious diseases worse ; and (3) viruses
can spread from CAFOs to workers or surrounding communities through contaminated meat, air, water, and odors .36

First, research shows that CAFOs can create breeding grounds where viruses can spillover from animals to
humans; one recent model based on data from hog farms shows that “workers at these facilities, being in close
proximity to animals and thus at increased risk of contracting a virus, can be a “ bridging population for transmission of
diseases from pigs to humans.”37 The study suggests, that if CAFO workers made up fifteen to forty-five percent of a given
community, which is common in some rural areas–human influenza cases in that community could increase by forty-two to eighty-six
percent.38 Specifically, multiple studies have confirmed that the exposure of factory farm workers to pigs increases the risk of swine influenza
infection in humans.39

Second, the spread between factory farm animals and humans does not just start as an origin of zoonotic viruses. Factory farms can
amplify existing viruses and make epidemics worse through a process called amplification .40 Specifically,
“[a]mplification occurs if the size of the epidemic in humans is increased due to transmission of the influenza virus into the CAFO species
which leads to an epidemic in the CAFO species , and subsequent transmission back to the local human
population.”41 This means that CAFO workers can become sick with infectious diseases that originate outside their jobs, and then
when they interact directly or indirectly with animals in the CAFOs, they can spread the disease through the animal species ,
which gives it a chance to mutate and become worse and then re-infect the workers with a more
dangerous strain of the dis- ease.42

Third, zoonotic
diseases can spread from animals to workers or neighboring populations through
diseased meat, air, untreated waste, and direct contact with bodily fluids.43 The Center for Dis- ease Control
(“CDC”) states that zoonotic spread between animals and people when factory workers touch animals on CAFOs because contact with saliva,
blood, urine, mucous, feces, or other body fluids of an infected animal can infect humans.44 CAFO
workers are also particularly
susceptible to zoonotic diseases because they can spread through indirect contact ––contact with areas where
animals live and roam, or objects or surfaces that have been contaminated with germs.45 Factory workers and neighboring human
populations are susceptible to infectious diseases that breed in CAFOs that can spread by vector borne emissions (contact
with a tick, mosquitos, or flea), foodborne emissions (eating contaminated undercooked meat), and waterborne emissions
(drinking or coming into contact with water that has been contaminated with the feces of infected animals).46

Additionally, CAFOs produce dust which can contain disease particles that make neighboring human communities sick.47
Dust from CAFOs have been found to contain biologically active organ- isms such as bacteria, and this dust has proven to pose a
health hazard .48 In 2015, a study of swine CAFOs found that twenty percent of the workers suffered from Organic Dust Toxic Syndrome
(“ODTS”).49 ODTS is an acute influenza-like illness that occurs after four to six hours of intense exposure to agricultural dust. The airborne
emissions from CAFOs act as vectors for airborne viruses and as one scientist put it, “ with
so many swine and poultry CAFOs in
proximity, the acceleration of the mixing and assortment of influenza viruses is unfathomable .”50

With multiple points of transmission, CAFOs pose an infectious disease threat to human communities.

Infectious disease causes extinction---the risk is categorically underestimated.

Pamlin & Armstrong 15. *Dennis Pamlin, Executive Project Manager Global Risks, Global Challenges
Foundation; *Stuart Armstrong, James Martin Research Fellow, Future of Humanity Institute, Oxford
Martin School, University of Oxford; (February 2015, “Global Challenges: 12 Risks that threaten human
civilization: The case for a new risk category,”
https://api.globalchallenges.org/static/wp-content/uploads/12-Risks-with-infinite-impact.pdf)
3.1.4.1 Expected impact

Infectious diseases have been one of the greatest causes of mortality in history. Unlike many other global
challenges pandemics have happened recently, as we can see where reasonably good data exist. Plotting historic epidemic fatalities on a log
scale reveals that these tend to follow a power law with a small exponent: many plagues have been found to follow a power law with exponent
0.26.261

These kinds of power laws are heavy-tailed 262 to a significant degree.263 In

consequence most of the fatalities are
accounted for by the top few events.264 If this law holds for future pandemics as well,265 then the majority
of people who will die from epidemics will likely die from the single largest pandemic .
Most epidemic fatalities follow a power law, with some extreme events – such as the Black Death and Spanish Flu – being even more
deadly.267

There are other grounds for suspecting that such a high impact epidemic will have a greater probability than usually
assumed . All the features of an extremely devastating disease already exist in nature: essentially incurable
(Ebola268), nearly always fatal (rabies269), extremely infectious (common cold270), and long incubation periods
(HIV271). If a pathogen were to emerge that somehow combined these features (and influenza has
demonstrated antigenic shift , the ability to combine features from different viruses272), its death toll would be
extreme .
Many relevant features of the world have changed considerably, making past comparisons problematic. The modern world has better
sanitation and medical research, as well as national and supra-national institutions dedicated to combating diseases. Private insurers are also
interested in modelling pandemic risks.273 Set against this is the fact that modern transport and dense human population
allow infections to spread much more rapidly 274, and there is the potential for urban slums to serve as breeding grounds for
disease.275

Unlike events such as nuclear wars, pandemics would not damage the world’s infrastructure, and initial survivors would likely be resistant to
the infection. And there would probably be survivors, if only in isolated locations. Hence the risk of a civilisation collapse would
come from the ripple effect of the fatalities and the policy responses . These would include political and agricultural
disruption as well as economic dislocation and damage to the world’s trade network (including the food trade).

Extinction risk is only possible if the aftermath of the epidemic fragments and diminishes human society
to the extent that recovery becomes impossible 277 before humanity succumbs to other risks (such as climate change or
further pandemics).

3.1.4.2 Probability disaggregation

Five important factors in estimating the probabilities and impacts of the challenge: 1. What the true probability distribution for pandemics is,
especially at the tail. 2. The capacity of modern international health systems to deal with an extreme pandemic. 3. How fast medical research
can proceed in an emergency. 4. How mobility of goods and people, as well as population density, will affect pandemic transmission. 5.
Whether humans can develop novel and effective anti-pandemic solutions.

Scenario 2 is Agroterrorism:

Concentration is a critical enabler for agroterrorism---the U.S. is not prepared and

underestimates the risk.
Kragness 15, received her LL.M. in Criminal Law and Advocacy from Western Michigan University
Thomas M. Cooley Law School in 2015 and her J.D. from Western Michigan University Thomas M. Cooley
Law School in 2011. She received her Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from Hope College in 2010. Ms.
Kragness currently serves as an Associate Attorney with the Grand Rapids Law Group (Jessica, “FALSE
PROMISES OF FOOD SAFETY: WHY HOMELAND SECURITY SHOULD CARE ABOUT YOUR DINNER, 32 W.
Mich. U. T.M. Cooley L. Rev. 265, Lexis)
When Americans think of terrorism, they undoubtedly conjure images of the Twin Towers in flames 1 or the Pentagon with a hole blasted into
its side. 2 Now, a man concealing a bomb in his underwear is not just a hypothetical security exercise--on Christmas Day in 2009, Umar Farouk
Abdulmutallab made this scenario a reality. 3 These sensational stories captivate the country's attention so [*266] that
the steak sitting on the plate in front of most Americans 4 may not even register as a potential security
threat . In fact, the "fields and pastures of America's farmland might seem at first to have nothing in common
with the towers of the World Trade Center or busy seaports" but unfortunately, that is not the case . 5 The American
farmland and the nerve center of New York City are "merely different manifestations of the same high-
priority target, the American economy." 6

There is an interesting mental block between the farm itself and what lands on the dinner table , much of
which is attributable to the federal government's current monopoly on the food system in America. 7 As the focus has shifted away from the
state and local government's role in the food system, 8 everyday Americans
are relatively content to pick up their
cellophane-wrapped rump roast and trust that the United States Department of Agriculture's (USDA) sticker on the packaging
provides everything they need to know about that piece of meat : whether the animal that it came from was healthy; 9
whether it was slaughtered in a sanitary facility; 10 and most importantly, whether someone with the right credentials was overseeing the
whole process. 11 Americans have lulled themselves into a shocking sense of false security by presuming
that meat is safe [*267] to eat, 12 despite the fact that they have no idea where this food actually came from. 13

Indeed, most Americans seem unaware of the Secretary of Agriculture's opinion that " the
absence of a terrorist attack on the
agricultural sector has been more by luck than by design ." 14 Looking only at the numbers and setting aside the other
consequences for now, a "successful attack on American livestock might cause between ten and thirty billion dollars in damage to the national
economy . . .." 15 The large variance in possible cost reflects the very nature of the food industry itself--it
encompasses not only direct losses but also potentially infinite indirect losses:

Direct economic losses due to the cost of destroying disease-ridden . . . livestock, and the cost of disease
containment; and indirect costs and multiplier effects resulting from disorder in agricultural sectors relying
on agriculture (transportation and retail) and from the loss of export markets (trading partners embargoing particular U.S.
agricultural products). 16

America has a remarkably meat-centric diet, fed by an industry that encompasses the entire life cycle of ten-billion animals. 17 To
keep an
industry of that size moving (and keep the production profitable), factory farming has become the norm in American
food production, using "industrial-scale facilities where tens of thousands of animals are crowded
together in tight conditions . . .." 18 Unfortunately, even when putting aside the controversial issue of [*268] whether such facilities
are humane, 19 the conditions on these factory farms raise two important issues 20 for the security of our

food system: unsanitary conditions 21 and extreme confinement of the animals. 22

Any facility that houses thousands of animals produces a tremendous amount of waste. A farm with 2,500 dairy
cows produces as much waste as a city of 411,000 people 23 but with a very important difference: livestock waste is not treated at
a sewage treatment plant and is allowed to wash into lagoons surrounding facilities. 24 Anything dropped on
facility floors will eventually be washed into lagoons, which can number in the hundreds and be as much as thirty feet deep. 25 While this
runoff process may sound harmless, "a testing of the waste from factory-farmed pigs revealed various toxic
substances, including ammonia, methane, hydrogen sulfide, carbon monoxide, cyanide, phosphorous, nitrates, and heavy metals, in
addition to . . . over [100] types of illness-causing pathogens ." 26 The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
(CDC) has designated many of the chemicals already found in factory farm lagoons as toxic enough to be
possible agents for a terrorist attack . 27 The question arises: how might an enemy use or add to these already-toxic substances
to convert them to a biological weapon? Research reveals no government strategy or initiatives to address
these toxic lagoons ; some factory farms even use the contents of these lagoons to fertilize their crops ,
which are then fed back to the animals . 28

Agroterrorism is likely.

FIRST---means:
Technical barriers are non-existent.
Prescott 16, *Nathalie N. Prescott, Associate at Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP; graduate of
Georgetown University Law Center, 2016; (2016, “ARTICLE: AGROTERRORISM, RESILIENCE, AND INDOOR
FARMING”, 23 Animal L. 103, LexisNexis)

*FMD = foot and mouth disease

a. Capability

Biological agroterrorism has been called low-tech and high-impact , and could be a cheap , simple way
to cause widespread damage. 153 For instance, any harmful biological agents can be found in the
environment , rather than having to be created in a lab . 154 The highly infectious [*123] FMD virus is prevalent in South
America and could be smuggled into the United States in "manure stuck to the bottom of a shoe, for example." 155 Detecting
smuggled agents like this is unlikely because airports and borders do not check individuals or luggage for disease samples, livestock are
not usually vaccinated against many of the worst pathogens, and agents can be highly resilient over long time
periods. 156 Furthermore, many
pathogens that are lethal or contagious in plants or animals are not harmful to
humans, allowing for easy transport, handling, and dissemination. 157

Even more complex agroterrorist attacks are also likely quite achievable today. Open-source scientific
literature is widely accessible via the web, and the physical resources necessary for manufacturing large
quantities of some agents can be found in a regular science lab or are readily available to the scientific
community for more sophisticated manufacturing. 158 Many of these agents can be produced in just a few days or even hours. 159
Additionally, the expertise, equipment, and materials required for a comprehensive attack are not particularly suspicious

or difficult to procure since they are legitimately used by agricultural, pharmaceutical, and medical
industries. 160 For example, a microbiologist researching at Kyoto University led an attempt to disperse anthrax and botulinum in Tokyo in
the 1990s. 161 Although the attack was ultimately unsuccessful, the group was able to produce the toxins by freely purchasing necessary
equipment, "including a coil-method heat exchanger, pump motor, vinyl chloride pipes, air filtration media, molecular modeling software, and
lasers." 162 Botulinum toxin is legitimately used to treat conditions like migraine headaches, chronic lower back
[*124] pain, strokes, and cerebral palsy, making its production less suspicious . 163

Finally, large quantities of an agent may not be necessary for an attack if the only goal is to cause massive panic or fear - just a few cases
of a highly contagious disease like FMD could interrupt months of animal production and exports . 164 For these smaller
attacks, labs are unnecessary since material scraped from another already diseased animal could be sufficient. 165 For example, a relatively
unsophisticated terrorist could easily bring FMD material into the United States, break into an un-surveilled hog
CAFO, and infect multiple animals. 166 Pigs have an especially long incubation period, or time between infection and
onset of symptoms. 167 They typically begin shedding the virus seven-to-ten days before symptoms are visible, and so combined with a CAFO's
low ratio of workers to animal, spread of the disease could be extremely rapid and take a long time to detect .
168 A USDA model of disease transmission estimates viruses like FMD could spread to twenty-five states in just
five days. 169
Extreme confinement and poor living conditions makes disease spread infinitely more
likely.
Olson 12, *Dean Olson, Law Enforcement, Retired commander, Criminal Investigation Bureau of the
Douglas County Sheriff's Department; Bachelor of Science in Criminal Justice. University of Nebraska-
Omaha, Master in Public Administration. University of Nebraska-Omaha, Master of Arts Degree in
Security Studies. Naval Postgraduate School, Graduate of the 193rd Session of the FBI National
Academy; (February 1st, 2012, “Agroterrorism: Threats to America’s Economy and Food Supply”,
https://leb.fbi.gov/articles/featured-articles/agroterrorism-threats-to-americas-economy-and-food-
supply)
Foot and Mouth Disease

Attacks directed against the cattle, swine, or poultry industries or via the food chain pose the most serious danger for latent, ongoing effects
and general socioeconomic and political disruption. Experts agree that FMD presents the most ominous threat.14 Eradicated in
the United States in 1929, FMD remains endemic in South America, Africa, and Asia.15 An especially contagious virus 20 times
more infectious than smallpox, FMD causes painful blisters on the tongues, hooves, and teats of cloven-hoofed animals, including
cattle, hogs, sheep, goats, and deer, rendering them unable to walk, give milk, eat, or drink. Although people generally cannot contract the
disease, they can carry the virus in their lungs for up to 48 hours and transmit it to animals. The animal-to-animal
airborne transmission range is 50 miles.16 An infected animal can shred the virus in large quantities from its upper respiratory tract via
drooling, coughing, and discharging mucus. Extremely
stable, FMD can survive in straw or clothing for one month and
spread up to 100 kilometers via the wind. Because herds exist as highly crowded populations bred and
reared in extremely close proximity to one another, a significant risk exists that such pathogenic agents
as FMD will spread well beyond the locus of a specific outbreak before health officials become aware
of a problem. An FMD outbreak could spread to as many as 25 states in as little as 5 days simply through the regulated movement of
animals from farm to market.17

From a tactical perspective, an FMD attack holds appeal for several reasons. First, unlike biological warfare directed against humans, no issue of
weaponization exists. In an FMD attack, the animals themselves serve as the primary medium for pathogenic transmission, and countries as
close as those in South America offer a ready source of the virus. As one analyst described it, the virus “can be spread by simply wiping the
mucus from an infected animal on a handkerchief and then transferring the virus to healthy animals by wiping their noses…by stopping on a
highway in rural America and releasing the virus among curious livestock an outbreak could be initiated.”18

Second, FMD is nonzoonotic, presenting no risk of accidental human infection. There exists no need for elaborate personal protective
equipment or an advanced understanding of animal disease science. In a biowarfare attack targeting people, the deadly pathogen poses a
threat to the perpetrators, as well as their intended victims. Preparing the pathogen so that terrorists can handle it safely yet disseminate it
effectively to intended victims can prove difficult. For instance, the Aum Shinrikyo sarin gas attacks on the Tokyo subway in 1994 largely failed
to kill the number of people intended due to the crude method of dissemination.

Third, terrorists could introduce and subsequently disperse the virus throughout the American food
production system through multiple carriers , including animals carrying and introducing it into
susceptible herds; animals exposed to contraband materials, such as contaminated food, hay, feedstuffs, hides, or
biologics; people wearing clothing or using equipment, including tractors and trucks, to transmit the virus to uninfected
animals; and
contaminated facilities , such as feed yards, sale barns, and trucks that commonly hold or transport
susceptible animals.19

SECOND---motivation:
Agriculture is the most appealing terrorist target.
Kiesel 20, PhD in Biodefense (Steve, “Reaping What You Sow: The Case for Better Agroterrorism
Preparedness,” The Pandora Report, https://pandorareport.org/2020/02/20/reaping-what-you-sow-the-
case-for-better-agroterrorism-preparedness/)
In addition to these attacks on agriculture, other groups have threatened to conduct such an attack and/or researched agroterrorism methods.
An attack on the food supply gives the perpetrating group several benefits . First, the psychological and
economic effect of targeting food supplies would be substantial . Such an effect could have a powerful pull with
a group such as al Qaeda, who has shown interest in biological weapons and in targeting US economic strength.
Second, and related, this type of attack would be relatively low cost when compared to the economic effects it could cause.

Third, similar to other forms of terrorism, agroterrorism

can allow a weaker group to lessen the power imbalance
between themselves and the state they are targeting. Fourth, some groups may turn to agroterrorist tactics because
these attacks “do not harm humans directly and may therefore be more easily justified .” And finally, the nature of
agroterrorism makes attribution difficult —this is particularly appealing to groups that want to evade
detection . The effects of an attack on crops would not be immediately apparent but would vary based on a number of factors, such as the
time lapse between exposure to the agent and the onset of symptoms. Economic impacts would also not be instantaneous, but a longer-term
negative effect of such an attack. Conversely, though, this characteristic may make agroterrorism unsuitable for other groups because they
place a high value on more immediate, kinetic effects such as those achieved by explosives.

There are numerous candidates an attack.

Prescott 16, *Nathalie N. Prescott, Associate at Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP; graduate of
Georgetown University Law Center, 2016; (2016, “ARTICLE: AGROTERRORISM, RESILIENCE, AND INDOOR
FARMING”, 23 Animal L. 103, LexisNexis)
2. Categories of Possible Agroterrorists Today

A 2005 Department of Justice report outlines several categories of possible agroterrorists . 101 These categories
include international terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda ; economic opportunists who may want to use a
deadly virus outbreak to manipulate markets for personal gain; domestic terrorists such as an
unbalanced person, disgruntled employee, apocalyptic sect, or person wanting to harm the government ; and
militant animal rights activists who may believe an attack is warranted to end the use of animals for food. 102
Though not a result of a terrorist attack, a 1970 outbreak of leaf blight on corn shows how lucrative a single outbreak of disease can be for just a
few individuals. 103 As the blight spread, the media took notice, and the weekend headline "Corn Market in Turmoil" shattered trading records
the following Monday. 104 Three days later, future prices of corn jumped thirty cents per bushel - an enormous amount considering the
millions of bushels traded. 105 One corn trader made a $ 500,000 profit in a single month, amounting to over $ 3 million today. 106

Fears of an attack on the U.S. agricultural sector are not unfounded . In 2002, a Navy SEAL team found
hundreds of concerning documents during a raid of a known al-Qaeda storehouse in caves in eastern
Afghanistan. 107 The storehouse contained a collection of American science journals; USDA papers; lists of
livestock pathogens like FMD, hog cholera, and rinderpest; and lists of crop diseases like soybean rust and rice blight. 108 The
team also found training documents for using the pathogens on U.S. farms . 109 Though the attacks never came
to pass, the episode demonstrates the possibility of future agroterrorist threats to the U.S. agricultural
system.
Even a single incident causes immediate national shortages and halts international
exports for years.
Olson 12, *Dean Olson, Law Enforcement, Retired commander, Criminal Investigation Bureau of the
Douglas County Sheriff's Department; Bachelor of Science in Criminal Justice. University of Nebraska-
Omaha, Master in Public Administration. University of Nebraska-Omaha, Master of Arts Degree in
Security Studies. Naval Postgraduate School, Graduate of the 193rd Session of the FBI National
Academy; (February 1st, 2012, “Agroterrorism: Threats to America’s Economy and Food Supply”,
https://leb.fbi.gov/articles/featured-articles/agroterrorism-threats-to-americas-economy-and-food-
supply)

The introduction of FMD would require the mass slaughter and disposal of infected animals. An outbreak
could halt the domestic and international sale of meat and meat products for years . In this regard, in 2001,
FMD in the United Kingdom affected 9,000 farms and required the destruction of more than 4,000,000 animals. Researchers believe that a
similar outbreak in the United States would cost taxpayers up to $60 billion.22 An
FMD attack could result in massive herd
culling, the need to destroy processed goods, and extensive decontamination efforts of production and livestock-
containment facilities. Most Americans have not witnessed the intense media coverage of high-volume culling operations involving the
destruction and disposal of tens of thousands of animals. Large-scale eradication and disposal of livestock likely would be especially
controversial as it affects farmers and ranchers and offends the sensibilities of animal rights activists and environmental organizations.

Food Production and Distribution

If terrorists strive for human deaths, the food

production and distribution chain offers a low-tech but effective
mechanism for disseminating toxins and bacteria , such as botulism, E. coli, and salmonella. Developments in the farm-to-
table continuum greatly have increased the number of entry points for these agents. Many food processing and packing plants employ large,
unscreened seasonal workforces. They commonly operate uneven standards of internal quality and inadequate biosurveillance control to
detect adulteration.23 These vulnerabilities, combined with the
lack of security at many processing and packing plants, contribute
to the ease of perpetrating a food-borne attack .

Beyond the economic and political impact, low-tech

bioterrorist assaults against the food chain have the potential
to create social panic as people lose confidence in the safety of the food supply . A large-scale attack
potentially could undermine the public’s confidence in its government. Because most processed food travels to
distribution centers within a matter of hours, a single case of chemical or biological adulteration could have significant latent
ongoing effects , particularly if the source of the contamination is not immediately apparent and there are acute
ailments or deaths.24 Supermarkets in major American cities stock only a 7-day supply of food; therefore, any significant and
continuing disruption in supply quickly will lead to severe shortages .

It collapses food security globally.

Preskitt 18, *Danielle Preskitt studies Agroterrorism at Kansas State University, Security Studies
Department; (August 20th, 2018, “Agroterrorism: The United States Must Be Proactive, not Reactive”,
https://www.geopoliticalmonitor.com/agroterrorism-the-united-states-must-be-proactive-not-
reactive/)
The United States’ response to the devastating attacks of September 11th demonstrated a simple message: America will not be destroyed by
brute force. The United States’ vast resources and responsive resiliency make it difficult for terrorist organizations to attack the country with
conventional means. However, an attack on US agriculture could elicit fear, anxiety, loss of faith in government, and psychological
trauma amongst the general public, all of which could threaten the country in profound ways .

The US government is not prepared for such an attack, despite the obvious vulnerabilities lurking within our
grocery stores, local farms, and favorite snacks.

Agroterrorism is defined as the introduction of an animal or plant disease with the intent of jeopardizing food safety. It may be
attractive to terrorists because it not only causes death, but also substantially affects the economy and
interferes in citizens’ relationships with their local, state, and federal governments. Distribution centers, crop fields, and
meat packaging plants are increasingly vulnerable targets due to lax security and few mandatory clearances. The US government is not
distributing its resources properly to prioritize this threat – we must be proactive , not reactive.

Currently, the United States enjoys a safe, plentiful, and relatively inexpensive food supply. Americans only
spend approximately 6.4 percent of their income on food, compared to almost 40 percent in various other countries, such as Guatemala and

Nigeria. The United States’ food supply services not only its domestic population but the entire world .
In 2017, the US exported $139.8 billion worth of agriculture.

This global market system is vibrant but highly threatened by disease. According to the World Health Organization, 75
percent of the world’s new and emerging diseases are zoonotic, meaning they can be transferred from animals to humans, and the number is
only increasing.

Agriculture is much more than the local corn maze explored in the fall or beautiful strawberry patch visited in spring; it is the backbone of the
US economy. One in six jobs are linked to agriculture, and it is a trillion-dollar industry in the United States. An attack would not only devastate
a critical economic engine but destroy the US economy as a whole. More importantly, food security is closely tied to faith in the government. A
disease outbreak or food shortage would quickly be blamed on the government, disrupting the public’s faith and eroding general law and order.
Additionally, an attack on the United States would increase food prices worldwide as other countries were
forced to seek new sources of agriculture, spreading the crisis globally , even to those who do not
import food from the United States.

Food insecurity causes nuclear war.

Cribb 19, *Julian Cribb, Principal of Julian Cribb & Associates, Fellow of the Australian Academy of
Technological Sciences and Engineering, former Director of National Awareness at the Commonwealth
Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation; (August 23rd, 2019, “FOOD AS AN EXISTENTIAL RISK”,
https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/food-or-war/food-as-an-existential-risk/
8C45279588CD572FE805B7E240DE7368)

Although actual numbers of warheads have continued to fall from its peak of 70,000 weapons in the mid 1980s, scientists argue the danger
of nuclear conflict in fact increased in the first two decades of the twentyfirst century. This was due to the modernisation
of existing stockpiles, the adoption of dangerous new technologies such as robot delivery systems, hypersonic missiles,
artificial intelligence and electronic warfare, and the continuing leakage of nuclear materials and knowhow to non- nuclear nations
and potential terrorist organisations.

In early 2018 the hands of the

‘Doomsday Clock’, maintained by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, were re-set at two minutes to
midnight, the highest risk to humanity that it has ever shown since the clock was introduced in 1953. This was due not only
to the state of the world’s nuclear arsenal, but also to irresponsible language by world leaders, the growing use of social media to destabilise
rival regimes, and to the rising threat of uncontrolled climate change (see below).12
In an historic moment on 17 July 2017, 122 nations voted in the UN for the first time ever in favour of a treaty banning all nuclear weapons. This
called for comprehensive prohibition of “a full range of nuclear-weapon-related activities, such as under- taking to develop, test, produce,
manufacture, acquire, possess or stockpile nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices, as well as the use or threat of use of these
weapons.”13 However, 71 other countries – including all the nuclear states – either opposed the ban, abstained or declined to vote. The Treaty
vote was nonetheless interpreted by some as a promising first step towards abolishing the nuclear nightmare that hangs over the entire human
species.

In contrast, 192 countries had signed up to the Chemical Weapons Convention to ban the use of chemical weapons, and 180 to the Biological
Weapons Convention. As of 2018, 96 per cent of previous world stocks of chemical weapons had been destroyed – but their continued use in
the Syrian conflict and in alleged assassination attempts by Russia indicated the world remains at risk.14

As things stand, the

only entities that can afford to own nuclear weapons are nations – and if humanity is to be
wiped out, it will most likely be as a result of an atomic conflict between nations . It follows from this that, if the
world is to be made safe from such a fate it will need to get rid of nations as a structure of human self-organisation and replace them with
wiser, less aggressive forms of self-governance. After all, the nation state really only began in the early nineteenth century and is by no means a
permanent feature of self-governance, any more than monarchies, feudal systems or priest states. Although many people still tend to assume it
is. Between them, nations have butchered more than 200 million people in the past 150 years and it is increasingly clear the world would be a
far safer, more peaceable place without either nations or national- ism. The question is what to replace them with.

Although there may at first glance appear to be no close linkage between weapons of mass destruction and food, in
the twentyfirst
century with world resources of food , land and water under growing stress , nothing can be ruled out. Indeed,
chemical weapons have frequently been deployed in the Syrian civil war, which had drought, agricultural
failure and hunger among its early drivers . And nuclear conflict remains a distinct possibility in South
Asia and the Middle East , especially, as these regions are already stressed in terms of food , land and water,
and their nuclear firepower or access to nuclear materials is multiplying .

It remains an open question whether panicking

regimes in Russia, the USA or even France would be ruthless enough to
deploy atomic weapons in an attempt to quell invasion by tens of millions of desperate refugees, fleeing
famine and climate chaos in their own homelands – but the possibility ought not to be ignored.
That nuclear war is at least a possible outcome of food and climate crises was first flagged in the report The Age of Consequences by Kurt
Campbell and the US-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies, which stated ‘it is clear that even nuclear war cannot be excluded as
a political consequence of global warming’.15 Food insecurity is therefore a driver in the preconditions for the use
of nuclear weapons , whether limited or unlimited.

The plan combats the intensive nature of factory farming and eliminates the threat of
disease spread among animals.
Stathopoulos 10, *Anastasia S. Stathopoulos, J.D. Candidate, 2010, New York University School of
Law; B.A., Cornell University, 2005; (2010, “You Are What Your Food Eats: How Regulation Of Factory
Farm Conditions Could Improve Human Health And Animal Welfare Alike”, 13 N.Y.U. J. Legis. & Pub.
Pol'y 407, https://www.animallaw.info/article/you-are-what-your-food-eats-how-regulation-factory-
farm-conditions-could-improve-human)
B. Proposed Regulations

 To lower the human health risks associated with factory farming, I propose that the following
regulations be enacted at the farm level : (1) setting a standard for clean living conditions on farms and proper disposal of animal
waste; (2) eliminating extreme confinement systems, such as battery cages, and overcrowding; (3) requiring that all animal feed be vegetarian
and free of arsenic; (4) prohibiting the prophylactic administration of antibiotics to animals, unless they are prescribed by a veterinarian to treat
an actual illness; (5) prohibiting the administration of growth hormones to cattle; and (6) requiring that cattle be grass-fed. The vast majority of
these proposed regulations could be effectuated under the current regulatory scheme, while the sixth regulation would require an amendment
that would expand the scope of agency authority on the farm.

 First, the
FDA should promulgate regulations that require animals farmed for food production to be raised in a
clean environment that includes the proper disposal and treatment of animal waste. In particular, the
regulation should mandate that any indoor premises where animals are kept be well-ventilated to remove
airborne diseases and regularly cleaned with a disinfectant to remove surface contamination. It should also
require the regular removal of animal waste from the area to prevent fecal-oral transmission of infections, and proper
treatment of that waste--as it is in human sewage treatment facilities-- instead of the use of lagoons. This type of regulation
would help prevent the spread of E. coli and other bacterial contamination, as well as infectious diseases such as
animal-origin influenza . *440 [FN231] The FDA arguably already has the authority to enact this regulation under the PHSA since it
relates to preventing the introduction of communicable diseases that could spread amongst humans. [FN232]

 Second, severe overcrowding and extreme confinement systems should be prohibited on farms. In particular,
the FDA should define a maximum number of animals allowed per unit of area in group housing, depending on the type of
animal, so that the animals are given enough freedom of movement to turn around and extend their limbs without
touching another animal. Additionally, the FDA should proscribe the use of battery cages, gestation crates, veal crates, and any
other caging system that allows the animals to be kept in extremely close proximity to one another and to their

waste. By limiting the animals' contact with other animals, waste, and human handlers, this regulation would greatly reduce the
spread of communicable diseases, such as animal-origin influenza, amongst the animals and to humans . [FN233]

Although the industry has vehemently opposed ballot initiatives proposing similar regulations, claiming
higher costs of production and
lower profits would drive them out of business , [FN234] these claims have not been borne out by economic

studies. For instance, a switch from battery-caged to cage-free hens is estimated to cost less than a penny more
per egg and might be partly offset by increased hen productivity. [FN235] Likewise, a switch from gestation
crates to group housing for sows leads to only a marginal increase in costs that is offset by increased
sow productivity from lower rates of injury, disease, stillborns, and death. [FN236] Similar to the first proposed regulation, the link to
prevention of communicable diseases may give the FDA authority to enact such a rule pursuant to the PHSA.

 *441 Third, the FDA or USDA should require that all animal feed be vegetarian and free of arsenic . This
proposed regulation aims to address three separate health concerns: mad cow disease , E. coli , and cancer . First, by
proscribing the feeding of cattle blood, rendered cattle meat, plate waste, and poultry litter to farmed animals, this regulation would
eliminate the present loopholes that could potentially result in BSE-infected food products entering the
market. [FN237] In its existing regulations designed to prevent mad cow disease, the FDA derived its statutory authority from the provision
of the FDCA allowing them to regulate “any food additive that is unsafe.” [FN238] Surely the FDA's authority must extend to the animal-derived
additives at issue here. The
FDA could therefore take its current regulations a step further by banning all animal-
derived additives from feed or, at least, by removing all cattle tissue from the animal feed system. Preventing
BSE-contaminated beef from entering the food supply should be of utmost concern to federal regulators since consumers have no way of
protecting themselves short of ceasing beef consumption altogether. [FN239] Despite industry claims that eliminating these cheap practices will
decrease their profitability, in one survey, seventy-seven percent of beef consumers indicated that they would pay more for beef that was
guaranteed free of mad cow disease. [FN240]

 Next, vegetarian feed would also lower the levels of E. coli present in the feces of cattle, thereby reducing
the risk of contamination in the slaughterhouse. [FN241] In this case, the FDA would again have authority under the FDCA
food additive provision and, since the goal is to prevent a communicable disease, possibly also under the PHSA. [FN242] Finally, this regulation
would also proscribe the use of carcinogenic arsenic in animal feed, using the FDA's authority under the FDCA to regulate unsafe food additives
and things “otherwise unfit for food.” [FN243]

 *442 Fourth, the prophylactic, non-therapeutic administration of antibiotics to animals should be

prohibited , unless prescribed by a veterinarian to treat an actual illness. [FN244] This regulation would help
prevent the growing problem of antibiotic resistance in humans, [FN245] which currently costs the United States $30
billion and 90,000 lives per year. [FN246] It would also give factory farms the economic incentive to provide
more sanitary and less crowded conditions since, without the aid of antibiotics, that would be the only
way to prevent the animals from becoming sick and dying before slaughter. The FDA has the authority to regulate
drugs administered to animals and drugs used in animal feed under the FDCA. [FN247]

 Fifth, the administration of growth hormones, such as rBGH, to cattle should be prohibited . This regulation would
protect beef and dairy consumers against a proven increased risk of cancer . [FN248] The total economic costs of
cancer in the United States were estimated at over $209.9 billion per year in 2005 and continue to rise. [FN249] The FDA *443 has the authority
to ban growth hormones under the FDCA as unsafe animal drugs. [FN250] Of course, this regulation would be met with substantial opposition
from the drugs' manufacturers and the farm industry. However, given the strong global consensus that growth hormones are unsafe for human
consumption, surely public health should take priority over economic interests in this area.

 Sixth, all cattle should be grass-fed , thus prohibiting the conventional corn -and soy-based diets typical of
factory farms. Given the unique dietary needs of cattle, this regulation would produce healthier meat and
dairy products with lower levels of disease-causing fats and higher levels of disease-preventing fats. It would also lower the levels
of E. coli present in cattle feces, thereby reducing the risk of contamination of beef in the slaughterhouse. Although beef and dairy
producers claim this would decrease their profitability, researchers contend that pasture-raised cattle could yield more profit
per animal for producers than conventionally-fed cattle , suggesting that such a switch could be
economically feasible. [FN251] However, neither the FDA nor the USDA currently has statutory authority to promulgate this rule. The
FDA does not have authority under the PHSA because the diseases at issue are not communicable and the FDCA only prohibits harmful
substances that have not been added to a food product if they are of such quantity that it ordinarily renders the food product injurious to
health. [FN252] Thus, an amendment would be required to extend the authority to enact such a regulation to the FDA, USDA, or both.

Although reducing cheap meat production in favor of food safety and quality is a politically unpopular idea, recent consumer trends and
increasing societal consciousness about health and the environment provide a hopeful outlook . As one
journalist has observed, “[i]f those trends continue, meat may become a treat rather than a routine. It won't be uncommon, but just as surely
as the S.U.V. will yield to the hybrid, the half-pound-a-day meat era will end.” [FN253] Indeed, if these *444 proposed regulations were in place,
factory farmers would have to shift their focus from quantity to quality . While the industry will oppose such
regulations for fear they will decrease their profitability, focusing on quality will not inevitably harm their bottom-line .
For instance, with food safety regulations that meet the standards of the European Union and other countries, American producers may be able
to sell their meat and dairy products internationally, thus expanding their market. [FN254] Furthermore, in recent years, the organic food
market has expanded considerably and American consumers have shown that they are willing to pay higher prices for better quality meat and
dairy that do not contain antibiotics or hormones and that have greater food safety and animal welfare guarantees. [FN255]

 Conclusion

Using the FDA's existing statutory authority or amending the USDA's authority in order to regulate factory farm conditions
and practices would greatly alleviate some of the most serious health problems faced by Americans
today, including antibiotic resistance, cancer, E. coli infection, heart disease, animal-origin influenza, and mad cow disease. The public
health purposes of the FDCA, PHSA, FMIA, PPIA, and EPIA would all be better served by enacting more proactive and
preventative measures at the farm level to regulate sanitation, overcrowding, animal feed, and the problematic
drugs administered to farmed animals. In addition, if these unsafe practices were prohibited, fewer animals would be raised for
food production and those that were would no longer suffer from painful health problems and
extreme confinement . In this way, the proposed regulations would promote human health and animal welfare
alike.

That embeds resilience into agricultural productivity, which solves the root cause of
agro-terror vulnerability---reactive measures fail.
Prescott 16, *Nathalie N. Prescott, Associate at Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP; graduate of
Georgetown University Law Center, 2016; (2016, “ARTICLE: AGROTERRORISM, RESILIENCE, AND INDOOR
FARMING”, 23 Animal L. 103, LexisNexis)

Generally, the government's scheme for reducing the risk of agroterrorism focuses on developing response
plans or increasing surveillance , but ignores problems inherent in the industrialization of agriculture.
While these focuses are important, improving the agricultural sector's resilience will have a much greater
effect by reducing the overall risk of an attack.
B. Increasing Resilience of the Current Agricultural Sector

Although "it is not feasible to be specifically prepared or have all the scientific tools for every contingency or threat to agriculture," this should
not be the goal. 248 Instead, the agricultural sector should focus on improving its resilience , which can be
accomplished by spreading everything out and making everything smaller . CAFOs and other types of highly
concentrated animal farming should be eliminated and replaced with more traditional animal husbandry, where livestock must
rely on their immune systems - rather than on cocktails of antibiotics and hormones - to survive. Facilities
should house fewer animals and be spread across the country, rather than concentrated in certain states and
regions. Producers should halt the practice of indiscriminate cross- breeding and move towards small-scale production that supports local
genetic diversity, a "prerequisite for adaptation in the face of future challenges." 249 These changes would increase the sector's
resilience by making animals hardier and more genetically diverse , which can help stop or at least slow the spread of
disease.

Furthermore, spreading livestock around the country would reduce the number of miles they are transported ,
thereby minimizing the potential for viral spreading . For crops, monocultures should also be eliminated or at least reduced.
Farms should increase crop varieties and rotations, cover crops (crops grown for protection and enrichment of soil), perennial plants, and
fallowing (leaving land unused for a period of time), and use any other techniques that, like these, have been shown to increase biodiversity.
250 Planting different crops in deliberate patterns can also [*134] form buffer zones to slow the spread of a disease. Though modern science is
still learning why methods like these so successfully improve resilience, indigenous people have been using such practices for centuries. 251
Unlike livestock facilities, however, cropland is dependent on weather and climate, so it cannot be as easily spread nationally. This is where
indoor farming can have a substantial impact on resilience.

Achieving these goals would require substantial overhauls of a highly entrenched system. Conveniently, groups
concerned with other
interests, like animal welfare , human health, and environmental ills, would likely support many of these changes . For

example, there are many proponents of banning or at least drastically reducing the extreme use of antibiotics in
livestock because of human health concerns. 252 In fact, California just recently banned livestock use of antibiotics that are medically
important for people. 253 When Denmark introduced such a ban in 1998, farmers had to implement changes like " cleaning more

frequently , increasing facility ventilation , allowing more space for animal movement , [and] vaccinating
animals." 254 Although not drastic, even these small changes can improve the resilience of livestock facilities by
spreading animals out and improving their immune systems . Furthermore, indoor farming should be promoted as an
attractive way to improve the sector's resilience while giving conventional farming time to catch up.
 1AC---Environment ADV
Advantage 2 is the Environment:

Animal agriculture is the leading emitter of the most harmful GHG pollutants,
including N2O---emissions reductions promise rapid climate mitigation.
Levandowski 21, *Ryan Levandowski, Georgetown Law, J.D. 2020; The George Washington
University, B.A. 2016; (January 2021, “Polluting ‘til the Cows Come Home: How Agricultural
Exceptionalism Allows CAFOs Free Range for Climate Harm”,
https://www.law.georgetown.edu/environmental-law-review/wp-content/uploads/sites/18/2021/01/
GT-GELR200048.pdf)
A. ANIMAL AGRICULTURE IS A LEADING EMITTER OF GREENHOUSE GASES

Animal agriculture is a primary contributor to climate change. According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture
Organization (“FAO”), the global live- stock sector contributes 7.1 gigatons of CO2 equivalent annually, representing 14.5 percent of all
anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions.13 This is roughly the same share as all transportation-related activities.14 Other reports estimate the
total direct and indirect contribution of livestock agriculture may be much higher—up to fifty-one percent of global
greenhouse gas emissions .15 In the United States, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) attributes nine percent
of all greenhouse gas emissions to agriculture , including enteric fermentation in domestic livestock and
livestock manure management.16 Beef production alone represents 3.3 percent of the total U.S.
greenhouse gas emissions.17

Along with CO2, methane (“CH4”) and nitrous oxide (“N2O”) are the primary greenhouse gases directly
emitted by livestock and their waste.18 Together, they are the three most common greenhouse gases across all sectors.19
Although CO2 is by far the most prevalent greenhouse gas in our atmosphere, each of the latter two gases possesses a much
greater global warming potential —25 and 298 times greater than that of CO2, respectively.20 Due to this fact,
non-CO2 greenhouse gases currently contribute just a third of all anthropogenic CO2 equivalent emissions, but
represent thirty-five to forty-five percent of climate forcing , or “the change in radiant energy retained by Earth owing to
emissions of long-lived greenhouse gases,” resulting from global emissions.21

CH4, the most abundant non-CO2 greenhouse gas, is primarily produced as a by-product of digestive processes
among ruminants.22 Domestic ruminants— cattle, sheep, goats, and buffalo—likely outnumber wild populations by a
significant amount, with 25 million domestic ruminants added to the global population annually.23 CH4 is also released from
manure, which is commonly stored in lagoons or holding tanks that provide a direct pathway to the
atmosphere.24 These deep pools of liquid manure, common among CAFOs, create anaerobic conditions that increase the production of
CH4 as organic wastes break down.25 In total, approximately 44 percent of annual emissions from the livestock sector are in the form of
CH4.26 N2O, the next most abundant non-CO 2 greenhouse gas, also results from live- stock waste management.27

Some N2O is emitted during handling and storage of manure,28 but the vast majority is released when manure is deposited or applied to soil.29
Most manure collected at CAFOs will be applied to farmland as fertilizer, at which point processes of nitrification and denitrification create
N2O.30

B. ANIMAL AGRICULTURE CAN PLAY A ROLE IN CLIMATE CHANGE MITIGATION

Reductions in greenhouse gas emissions in the livestock sector can be achieved by reducing
production , consumption, or any combination of the two.31 In fact, a number of the sector’s unique characteristics ,
including the high global warming potential of the gases emitted and the relative inexpensiveness of voluntary shifts in
diet, lend themselves to exceptionally efficient mitigation strategies. That being said, a number of barriers exist that
may prevent the implementation of these strategies.

1. Opportunities for Reducing Emissions from Animal Agriculture

As previously mentioned, climate mitigation in the animal agriculture sector can be achieved by addressing consumption, production, or both.
Solutions that address consumption are generally based on lifestyle changes that reduce the amount of meat consumed, either through
voluntary dietary restriction or by demand control mechanisms.32 On the other hand, solutions
that target production are
focused on the various facilities that make up the industrial livestock production chain, and include changes
in livestock management practices and the intro- duction of new technologies.33
Although this Note will primarily focus on the potential for mitigation of emissions resulting from production at the CAFO level, it bears
mentioning that demand-side solutions may be equally necessary to achieve meaningful mitigation. Several significant studies modeling
mitigation potential based on variations in dietary behavior have found that limiting meat consumption to levels consistent with nutritional
recommendations could result in CO2 equivalent savings between 2.15 and 5.6 gigatons per year.34 This amount of emissions savings would be
considerably more than the estimated savings from production-based mitigation strategies.35 Thus, some studies suggest that even with
ambitious mitigation strategies targeting livestock production, it may not be possible to limit global warming to less than two degrees Celsius
without “radical” shifts in dietary levels of meat and dairy.36

Notwithstanding the necessity of demand-side solutions, there

is room for significant reductions in greenhouse gas
emissions from the livestock producers themselves. Much of the sector’s potential for mitigation may be attributed to a lack
of standards at a national and global scale, resulting in “high variability of emission intensity on a global and regional scale.”37 According to the
FAO, a reduction of up to thirty percent of the sector’s emissions (approximately 2.13 gigatons CO 2 equivalent) could be achieved if producers
in a given livestock production system were to adopt the technologies and practices used by the ten percent of producers with the lowest
emission intensity, assuming overall production remains constant.38 This may be a conservative estimate of the reductions possible; FAO does
not account for certain mitigation practices and technologies, such as biodigesters and dietary supplements, which are currently available but
have not been adopted by more than a few producers.39

Regardless of the source, any reduction in CH4 and N2O emissions from live-stock production and
consumption has the potential for efficient and rapid mitigation of climate change effects. As previously
mentioned, these gases have significantly higher global warming potentials and shorter atmospheric lifetimes than CO2.40 Consequently,
these gases hold “the potential for more rapid reductions in radiative forcing than would be possible
by controlling emissions of CO2 alone .”41 Only by reducing CO2 and non-CO2 emissions simultaneously
will climate forcing be reduced during this century.42

No alt causes---it’s impact outweighs that of every other industry.

Cassuto 10, *David Cassuto, Professor of Law, Pace University School of Law and Director, Brazil-
American Institute for Law & Environment, (BAILE); (2010, “The CAFO Hothouse: Climate Change,
Industrial Agriculture and the Law”, https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1646484)
3. The role of Livestock in Climate Change

3.1 GHG emissions from Industrial Livestock Cultivation

Industrial agriculture’s emphasis on volume has dramatically increased the number of animals raised
for food . In the United States, 9.5 billion animals are slaughtered for food each year. ix The CH4 (methane), N2O
(nitrous oxide) and CO2 (carbon dioxide) released from livestock account for over 7 percent of U.S. greenhouse
gas emissions (hereafter, “GHGs”) and over 18 percent of GHGs worldwide. Table 1 shows U.S. GHG emissions of just CH4 and N2O from
the various stages of agriculture while Table 2 breaks down the entire GHG emissions process within the animal industrial cycle. X
The upshot of all this is that GHG emissions from agriculture exceed those from other areas of the
economy (e.g., transportation) that receive far more attention , both domestically and internationally.
3.2 Comparing emissions from Industrial Agriculture to Other Sectors

One often hears it said that a vegan driving a Hummer does more to combat climate change than an environmentalist in a Prius. xi This claim
may sound exaggerated but the data bear it out. It takes more energy to supply an average family with meat than it does to power the family
car. And since fossil fuel expenditure translates into GHG emissions, the average family’s carbon footprint would actually decrease – albeit not
enough – if it used more fuel and ate less meat. Xii

A chief reason for factory farming’s large carbon footprint lies in the fact that it requires a great deal of
fossil fuel , including petroleum-based fertilizers (used to grow the corn and soy that feeds the animals)
and other chemicals. According to the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production Report (“Pew Commission Report”), the ratio of
energy input to output for industrially produced meat can reach as high as 35:1.xiii That means that it takes 35 units of energy to
produce just one unit of energy from meat. Even within an agricultural sector badly in need of reform
(overall, agriculture’s energy input-to-output ratio is 3:1), these numbers stand out . xiv
3.3 expanding Demand for Meat

On average, Americans consume 45 more pounds of meat per year than they did 50 years ago . xv According to
the Pew Commission Report, that increase translates into Americans eating 2.8 times more pork, 2.5 times more eggs, 2.3 times more chicken
and 1.3 times more beef. xvi This upsurge forms part of a global trend.

Worldwide, demand for animal products is growing by 3 percent per year in developing countries. It is expected to increase an additional 35
percent by 2015 and to double by 2050.xvii These increases will inevitably lead to increased production. Increased production will necessarily
and significantly swell GHG emissions from the agricultural sector.

3.4 CAFOs Are Woefully Under-regulated

Five thousand pigs produce as much raw sewage as a town of 20,000 people.xviii That statistic alone makes
factory farming environmentally problematic and in need of regulatory oversight. But there’s more. Pig waste is more concentrated
than human waste and tends to contain both pathogens and antibiotics . Yet waste from pigs does not go to
sewage treatment facilities; it tends to go straight onto the ground , where it eventually makes its way into
the groundwater and rivers and into the air, causing respiratory problems, antibiotic resistance, and more. Habitat loss and
degradation, erosion, water depletion, pollution and salinization, agrochemical contamination, the above-mentioned animal waste and air
pollution are also serious and growing CAFO-related problems. Still, agriculture remains virtually unregulated . Of the major
federal environmental statutes, only the Clean Water Act xix applies at all. Xx

This dearth of regulation does not result from collective inaction or failure to recognize the damage from industrial agriculture. Rather, as legal
scholar J. B. Ruhl notes, “Congress has actively prevented their intersection through a nearly unbroken series of decisions to exclude farms and
farming from the burdens of federal environmental law, with states mainly following suit.” xxi Ruhl calls this a “vast ‘anti-law’ of farms and the
environment.” xxii The combination of a powerful agricultural lobby, the family farm’s hold on the collective national imagination, and the
short-term profits of industrial agriculture have proved too potent a mix for any would-be regulators.

4. Indirect Environmental Impacts of Industrial Agriculture

4.1 Water Depletion, Land Use Impacts and Deforestation

The already high and increasing demand for water places an ever-growing strain on dwindling fresh
water reserves . Water shortages have always formed part of the geography of the American West. In recent years, however, the
shortages have increased in scope and frequency. California has faced an ongoing drought for the last several years. xxv Elsewhere, Lake Powell,
located in Glen Canyon, was once full but is now at less than two-thirds of capacity. xxvi Similarly, Lake Mead, formed behind the Hoover Dam,
has also shrunk to 42 percent capacity xxvii Snowpack in the Rockies has also diminished considerably. The list goes on.
Even more remarkable is the fact that water shortages have become common in the eastern United States. Droughts, water shortages
and litigation over water rights have become increasingly typical . Even Florida and Georgia, two of the wettest states
in the country, face water shortages and have sued each other over rights to the Chattahoochee River. xxviii

With all that in mind, consider this: It takes 23 gallons of water to produce one pound of tomatoes but it takes 5,214 gallons to produce one
pound of beef. xxix Furthermore, contaminants from agribusiness (runoff, pesticides, manure, etc.) account for more
water pollution than all other industrial and municipal water sources combined. xxx So, industrial
agriculture requires more water than anything else and it pollutes what it doesn’t use.

There are many other environmental impacts from factory farming as well. Worldwide, such livestock-related land use changes as
deforestation and overgrazing cause desertification, ground water and soil contamination, and other environmental problems. They also lead
to a release of 2.4 billion metric tons of CO2 per year – 7 percent of global GHG emissions. xxxi In addition, using land for
factory farms contains an embedded opportunity cost. Land used for livestock production might instead be used in ways
that sequester rather than release carbon as opposed to reforestation, afforestation, and other
sustainable land uses. xxxii

Climate change is a non-linear, existential risk.

Kemp et al. 22, *Luke Kemp, Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, University of Cambridge; *Chi
Xu, School of Life Sciences, Nanjing University; *Joanna Depledge, Cambridge Centre for Environment,
Energy and Natural Resource Governance, University of Cambridge; *Timothy Lenton, Global Systems
Institute, University of Exeter; (August 1st, 2022, “Climate Endgame: Exploring catastrophic climate
change scenarios”, https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2108146119#sec-3)
Worst-Case Climate Change

Despite 30 y of efforts and some progress under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) anthropogenic
greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions continue to increase . Even without considering worst-case climate responses, the
current trajectory puts the world on track for a temperature rise between 2.1 °C and 3.9 °C by 2100 (11). If all
2030 nationally determined contributions are fully implemented, warming of 2.4 °C (1.9 °C to 3.0 °C) is expected by 2100. Meeting all long-term
pledges and targets could reduce this to 2.1 °C (1.7 °C to 2.6 °C) (12). Even these optimistic assumptions lead to dangerous
trajectories . Temperatures of more than 2 °C above preindustrial values have not been sustained on
Earth system
Earth’s surface since before the Pleistocene Epoch (or more than 2.6 million years ago) (13).
Even if anthropogenic GHG emissions start to decline soon, this does not rule out high future GHG concentrations or extreme climate change,
particularly beyond 2100. There are feedbacks in the carbon cycle and potential tipping points that could
generate high GHG concentrations (14) that are often missing from models. Examples include Arctic permafrost
thawing that releases methane and CO2 (15), carbon loss due to intense droughts and fires in the Amazon (16), and the
apparent slowing of dampening feedbacks such as natural carbon sink capacity (17, 18). These are likely to not be
proportional to warming, as is sometimes assumed. Instead, abrupt and/or irreversible changes may be triggered at a
temperature threshold . Such changes are evident in Earth’s geological record, and their impacts cascaded across the coupled climate–
ecological–social system (19). Particularly worrying is a “tipping cascade” in which multiple tipping
elements interact in such a
way that tipping one threshold increases the likelihood of tipping another (20). Temperature rise is crucially
dependent on the overall dynamics of the Earth system, not just the anthropogenic emissions trajectory.
The potential for tipping points and higher concentrations despite lower anthropogenic emissions is evident in existing models. Variability
among the latest Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6) climate models results in overlap in different scenarios. For example,
the top (75th) quartile outcome of the “middle-of-the-road” scenario (Shared Socioeconomic Pathway 3-7.0, or SSP3-7.0) is substantially hotter
than the bottom (25th) quartile of the highest emissions (SSP5-8.5) scenario. Regional temperature differences between models can exceed 5 
°C to 6 °C, particularly in polar areas where various tipping points can occur (SI Appendix).

There are even more uncertain feedbacks, which, in a very worst case, might amplify to an irreversible transition into a
“Hothouse Earth” state (21) (although there may be negative feedbacks that help buffer the Earth system). In particular, poorly
understood cloud feedbacks might trigger sudden and irreversible global warming (22). Such effects remain underexplored and largely
speculative “unknown unknowns” that are still being discovered. For instance, recent simulations suggest that stratocumulus cloud decks might
abruptly be lost at CO2 concentrations that could be approached by the end of the century, causing an additional ∼8 °C global warming (23).
Large uncertainties about dangerous surprises are reasons to prioritize rather than neglect them.
Recent findings on equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS) (14, 24) underline that the magnitude of climate change is uncertain even if we knew future GHG concentrations. According to the IPCC, our best estimate for ECS is a 3 °C
temperature rise per doubling of CO2, with a “likely” range of (66 to 100% likelihood) of 2.5 °C to 4 °C. While an ECS below 1.5 °C was essentially ruled out, there remains an 18% probability that ECS could be greater than 4.5 °C
(14). The distribution of ECS is “heavy tailed,” with a higher probability of very high values of ECS than of very low values.

There is significant uncertainty over future anthropogenic GHG emissions as well. Representative Concentration Pathway 8.5 (RCP8.5, now SSP5-8.5), the highest emissions pathway used in IPCC scenarios, most closely matches
cumulative emissions to date (25). This may not be the case going forward, because of falling prices of renewable energy and policy responses (26). Yet, there remain reasons for caution. For instance, there is significant uncertainty
over key variables such as energy demand and economic growth. Plausibly higher economic growth rates could make RCP8.5 35% more likely (27).

Why Explore Climate Catastrophe?

Why do we need to know about the plausible worst cases? First, risk management and robust decision-making under uncertainty requires knowledge of extremes. For example, the minimax criterion ranks policies by their worst
outcomes (28). Such an approach is particularly appropriate for areas characterized by high uncertainties and tail risks. Emissions trajectories, future concentrations, future warming, and future impacts are all characterized by
uncertainty. That is, we can’t objectively prescribe probabilities to different outcomes (29). Climate damages lie within the realm of “deep uncertainty”: We don’t know the probabilities attached to different outcomes, the exact
chain of cause and effect that will lead to outcomes, or even the range, timing, or desirability of outcomes (, 30). Uncertainty, deep or not, should motivate precaution and vigilance, not complacency.

Catastrophic impacts, even if unlikely, have major implications for economic analysis, modeling, and society’s responses (31, 32). For example, extreme warming and the consequent damages can significantly increase the projected
social cost of carbon (31). Understanding the vulnerability and responses of human societies can inform policy making and decision-making to prevent systemic crises. Indicators of key variables can provide early warning signals
(33).

Knowing the worst cases can compel action, as the idea of “nuclear winter” in 1983 galvanized public concern and nuclear disarmament efforts. Exploring severe risks and higher-temperature scenarios could cement a
recommitment to the 1.5 °C to 2 °C guardrail as the “least unattractive” option (34).

Understanding catastrophic climate scenarios can also inform policy interventions, including last-resort emergency measures like solar radiation management (SRM), the injection of aerosols into the stratosphere to reflect sunlight
(35). Whether to resort to such measures depends on the risk profiles of both climate change and SRM scenarios. One recent analysis of the potential catastrophic risk of stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI) found that the direct
and systemic impacts are under-studied (36). The largest danger appears to come from “termination shock”: abrupt and rapid warming if the SAI system is disrupted. Hence, SAI shifts the risk distribution: The median outcome may
be better than the climate change it is offsetting, but the tail risk could be worse than warming (36).

There are other interventions that a better understanding of catastrophic climate change could facilitate. For example, at the international level, there is the potential for a “tail risk treaty”: an agreement or protocol that activates
stronger commitments and mechanisms when early-warning indicators of potential abrupt change are triggered.

The Potential for Climate Catastrophe

There are four key reasons to be concerned over the potential of a global climate catastrophe. First, there are warnings from history. Climate
change (either regional or global) has played a role in the collapse or transformation of numerous previous societies (37)
and in each of the five mass extinction events in Phanerozoic Earth history (38). The current carbon pulse is occurring at an
unprecedented geological speed and, by the end of the century, may surpass thresholds that triggered previous mass

extinctions (39, 40). The worst-case scenarios in the IPCC report project temperatures by the 22nd century that last prevailed in the Early
Eocene, reversing 50 million years of cooler climates in the space of two centuries (41).

This is particularly alarming, as human

societies are locally adapted to a specific climatic niche. The rise of large-
scale, urbanized agrarian societies began with the shift to the stable climate of the Holocene ∼12,000 y ago (42). Since then,
human population density peaked within a narrow climatic envelope with a mean annual average temperature of ∼13 °C. Even today, the
most economically productive centers of human activity are concentrated in those areas (43). The
cumulative impacts of warming may overwhelm societal adaptive capacity .

Second, climate change could directly trigger other catastrophic risks, such as international conflict , or exacerbate
infectious disease spread , and spillover risk. These could be potent extreme threat multipliers .

Third, climate change could exacerbate vulnerabilities and cause multiple, indirect stresses (such as economic
damage, loss of land, and water and food insecurity ) that coalesce into system-wide synchronous failures . This is
the path of systemic risk. Global crises tend to occur through such reinforcing “ synchronous failures ” that spread across
countries and systems, as with the 2007–2008 global financial crisis (44). It is plausible that a sudden shift in climate could trigger systems
failures that unravel societies across the globe.

The potential of systemic climate risk is marked : The most vulnerable states and communities will continue to
be the hardest hit in a warming world, exacerbating inequities. Fig. 1 shows how projected population density intersects with extreme
>29 °C mean annual temperature (MAT) (such temperatures are currently restricted to only 0.8% of Earth’s land surface area). Using the
medium-high scenario of emissions and population growth (SSP3-7.0 emissions, and SSP3 population growth), by 2070, around 2 billion people
are expected to live in these extremely hot areas. Currently, only 30 million people live in hot places, primarily in the Sahara Desert and Gulf
Coast (43).

Extreme temperatures combined with high humidity can negatively affect outdoor worker productivity and yields
of major cereal crops . These deadly heat conditions could significantly affect populated areas in South and southwest Asia(47).
Fig. 2 takes a political lens on extreme heat, overlapping SSP3-7.0 or SSP5-8.5 projections of >29 °C MAT circa 2070, with the Fragile States
Index (a measurement of the instability of states). There
is a striking overlap between currently vulnerable states and
future areas of extreme
warming. If current political fragility does not improve significantly in the coming decades, then
a belt of instability with potentially serious ramifications could occur.

Finally, climate change could irrevocably undermine humanity’s ability to recover from another
cataclysm, such as nuclear war . That is, it could create significant latent risks (Table 1): Impacts that may be
manageable during times of stability become dire when responding to and recovering from catastrophe. These different causes for catastrophic
concern are interrelated and must be examined together.

Nitrogen pollution is increasing---industrial agriculture causes eutrophication and algal

blooms that deoxygenate the ocean.
Gilbert 20, *Patricia M. Gilbert, Ph.D., affiliated with Horn Point Laboratory, University of Maryland
Center for Environmental Science; (2020, “From hogs to HABs: impacts of industrial farming in the US on
nitrogen and phosphorus and greenhouse gas pollution”,
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7416595/)
Eutrophication and algal blooms

Hypoxia and HABs due to eutrophication are increasing in frequency and magnitude in both fresh and
marine waters (e.g., Anderson et al., 2002, Heisler et al. 2008; Glibert et al. 2005, 2006, 2014; Glibert and Burkholder 2018). Compared to
the 12 million MT of N fertilizer used in the US, it is estimated that 1.15 million MT (or about 10%) of N flows into the
Gulf of Mexico annually (von Reusner 2019) contributing to the hypoxia there. The Gulf of Mexico is a prime
example of how eutrophication problems can be spatially and temporally displaced from the original nutrient
source (Conley et al. 2009; Paerl 2009; Glibert et al. 2011; Glibert 2020). Aside from the nuisance they cause, HAB toxins contaminate
drinking water supplies, as was the case in Toledo in 2014 when 500,000 residents were told not to use tap water due to microcystin
contamination (e.g., Fitzsimmons 2014), and in coastal waters, HABs also contaminate
seafood supplies, cause fish kills,
and, depending on species, respiratory distress among many other human and ecosystem health effects (e.g., Landsberg
2002; Backer and McGillicuddy 2006; Basti et al. 2018, Gratton et al. 2018 and references therein).

Control of P has been long been promoted to curtail freshwater HABs because it is easier to control than N, and has long been considered the
limiting nutrient in freshwaters (e.g., Schindler et al. 2008, 2016, Schindler and Hecky 2008). It has also been long been thought that if N is
reduced well below balanced proportions, there can be growth of N2-fixing cyanobacteria among which are toxic species and they will
compensate for N limitation by accessing the atmospheric source (e.g., Schindler et al. 2008, 2016 and references therein). Thus, it would seem
that the trend in increasing N:P should be viewed positively. However, the trend of increasing N:P proportions in fertilizer
inputs is particularly concerning for several reasons . Many HAB cyanobacteria are not N2-fixing, for example,
Microcystis, and their occurrences are increasing in freshwaters around the world in direct proportion to
increasing N loads (Glibert et al. 2014 and references therein). Microcystis is increasing throughout the US, but the
Midwest is a hot spot for blooms—and for more toxic blooms—due to agricultural impacts (Fig. 18c; Michelak et al.
2013; Loftin et al. 2016). Many marine and estuarine dinoflagellate HABs also have been shown to be more abundant
under conditions of increasing N:P . Examples of high biomass HAB dinoflagellates occurrences in environments where N:P loads
are in excess of Redfield proportions can be found in the Baltic Sea (Hajdu et al. 2005), Delaware Inland Bay (Handy et al. 2008), Neuse River
Estuary (Springer et al. 2005), Chesapeake Bay (Li et al. 2015) and East China Sea (Li et al. 2009; Glibert et al. 2014) among many other regions.

The second problem with a focus

on P control over N control is that many cyanobacteria and marine or estuarine
dinoflagellate HABs (among other HAB taxa) may be, in fact, more toxic when N is in stoichiometric excess over P.
Thus, contrary to the concern that N limitation will promote toxic cyanobacteria, the toxicity of many HABs increases as N:P
increases (Glibert 2017 and references therein). Most notably, excess N over P availability has been related to microcystin production
under controlled chemostat conditions and in natural populations (Oh et al. 2000; Van de Waal et al., 2009; Harris et al. 2016). In the
dinoflagellate Alexandrium tamarense, saxitoxin production increased by three- to fourfold under P deficiency (Boyer et al. 1987; Guisande et
al. 2002, reviewed by Granéli 2005; Granéli and Flynn 2006), and toxicity of the dinoflagellate Karlodinium veneficum increased under P
limitation, but especially in combination with elevated levels of CO2 (Fu et al. 2010). Similarly, toxin production by the dinoflagellates
Gymnodinium catenatum, Alexandrium excavatum and the diatom Pseudo-nitzschia multiseries also increased under P stress (Granéli and
Flynn, 2006). Many toxins are rich in N and accordingly N-rich toxins can accumulate in excess under P limitation (e.g., Granéli and Flynn 2006;
Van der Waal et al. 2014 and references therein).

Adding to the trends of increasing N relative to P are the atmospheric NH3 emissions from animal
feeding operations. Most such emissions are deposited within 2.5 km of the source, based on studies of emission from broiler houses
on the US eastern seaboard (Baker et al. 2020). These emissions, derived from the animal houses themselves, manure
handling, or land applications, have multiple environmental effects . Not only do these emissions
contribute to eutrophication (e.g., Mallin and Cahoon 2003; Galloway et al. 2014), but they can form fine aerosols as
NH3 is converted to NH4 and deposited on particles , contributing to haze, impaired visibility and respiratory
problems. These aerosols can also be deposited as NH3/NH4 on nearby forests or crops which can, in turn, elicit stress responses from acute
NH3/NH4 exposure (e.g., Fangmeier et al. 1994). Recent modeling has shown that there has been a threefold increase in soluble N deposition
over land and a twofold increase over the ocean due to human activities (Kanakidou et al. 2016), driven largely by NH3 emissions from
agriculture that have traveled from the original source.

These trends all underscore that nutrient reduction efforts must focus on both N and P , even for regional systems that are
classically considered to be “limited” by one nutrient or the other (e.g., Burkholder et al. 2006; Howarth and Paerl 2008; Conley et al. 2009;
Paerl 2009; Glibert et al. 2011, 2013; Glibert 2017, 2020). Dual nutrient strategies, however difficult they are to achieve, should be the goal, as
multiple ecological and ecoservice benefits are met by reducing N input (Vitousek et al. 1997) even in classically P-limited systems, such as
lakes. Fragmenting sustainability arguments and focusing on single nutrient reduction measures undermines the need to protect multiple
ecosystem services at broad spatial scales, especially given that many eutrophication problems are displaced from the original nutrient source,
as previously described for the Gulf of Mexico.

To promote a more environmentally-favorable image, the fertilizer industry has been advocating that farmers apply the “4R” rule for fertilizers:
the right source at the right rate, right time and right place (https://www.nutrientstewardship.com/4rs/). This same right-place-right-time
principle applies to the kinds of algal species that respond in receiving waters of these wastes. It takes the right nutrients at the right time
relative to the needs of the primary producers (algae) for blooms to form (Glibert and Burford 2017). While over-enrichment of both
fresh and coastal waters by nutrients is a major pollution problem worldwide, it is not only total nutrient loads that
promote HABs and alter microbial biodiversity, it is the right nutrients at the right time.

Many HAB taxa also appear to be favored over diatoms when N is supplied in chemically-reduced relative to oxidized forms—as, for example, in
the form of urea (Glibert et al. 2006, 2014). The shift toward increasing use of urea stems from several advantages it has over other N forms
(Glibert et al. 2006). It is less explosive than NH4 and NO3 when stored, and it can be applied as a liquid or solid. The
increase in global
use of urea has been related to HAB increases (Glibert et al. 2006, 2014, 2016), and similar conclusions can be
drawn for various parts of the US where urea use has increased . For example, cyanobacterial blooms in
Florida Bay and on the southwest Florida shelf have been shown to be positively correlated with the
fraction of N taken up as urea, and negatively correlated with the fraction of N taken up as NO3− (Glibert et al. 2004). Use of slow-
release fertilizers has been promoted to reduce leaching of N; slow release fertilizers are coated urea-based granules that may contain a urease
inhibitor. The use of urease inhibitors delays the hydrolysis of urea for up to several weeks and thus increases the likelihood that runoff or
overland transport will contain urea and not its decomposition products (Prakash et al. 1999). Use of slow-release fertilizers may help to reduce
hydrolysis in the soil, but may contribute to runoff of forms of N that are more favorable for at least some HABs.

Recently another environmental consequence of algal blooms has been reported: that is, blooms
are an important contributor to
CH4 emissions (Beaulieu et al. 2019 and references therein; Fig. 1b). Production of CH4 in lakes and eutrophic
impoundments is directly related to the chlorophyll a concentration of the water (DelSontro et al. 2018).
Beaulieu et al. (2019) estimate that CH4 emissions from eutrophic lakes will increase 30–90% over the next
century due to continuing eutrophication pressures . Moreover, these authors reported that an increase in P loading by 1.5
times will lead to CH4 emissions that are equivalent to that from wetlands, currently the largest single source. The continued nutrient
pollution from crop and animal production clearly multiplies the impact on greenhouse gases due to
accumulations of algal biomass and its decay . It is now abundantly clear that the historic view of algal responses to
eutrophication—i.e., that increased nutrients promote increased chlorophyll and high-biomass blooms leading to oxygen deduction and losses
in habitat (e.g. Cloern 2001)—is far too simplistic for understanding how harmful taxa develop in response to changes in nutrients.

Extinction---tackling industrial agriculture is key.

Mukpo 21, *Ashoka Mukpo, a staff writer for Mongabay and freelance journalist with expertise in
international development policy, human rights, and environmental issues; (September 22 nd, 2021,
“Nitrogen: The environmental crisis you haven’t heard of yet”,
https://news.mongabay.com/2021/09/nitrogen-the-environmental-crisis-you-havent-heard-of-yet/)

But the overuse of nitrogen and phosphorus from those fertilizers is causing an environmental crisis , as algae
blooms and oceanic “dead zones” grow in scale and frequency.

Of the nine “planetary boundaries” that scientists say we must not cross in order to sustain human life , the
boundary associated with nitrogen and phosphorus waste has been far surpassed , putting Earth’s
operating system at risk .

Global policymakers are beginning to slowly recognize the scale of the problem, as climate change threatens to make it worse. Absent major
reforms to agribusiness practices, scientists are aiming to convince the world to reduce waste.
On a sunny day, Guatemala’s Lake Atitlán is normally a sweeping vista of turquoise and sapphire, with the lake drinking the color of the sky until the two are nearly indistinguishable from each other. Ringed by mountains and
towering volcanos, below Atitlán’s waves lie sunken ruins that were once used for worship and ceremony by the Mayan communities that have thrived here for thousands of years.

But in 2009, those communities awoke one morning to an unsettling sight. Vast swaths of the azure lake had instead turned sickly green. A film of foul-smelling scum was drifting on its surface, washing ashore, and swirling in the
coves where people bathe and catch fish.

Atitlán had been overrun by cyanobacteria, or as it’s more commonly known, blue-green algae. The outbreak was massive, covering 40% of the lake’s surface; big enough to be seen from space. It was the first time a blue-green
algae outbreak that size had been recorded at the lake, but it wouldn’t be the last. In 2015, another extensive bloom chased away tourists, a vital part of the local economy, and now, algal blooms are a semiconstant health threat
for the lake’s Indigenous residents.

The surface of Guatemala’s Lake Atitlán is normally a sweeping, fluorescent blue vista. The lake is a vital part of the local economy and the Indigenous residents also depend on it for water. Image by Murray Foubister via Wikimedia
Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0).

The explanation for the algal growth explosion at Atitlán, an affliction now shared by many of Earth’s freshwater lakes, is inseparable from the story of our species’ 20th-century population boom. In recent decades, the lake has
been flooded with phosphorus and other nutrients, delivered largely via sewage and agricultural runoff. Along with its sister element nitrogen, phosphorus is almost entirely responsible for our ability to feed billions of people. The
two elements are essential for plants and crops, and as the building blocks of synthetic fertilizers, vital to modern industrial food production.

They are also the cause of one of the world’s least recognized, and most severe, ecological crises: the human-caused destabilization of Earth’s natural nitrogen and phosphorous cycles.
Widespread use of synthetic fertilizers enabled crop yields to skyrocket during the past century. But there’s a catch: Excess
nitrogen and
phosphorus runoff from agriculture is leaking into lakes and flowing into estuaries , bays and seas
planetwide, causing toxic algal blooms like the ones at Atitlán, as well as immense oxygen-free “dead zones”
in the oceans, where most marine life can’t survive . Mega storms and higher temperatures caused by climate change are
making the problem worse.

These algae blooms and dead zones are now on the rise , and experts say that unless governments start
taking effective action, and fast, Lake Atitlán’s woes are just a taste of what’s to come . The imbalances
caused by nitrogen and phosphorus overload are threatening biodiversity across the world, and according to some
scientists, pushing us out of the “safe operating space for humanity .”
From guano to green revolution

The struggle to provide, or “fix,” enough nitrogen in soil to grow bountiful crops has been a constant of human history. Both nitrogen and phosphorus are necessary components of photosynthesis; without enough, plants turn
sickly and stunted. Nitrogen is naturally abundant, making up 80% of the atmosphere, but most plants can’t use it until it’s converted into its “reactive” form, limiting where they can grow.

Early societies found a way to get around those limits by burning vegetation, then planting crops in the charred soil to boost growth. With this discovery, “slash-and-burn” agriculture was born, and while they didn’t know it, these
Neolithic farmers were injecting reactive nitrogen and phosphorus, released from incinerated plant matter, into the soil.

Later civilizations learned that interspersing their crops with clover and legumes, such as soybeans (among the rare plants that can fix their own nitrogen), or applying animal manure (which contains digested reactive nitrogen and
phosphorus) were even better solutions than slash and burn. These innovations allowed agriculture to support bigger populations.

In the mid-1600s, a German alchemist inadvertently discovered that phosphorus was part of the makeup of the human body when he boiled down 50 buckets of urine while searching for the mythical “philosopher’s stone.” As a
result, crushed human bones (along with copious amounts of manure) were subsequently used as fertilizer in Europe.

Despite these discoveries, famine remained a constant danger, and when the colonial powers of Europe and the United States learned of a technique used by Indigenous groups in Peru, who fertilized their crops with nutrient-rich
seabird guano, a hotly contested cross-Atlantic extractive trade was born. By the mid-1800s, newly independent Peru, Chile and Bolivia were fighting a bloody war over control of the islands where the bird droppings fell. Around
the same time, U.S. scientists discovered that natural rock deposits of soluble phosphorus existed and could be mined.

Then, in the first decade of the 20th century, two German chemists, Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch, changed the course of history, for good and ill. The pair developed the Haber-Bosch process, a means of directly converting
atmospheric nitrogen and hydrogen into ammonia (a reactive nitrogen compound) through intense pressure and heat. This breakthrough led to the production of synthetic fertilizers — and the deadly explosives used in World War
I.

The twindevelopments of phosphorus mining and artificial nitrogen fixation marked an underappreciated
turning point in the story of humanity . Coupled with new high-yield crops and chemical pesticides, people were suddenly able
to produce food on a scale previously inconceivable, and our population was off to the races. Between 1900 and 2000, the number of human
beings on the planet rose from 1.6 billion to 6 billion, while the total land mass used for agriculture increased by only 30% — an impossible feat
without synthetic fertilizer.

The downside was that reactive nitrogen and phosphorus were introduced into the biosphere in
staggering volumes . In 1890, humanity annually produced 15 million tons of reactive nitrogen (almost entirely by growing legumes and
rice), and used about 2 million tons of phosphorus for agriculture. Today, that figure tops 200 million tons of reactive nitrogen per year and 47
million tons of phosphorus.

The growth of industrial agriculture was one of many technological miracles that arose during the 20th century. But
as with many others, there was a hidden price.

By land, by air, and by sea

Before the advent of synthetic fertilizers and fossil fuels, the movement of nitrogen through the biosphere was relatively stable. In what’s
known as the “nitrogen cycle,” the element’s atoms traveled through flora and fauna, being released via excretion and death back into the
ground, with some escaping through bacterial conversion to the atmosphere or trickling into waterways. The nitrogen cycle was a
foundation of life on Earth, helping to sustain and nourish flora and fauna alike in a harmonious balance of atomic movement.

That balance was shattered by industrialization and technology. While nitrogen-based fertilizers, which also contain
phosphorus mined from the earth, today produce food that sustains around half of the world’s population, their liberal application has
created a nitrogen “cascade.” Governments, eager to expand national economies, subsidized fertilizer purchases, allowing farmers
to grow more food and faster, while chemical companies used the Haber-Bosch process to saturate the market with relatively cheap nutrients.
In turn, the massive influx of nitrogen and phosphorus became a form of pollution , spilling into Earth’s
ecosystems . Now, nearly 80% of the nitrogen used in synthetic fertilizer is lost into the environment
through soil erosion , runoff , atmospheric conversion and other forms of waste . A 2002 study estimated that for
every 100 nitrogen molecules converted by the Haber-Bosch process into fertilizer, only 14 end up consumed as food.

This “overload” of nitrogen and phosphorus is wreaking environmental havoc across the world. Runoff from
fertilizers and sewage, which contains nutrients consumed by humans, seeps into groundwater and enters waterways. Just as commercial crops
love these two elements, so too do cyanobacteria and algae found naturally in water bodies like Lake Atitlán.

This nutrient feast leads to “blooms” of astronomical growth, sometimes dubbed “red tides.” The abundance
of algae uses up the oxygen in the water, then dies, floating to the surface as a rotting green or red scum that
is often toxic and which further depletes water oxygen levels. This process, called eutrophication, is now a common sight
from Michigan to Shanghai, along with dead zones that began in river mouths and in bays but which have even occurred in the middle of the
ocean.

“The overloading of nutrients into fresh waterways feeds more algae blooms, and as the algae
duplicates and grows very quickly ,
they will consume oxygen and create a very dangerous living environment for fish and other types of
animals in the water system,” said Xin Zhang, associate professor at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science.
“It’s the same case with ocean fronts and in estuaries.”

While most people have never heard the word “eutrophication,” growing numbers are becoming familiar with its effects. In the U.S., lakes and
coastlines from Florida to Michigan are struggling with algae, and in China, which has some of the highest concentrations of nutrient overloads
on Earth, a massive bloom forced the competitive sailing event to be postponed during the 2008 Olympics. In India, the sacred Ganges River has
turned green with algae.

“Human disturbance to the nitrogen and phosphorus cycles has already exceeded the planetary boundary,” Zhang said. Scientists have so far
recognized nine planetary boundaries that they say represent the safe limits of human activity. Beyond them, we risk disrupting
natural Earth systems and putting our very survival . (The Stockholm Resilience Center, which helped develop and
popularize the concept, maintains a description of the full nine boundaries, which include: climate change; biodiversity loss; ocean acidification;
ozone depletion; atmospheric aerosol pollution; freshwater use; land-system change; release of novel chemicals; and biogeochemical flows of
nitrogen and phosphorus.)

*U.S. action abates harmful nitrogen-climate synergies and serious climate change.
Suddick et al. 12, *Emma Suddick, Woods Hole Research Center, a non-profit climate science center;
*A.R. Townsend, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Colorado; (September
28th, 2012, “The role of nitrogen in climate change and the impacts of nitrogen–climate interactions in
the United States : foreword to thematic issue”, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10533-012-
9795-z#Sec6)
Nitrogen’s contribution to climate change: radiative forcing

A direct affect on global warming occurs through emissions of N2O , a greenhouse gas ~300 times more
potent than CO2, with long-term warming effects because of its >100 year residence time in the
atmosphere. Most of the increases in N2O come from fertilized agricultural soils and from livestock
manure, about 0.48 million tons of N2O-N year−1, which is about 80% of total anthropogenic US N2O production
(the remainder derives from energy and industrial sources) (US-EPA 2011). Pinder et al. (this issue) review the climate change impact of Nr and
N cycle process on radiative forcing in the US and calculate the global temperature potential (GTP) over a 20 year or 100 year time period.
Overall, the effect of N cycling processes in the US on global warming is probably a modest cooling effect for a 20-year time frame,
and a modest warming for a 100-year time frame. In short, combustion sources of Nr that are likely causing cooling are
declining in the US due to enforcement of air pollution regulations for human health. In contrast, most agricultural sources of Nr
cause long-term warming, especially N2O, and these are mostly unregulated and are increasing .

Emissions of NO x , indirectly affect radiative forcing through the effects on atmospheric concentrations of CH4, O3, and aerosol
particulate matter (PM). These effects are complex and difficult to quantify (Rypdal et al. 2009; Penner et al. 2010; Myhre et al. 2011). However,
they generally result in a net cooling effect on time scales of days to decades, becoming insignificant on longer time
scales (Boucher et al. 2009).
Emissions of NO x and NH3 are chemically transformed and eventually deposited onto ecosystems via wet (e.g., rain or snow) and dry (e.g.,
wind) deposition. This increases the availability of N to ecosystems, which can affect the sources and sinks of N2O, CH4, and CO2, with the
dominant effect being enhanced sequestration of C.

The literaturereviewed here reports a range of estimates of 20–70 kg C sequestered per kg N deposited
onto forests, which are the dominant potential C sinks (Butterbach-Bahl et al. 2011; Thomas et al. 2010). Most of the
sequestration occurs in aboveground forest biomass, with less consistency and lower rates reported for C sequestration in soils. The
permanency of the forest biomass sink is uncertain, but data on forest product fates in the US indicate that only a small fraction of
enhanced forest biomass C is sequestered in long-term harvest products or in unmanaged forests .
Nitrogen–climate interactions and impacts

Climate change will almost certainly increase the release of Nr, which in turn will impact agriculture, land and aquatic
ecosystems and human health. In each of these sectors, a changing climate and greater Nr release can then interact in
a variety of ways, further complicating attempts to manage and maintain key ecosystem services.
Agriculture Robertson et al. (this issue) review literature to understand N cycling and climate change-N interactions and the subsequent impact on agricultural systems. Climate change-N interactions affect agricultural productivity in part through exposure of crops to elevated O3. These interactions will also result in greater emissions of Nr from livestock and cropping systems.
Climate change impacts including drought, heat, and higher rainfall will hinder the ability of farmers to match crop needs with appropriate fertilizer applications, causing additional N releases to water and air, especially if higher fertilizer rates are used to meet climate challenges on crop growth. Increases in temperature can lead to higher rates of precursor emissions and O3
formation. Based on large-scale experimental studies in the US (Heagle 1989; Heck 1989), higher O3 levels will decrease crop growth and yield in a variety of crops (Mills et al. 2007; Emberson et al. 2009). Model simulations of O3 used with these established concentration and yield response relationships predict larger effects for grain crops for 2000 and 2030 (Avnery et al. 2011a, b).
Projected temperature changes will increase NH3 emissions throughout all phases of manure handling (Montes et al. 2009), likely hampering the efforts of livestock industries to improve N use efficiency and causing greater losses of Nr to the environment. These effects can lead to lower production, lower reproduction, and higher mortality (Nardone et al. 2010). As production is
increased elsewhere to make up for this lost productivity, more N will be needed and Nr releases to the environment will increase. Under our current climate, heat stress is estimated to cause an annual economic loss of 1.7–2.4 billion dollars in the US livestock sector (St-Pierre et al. 2003). Flooding and extreme precipitation can also cause major releases of Nr as excess water drains
from fields and through gaseous losses of N2O from wet soils. Increased NO3 − flushed from agricultural systems due to irregular precipitation (Davidson et al. 2012) will pose greater risks to groundwater and drinking water safety. Aquatic ecosystems and resources The loading of N from watersheds and atmospheric deposition has more than doubled the flux of N to estuaries and
coastal oceans since the industrial and agricultural revolutions (Howarth et al. 2011a; Boyer and Howarth 2008). For many US watersheds, the relative increase is far greater, sometimes exceeding an order of magnitude. A review of Nr inputs to various aquatic systems through literature sources and model outputs by Baron et al. (this issue), have shown that nearly all freshwaters
and coastal zones in US are degraded by N pollution, including remote sources in alpine regions such as Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado. Inputs to river systems were estimated with the USGS SPARROW model to be 4.8 Tg N year−1 in 2002 (SAB 2011; Alexander et al. 2008). North American riverine N export to the coastal zone, inlands and drylands was estimated at
approximately 7.0 Tg N year−1 (Boyer et al. 2006). Adverse effects range from eutrophication and acidification to human health risks, biodiversity loss, and economic costs to fisheries and tourism from the increased frequency of harmful algal blooms (Bricker et al. 2007; SAB 2011). Aquatic ecosystems are critically important to N processing because of their ability to transform Nr
into unreactive N2 gas during denitrification (although some N2O is also produced). One estimate suggests one-fifth of global denitrification occurs in freshwater such as lakes and rivers (Seitzinger et al. 2006). Both hydrologic manipulation by human-made infrastructure and climate change alter the landscape connectivity and hydrologic residence times that are essential for
denitrification (Howarth et al. 2011b). The effect of climate change on N processing in fresh and coastal waters will be felt most strongly through precipitation changes. This will speed or slow runoff, thereby influencing the rate Nr is added to aquatic systems and groundwater, and the average time water resides in a body of water such as a reservoir, a process that aids N removal.
Other impacts include: More extreme precipitation events will flush fertilizer or manure into streams or groundwater. Freshwater bodies such as lakes will have less time to process and reduce excess N before it travels further downstream or is transported into the atmosphere. Algal blooms, which are linked to nutrient enrichment and warm waters (Heisler et al. 2008), will occur
more frequently. These have been linked to human health impacts, such as swimmers itch, food poisoning, cancer, and paralysis (Johnson et al. 2010). Harmful algal blooms are responsible for massive fish kills and marine mammal kills (Morris 1999). Increasing numbers of studies show correlations between N enrichment in waters and pathogen abundance and diseases of both
humans and wildlife (Johnson et al. 2010). Many mosquitoes that are carriers of diseases like malaria or West Nile Virus and other parasites associated with warm climates or seasons have increased breeding success in waters high in NO3 − (Johnson et al. 2010). American reliance on groundwater for drinking water is expected to increase under future climate change scenarios. In
addition, there will likely be increases in costs for treating drinking water to avoid exposure to NO3 −, which contributes to the formation of N-nitroso compounds associated with cancer, diabetes, and reproductive problems such as premature birth (Ward et al. 2005). At present, approximately 1.2 million Americans use private, shallow groundwater wells in areas with estimated
NO3 − concentrations between 5 and 10 mg L−1, and about 0.5 million use groundwater in areas with estimated NO3 − >10 mg L−1 (Nolan and Hitt 2006). A recent study showed that the maximum NO3 − contaminant level of 10 mg L−1 was exceeded in 22 % of domestic wells in agricultural areas (Dubrovsky et al. 2010). Model results also suggest that deeper groundwater supplies
may be contaminated in the future as NO3 − in shallow groundwater migrates downward and is slow to respond to changes in management (Nolan and Hitt 2006; Exner et al. 2010; Howden et al. 2010). Biodiversity Biodiversity loss is caused by loss of habitat, overexploitation, invasive species, climate change, and pollution, including N pollution (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment
(MEA) 2005; Hooper et al. 2012). Porter et al. (this issue) review and show that the results from both empirical studies and modeling indicate N pollution coupled with climate change can drive species losses that are greater than those caused by either stressor alone; including favoring the growth of fast-growing non-native species that favor or can adapt to high levels of N. For
example, controlled experiments in California grassland have shown that increased N and CO2, separately and in combination, significantly reduced forb diversity (Zavaleta et al. 2003). In arid ecosystems of southern California, elevated N deposition and changing precipitation patterns have promoted the conversion of native shrub communities to communities dominated by a few
species of annual non-native grasses. A change in biodiversity can also affect ecosystem function, such as increasing fire risk where fuel accumulation was previously rare (Rao et al. 2010). Earlier snowmelt in high elevation sites has caused earlier starts to the growing season, increasing the exposure of some plants to killing frosts (Inouye 2008). Excess N deposition has been
associated with greater frost sensitivity in conifer species (Perkins et al. 2000). The combination of more frequent frosts and greater plant sensitivity to those frosts can cause greater die-off of those species. Some estuaries, such as the New York harbor estuary, have experienced more occurrences of algal blooms and become more eutrophic. In New York, this is due to less winter
snowpack in the Adirondack Mountains, which has increased the amount of time water resides in the estuary over the summer and decreases N flushing (Howarth et al. 1999). In addition, the St. Lawrence Estuary and Gulf of St. Lawrence have also become hypoxic in recent years, as their bottom waters now come more from the deep Atlantic water and less from the Labrador
Current (Gilbert et al. 2005; Howarth et al. 2011a). Moreover, due to greater stratification, productivity in the Dead Zone area in the Gulf of Mexico has become co-limited by phosphorus (P), causing less N uptake, more Nr loss in coastal environments, and greater transport of Nr to deeper waters (Sylvan et al. 2006; Donner and Scavia 2007). Air pollution and human health Nitrogen
pollution plays an important role in air quality and the resulting impacts on human health (Peel et al. this issue). Emissions of Nr released into the atmosphere from agriculture, industry, and urban areas contribute to high levels of fine particulate matter (PM2.5), ground-level O3, and NO x in the air we breathe and can cause premature death and a variety of serious health effects
(US-EPA 2006, 2008, 2009). In addition, NO x is a key component of O3 creation in the lower atmosphere, which affects air quality for both human health and crop productivity. Changes in temperature and precipitation patterns are projected to both lengthen the O3 season and intensify high O3 episodes in some areas. Recent studies have provided evidence that the adverse health
consequences of ambient O3 pollution increase when temperatures are higher (Jacob and Winner 2009). A longer O3 season could result in O3 exposure overlapping the spring and fall respiratory viral and asthma seasons. In addition, there is evidence that O3 and other pollutants can enhance the susceptibility to and the severity of respiratory infections and increase sensitization to
allergens (Chauhan et al. 2003; Ciencewicki and Jaspers 2007; Rusznak et al. 1996). Other climate-related changes may increase the atmospheric release of N-containing air pollution precursors and reactants by impacting wildfire regimes, emissions from soil, and volatile organic carbon (VOC) emissions from terrestrial ecosystems. Increases in climate-induced anthropogenic NO x
emissions are more likely during the summer, when extreme O3 events are most common and when O3 formation is most sensitive to NO x emissions (e.g., Jacob 1999; Liao et al. 2010; Weaver et al. 2009). The impact of climate change on PM2.5 levels is less clear than for O3. While climate-induced severe air stagnation events can lead to increased pollutant levels, PM2.5 formation
is expected to decrease in areas where rainfall is expected to increase and/or become extended. Higher temperatures will also shift the thermodynamic equilibrium away from nitric acid combining with NH3 to form the ammonium nitrate (NH4NO3) aerosol, leading to lower levels of that aerosol product (Stelson and Seinfeld 1982; Dawson et al. 2007; Mahmud et al. 2010).
Accordingly, the impact that climate change will have on PM2.5 will likely vary regionally. Vulnerability to the joint impacts of N-related air pollutants and global climate change will reflect the non-uniform distribution of human exposures (Morello-Frosch et al. 2011). Furthermore, vulnerability to the impact of both air pollution and temperature is greater in the absence of air
conditioning, which has been shown to prevent or reduce infiltration of many ambient air pollutants indoors as well as to affect vulnerability to heat waves. This vulnerability has been shown to covary with socioeconomic status, education, poverty and race, social isolation, age, and pre-existing diseases (e.g., diabetes; Reid et al. 2009). Although some components of air quality have
been improving in the US and are expected to improve further as NO x emissions decrease due to current control programs, in a warmer world, larger reductions in NO x will be needed to achieve the same reductions of ozone due to the “climate penalty” (Wu et al. 2008). Air pollution may worsen even if current regulations continue to reduce NO x emissions.

Potential mitigation solutions

Reducing N pollution can be used as a lever to avert or slow impending climate impacts . Policies
aimed at improving N use efficiencies in agriculture and reducing emissions from transportation and energy sectors, would have
multiple interacting benefits for climate mitigation and for minimizing climate change impacts on crop
productivity, air and water quality, biodiversity, and human health risks (Townsend et al. 2012). To date, the greatest
success has been through the Clean Air Act enforcement, which has dramatically reduced industrial and transportation NO x emissions from
smokestack and combustion sources.

In addition, the opportunities for further reductions are greatest in agricultural systems , since its use of N is
often inefficient . Applying current practices and technologies could reduce Nr pollution from farm and livestock operations by 30–50 %
(Robertson and Vitousek 2009; Davidson et al. 2012). They include managing fertilizer timing, optimizing fertilizer use, and implementing
wetlands, wood chip trenches, cover crops, and streamside vegetation to mitigate excess N released into the environment. While agriculture is
the major source of N pollution in the US and worldwide, there is little national awareness of the connection between agricultural activities and
human health that would spur effective regulatory action. Outside of N pollution hotspots like the Chesapeake Bay or Gulf of Mexico, which
have borne economic costs to their fisheries, there has been little political will to improve agricultural management and reduce agricultural
releases. As efforts to reduce N pollution are not as nationally politicized as the climate debate, focusing on reducing Nr from
agriculture , with its co-benefits for reducing human health risks, could offer promise .
Emphasizing the damage costs of Nr on clean air, safe drinking water and fisheries could build the public will and support for funding federal
agricultural conservation programs to extensively reduce N releases. A recent EPA study by Compton et al. (2011) showed that the human
health costs of NO x releases are about $23 per kilogram. Looking at coastal eutrophication, the cost of fisheries decline in the Gulf of Mexico is
estimated to be $56 per kilogram of excess Nr released. Most importantly, prevention costs were found to be far less than the total costs of the
resulting pollution, with current efforts in Chesapeake Bay to prevent and reduce N loads into the Bay ranging from $8 to $15 per kilogram.

Clearly, action is needed, as reducing Nr releases from all sectors will almost certainly help slow the rate
of climate change over the next century.

Perturbations to both climate and the N cycle will cause multiple stressors to ecosystem function and
human health that are likely to be additive or synergistic . Although our knowledge of those interactions is incomplete, we
know a great deal about mitigation of climate change and mitigation of excess N in the environment. As with climate change, political and
economic impediments often stand in the way of mitigating releases of excess N to the environment (Davidson et al. 2012). However, we

demonstrate in this special issue of Biogeochemistry that policies aimed at improving national N use efficiencies (NUE)
would: (i) benefit the US economy on the production side; (ii) reduce social damage costs; and (iii) help avoid some major
climate change risks in the future .
2AC
ADV---Concentration
 IL---AT: Bioterror Defense
Bioterror defense doesn’t apply.
Murali 19, PhD in Microbiology (Jayanth, “The threat of agroterrorism,” Deccan Chronicle, Lexis)
Agro-terrorism is an issue that compels considerable attention than it is being allotted at present. A low-cost agro terror attack could be an
extremely devastating way of destroying our economy. Agro terrorism is an aspect of bioterrorism whose goal is agricultural sabotage.
Compared to bioterror, agroterror is appallingly easy. Access to these hazardous pathogens is
straightforward , as we can get them from infected animals in many parts of the world, and agent dissemination is simple
and could take place in a variety of venues. Terrorists have a vast choice of the bioagents, bulk of which are
environmentally sturdy and which can easily be smuggled into any country with no vaccination programs being focussed
on them. The food chain offers an excellent route for inflicting human casualties. Most animal and plant
pathogens are non infectious to humans, which makes it easier for terrorists to handle and work with.
Livestock is the primary vector for pathogenic transmission; there being no weaponisation impediment to overcome.
Terrorists or even lone wolves could, in theory, acquire and use this kind of agent more easily than other
biological agents that are pathogenic to humans . A group or an individual may not need laboratories to
acquire these agents. Many of these are non-pathogenic to human beings. We do not have a strategy in case of an act of agroterrorism
because we do not seem to expect one despite facing a significant threat we are still to take suitable action.
ADV---Environment
AT: RIGHTS PIC
 2AC---AT: Regulation CP/Rights PIC---TL
‘Vest’ means to grant a particular right.
Websters 22, (Merriam Websters Dictionary; “Vest”; 11th Ed.)
1a: to grant or endow with a particular authority, right , or property

For animals, rights are vested UPON the existence of a legal duty---the counterplan is
that legal duty.
Stucki 20, *Dr. Saskia Stucki is a Senior Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative
Public Law and International Law (Heidelberg), where she is working on her Habilitation project on
Climate Mainstreaming; (June 26th, 2020, “Towards a Theory of Legal Animal Rights: Simple and
Fundamental Rights”, Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, Volume 40, Issue 3, Autumn 2020, Pages 533–560,
https://doi.org/10.1093/ojls/gqaa007)
A. Extracting ‘Animal Welfare Rights’ from Animal Welfare Laws

(i) The simple argument from correlativity

Existing animal welfare laws are not framed in the language of rights and do not codify any explicit animal rights. They do, however, impose on
people legal duties designed to protect animals—duties that demand some behaviour that is beneficial to the welfare of animals. Some
commentators contend that correlative (claim) rights are thereby conferred upon animals as the
beneficiaries of such duties.62 This view is consistent with, and, indeed, the logical conclusion of, an interest-theoretical analysis.63
Recall that rights are essentially legally protected interests of intrinsically valuable individuals, and that a
claim right is the ‘ position of normative protectedness that consists in being owed a … legal duty’ .64
Under existing animal welfare laws, some goods of animals are legally protected interests in exactly this sense of ultimately valuable interests
that are protected through the imposition of duties on others. However, the inference from existing animal welfare duties to the existence of
correlative ‘animal welfare rights’ appears to rely on a somewhat simplistic notion of correlativity, along the lines of ‘where there is a duty there
is a right’.65 Two objections in particular may be raised against the view that beneficial duties imposed by animal welfare laws are sufficient for
creating corresponding legal rights in animals.

A duty on humans is a right.

Burdon 10, PhD student and sessional teacher at the University of Adelaide, School of Law (Peter,
“The Rights of Nature: Reconsidered,”
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228223796_The_Rights_of_Nature_Reconsidered)

In this box, every vertical represents a correlation and every diagonal an opposition. Thus, if a landowner has a right to a piece of
land, non-owners have a duty to respect this right. Here the focus of the right is not individual entitlement, but on the
surrounding relationship. Further, if nature is recognised as having the right to exist, a duty is placed against
human beings who no longer have permission to act in a certain manner . Beyond this, it is difficult to see how
nature can engage with the concept of rights. Indeed, in support of Rolston’s critique, Hohfeld’s table illustrates the conceptual difficulty of
importing or recognising full legal rights in nature. It is clearly nonsense to speak of nature holding privileges, powers, immunities or the
corresponding categories such as duties. Nature can only enter this framework as a ‘right-holder’.

Duties vested in humans to protect animals are legal claim-rights for animals.
Spaak 20, *Torben Spaak is Professor in jurisprudence at the Department of Law, Stockholm University
since 2013; (2020, “Animal Law: Human Duties or Animal Rights?”,
https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1595455/FULLTEXT01.pdf)
I conclude that what is of interest to animals is not their own legal positions, because they do not have any, but how they are treated, and such
treatment is precisely what would be the content of animal claim-rights against humans. If we thus focus on claim-rights, and if we adopt the

interest-theory of rights, we can say that an animal is a holder of a legal claim-right to be treated
well if, and only if , its interest in being treated well is protected by a legal duty on the part of humans
to treat them well, and that animals are therefore in this minimal sense legal subjects. As we have seen, however, such a claim-right
would be nothing more than a reflex of the relevant duty, and this means that having such a right – in addition to simply being protected by the
relevant human duty – would not be useful to animals.

Claim-rights can be positive or negative.

Stucki 20, *Dr. Saskia Stucki is a Senior Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative
Public Law and International Law (Heidelberg), where she is working on her Habilitation project on
Climate Mainstreaming; (June 26th, 2020, “Towards a Theory of Legal Animal Rights: Simple and
Fundamental Rights”, Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, Volume 40, Issue 3, Autumn 2020, Pages 533–560,
https://doi.org/10.1093/ojls/gqaa007)
(i) Animal claim rights

To have a right in the strictest sense is ‘to have a claim to something and against someone’, the claim
right necessarily corresponding with that person’s correlative duty towards the right holder to do or
not to do something.19 This type of right would take the form of animals holding a claim to something
against, for example, humans or the state who bear correlative duties to refrain from or perform certain
actions. Such legal animal rights could be either negative rights (correlative to negative duties) to non-interference
or positive rights (correlative to positive duties) to the provision of some good or service.20 The structure of claim rights
seems especially suitable for animals, because these are passive rights that concern the conduct of others (the duty bearers) and are simply
enjoyed rather than exercised by the right holder.21 Claim rights would therefore assign to animals a purely passive position that is specified by
the presence and performance of others’ duties towards animals, and would not require any actions by the animals themselves.

That means the counterplan’s regulations vindicate claim-rights.

Spaak 20, *Torben Spaak is Professor in jurisprudence at the Department of Law, Stockholm University
since 2013; (2020, “Animal Law: Human Duties or Animal Rights?”,
https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1595455/FULLTEXT01.pdf)

A has a
On a Hohfeldian approach, we may thus say that, under the will-theory, A has a claim-right vis-à-vis B that B do (or not do) X if, and only if, the function of the associated elements is to confer autonomy on A over B’s duty, whereas under the interest-theory,

claim-right vis-à-vis B that B do (or not do) X if, and only if , the function of the associated elements is to
protect the right-holder’s interest by regulating B’s duty ; that under the will-theory, A has a liberty-right vis-à-vis B to do (or not do) X) if, and only if, the function of the associated

elements is to confer autonomy on A over B’s no-claim that A not do (or do) X, whereas under the interest-theory, A has a liberty-right vis-à-vis B to do (or not do) X if, and only if, the function of the associated elements is to protect A’s interest by regulating B’s no-claim; that under the
will-theory, A has a power- right vis-à-vis B to change a legal position, LP, if, and only if, the function of the associated elements is to confer autonomy on A over B’s liability vis-à-vis A to have LP changed by A, whereas under the interest-theory, A has a power-right vis-à-vis B to change LP
if, and only if, the function of the associated elements is to protect A’s interest by regulating B’s liability; and that under the will-theory, A has an immunity-right vis-à-vis B as regards B’s changing LP if, and only if, the function of the associated elements is to confer autonomy on A over B’s
disability vis-à-vis A to change LP, whereas under the interest-theory, A has an immunity-right vis-à-vis B as regards B’s changing LP if, and only if, the function of the associated elements is to protect A’s interest by regulating B’s disability.
That’s true EVEN IF the counterplan doesn’t say the words ‘legal rights’.
Stucki 20, *Dr. Saskia Stucki is a Senior Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative
Public Law and International Law (Heidelberg), where she is working on her Habilitation project on
Climate Mainstreaming; (June 26th, 2020, “Towards a Theory of Legal Animal Rights: Simple and
Fundamental Rights”, Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, Volume 40, Issue 3, Autumn 2020, Pages 533–560,
https://doi.org/10.1093/ojls/gqaa007)

In conclusion, existing animal welfare laws could indeed be analysed as comprising unwritten animal welfare ‘

rights’ as implicit correlatives of the explicit animal welfare duties imposed on others The essential .

feature of legal rules conferring rights is that they specifically aim at protecting individual interests or
goods whether they do so expressis verbis or not is irrelevant
— .77 Even so, in order for a right to be an actual (rather than a potential or merely postulated) legal right, it

should at least be legally recognised (if not claimable and enforceable),78 which is determined by the applicable legal rules. In the absence of unequivocal wording, whether a legal norm confers unwritten rights on animals becomes a matter of legal interpretation. While theorists can
show that a rights-based approach lies within the bounds of a justifiable interpretation of the law, an actual, valid legal right hardly comes to exist by the mere fact that some theorists claim it exists. For that to happen, it seems instrumental that some public authoritative body, notably a
court, recognises it as such. That is, while animals’ existing legal protections may already provide for all the ingredients constitutive of rights, it takes a court to actualise this potential, by authoritatively interpreting those legal rules as constituting rights of animals. However, because
courts, with a few exceptions, have not done so thus far, it seems fair to say that unwritten animal rights are not (yet) legally recognised in practice and remain a mostly theoretical possibility for now.79
AT: DA---SPILLOVER
 2AC---AT: Spillover DA---TL

No link:
1---the plan does not grant standing NOR personhood status. Claim-rights are passive
rights, and animals don’t actively enforce it.
Stucki 20, *Dr. Saskia Stucki is a Senior Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative
Public Law and International Law (Heidelberg), where she is working on her Habilitation project on
Climate Mainstreaming; (June 26th, 2020, “Towards a Theory of Legal Animal Rights: Simple and
Fundamental Rights”, Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, Volume 40, Issue 3, Autumn 2020, Pages 533–560,
https://doi.org/10.1093/ojls/gqaa007)
(i) Animal claim rights

To have a right in the strictest sense is ‘to have a claim to something and against someone’ , the claim right
necessarily corresponding with that person’s correlative duty towards the right holder to do or not to do
something.19 This type of right would take the form of animals holding a claim to something against, for
example, humans or the state who bear correlative duties to refrain from or perform certain actions . Such legal
animal rights could be either negative rights (correlative to negative duties) to non-interference or positive rights
(correlative to positive duties) to the provision of some good or service.20 The structure of claim rights seems especially
suitable for animals, because these are passive rights that concern the conduct of others (the duty bearers) and are
simply enjoyed rather than exercised by the right holder.21 Claim rights would therefore assign to
animals a purely passive position that is specified by the presence and performance of others’ duties towards
animals, and would not require any actions by the animals themselves .

Legal rights for animals are distinct from personhood.

Tudor 10, PhD, Professor of Philosophy (Steven, “Some Implications for Legal Personhood of Extending
Legal Rights to Non-Human Animals,” Australian Journal of Legal Philosophy, 35)

Some non-human animals (whom I shall simply call ‘animals’ for convenience) are already the beneficiaries of various laws
that impose duties on humans (and indeed artificial persons) not to harm them. Just one example is found in the
Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act 1986 (Vic), s 9, which makes it a criminal offence to commit an act of
cruelty upon an animal. However, from my brief reading ofthe law, there appears to be no private action available (for example, in
tort) whereby the animal victim of cruelty could seek its own legal remedy in the absence of criminal prosecution. Animals thus remain merely
passive beneficiaries of the duties imposed on others. As Naffine notes, 2 Cass Sunstein argues3 that by being the beneficiaries of
such legal duties, animals already enjoy legal rights of a sort. I think he is right, but is that minimal sort of right enough
for legal personhood? On one view of legal personhood, the holder of any right, no mater how limited that right is, will, by definition,
be a legal person. This strikes me, however, as insufficient . Legal personhood, to my ear at least, requires more, namely

the legal capacity to seek enforcement of one’s right . That is to say, merely being the beneficiary of another’s duty does
not seem to amount to legal personhood if the beneficiary lacks standing to bring legal actions in its own name to enforce its rights.
2---judges won’t interpret the plan as granting animals standing.
Kobil 15, J.D. Candidate, The Dickinson School of Law @ Pennsylvania State University (Kelsey, “When
it Comes to Standing, Two Legs are Better than Four.” 120 Dick. L. Rev. 621, Lexis)

1. State Animal Welfare Statutes Do Not Grant Animals Standing To File Law suits

State animal welfare statutes protect animals from wantonly cruel and malicious treatment . 74 Despite the
protection afforded to animals under these statutes, animals' security and welfare often rests on the position that animals are
property . 75 Therefore, the monetary penalties assigned for violating the cruelty statutes reflect the
animals' status as property. 76 Furthermore, animal welfare is continually disregarded when that welfare conflicts
with humans' rights . For example, in Alabama, the same provision that protects animals from inhumane treatment also provides a defense for "destroying" an animal that trespasses onto growing crops.
77 Many states view farming, fishing, and hunting as valuable to humanity, and likewise exempt these activities from prosecution under animal cruelty statutes. 78 In some states, these statutes go as far as requiring a cat or dog
owner to pay a livestock owner for all damages the cat or dog caused to the livestock, even if the livestock owner ultimately killed that cat or dog. 79 Most importantly, although these statutes afford limited protection for animals,

Animal rights statutes were

none of these statutes include provisions that grant animals standing to file a lawsuit on their own behalf. 2. Congress Has Not Granted Animals Standing to File Lawsuits

not passed with the sole purpose of protecting animals . 80 The federal legislature passed the Endangered Species Act 81 (" ESA ") and the Marine
Mammal Protection Act 82 (" MMPA ") to help avoid the extinction of animal species because the absence of certain animal species would disadvantage mankind. 83 These two
acts' legislative histories further reveal that Congress did not intend for the animals protected under either act to have rights themselves, but rather recognized that certain animals have specific value to humans. 84 Although these

statutes were passed with the goal of maintaining diversity among nature, both statutes place humans' needs above animals' needs. 85 Neither statute provides animals with any
enforceable claim against humans or the government . 86 Likewise, Congress stated that animals should be protected because they are potential resources, and "it is
in the best interest of mankind to minimize the losses of genetic variations." 87 Additionally, neither the ESA nor the MMPA contain any language that would be consistent with a concern for animal safety, harm, or welfare. 88
Under both statutes, animals are protected purely for the resulting benefit to humans. Although the Animal Welfare Act 89 ("AWA") protects countless animals from harm and abuse, the AWA also explicitly provides for the
regulation and use of animals in research. 90 Furthermore, the AWA plainly permits animal suffering for necessary research, as long as this suffering is minimized. 91 Much like state animal cruelty statutes, the ESA, the MMPA, and
the AWA were never intended to place animal welfare on equal footing with human rights. 92 Consequently, the AWA contains no language that explicitly grants animals standing to file lawsuits by claiming a violation of the Act. 93
Because the ESA, the MMPA, and the AWA were passed with human interests in mind, animal rights activists have been largely unsuccessful in filing lawsuits under these statutes. 94 3. State Courts Are Reluctant to Broadly

Interpret Animal Cruelty Statutes, Even When the Issue of Standing Is Not Raised One area where courts have narrowly interpreted the afforded protection in
animal cruelty statutes is the scientific research field. Although some state legislatures have explicitly exempted scientific research from generic animal cruelty statutes, 95 courts in other states have
read this exemption into generally worded animal cruelty statutes. 96 In New Jersey Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals v. Board of Education, 97 the court found that activities with educational and scientific purposes,
such as research for a high school science fair, possessed "redeeming qualities," and therefore would not be classified as wantonly cruel acts under the state's animal cruelty statute. 98 Courts' interpretations of state animal cruelty
statutes demonstrate that courts often refuse to place animals' welfare above human needs and scientific progress, and importantly, none of the abovementioned statutes contain explicit provisions granting animals standing. 4.

Federal Courts Are Reluctant to Enforce Legislation When Animals Are Named as Plaintiffs In federal legislation such as the ESA, specific statutory provisions allow for
private citizens to file lawsuits based on ESA violations in a "citizen suit." 99 Despite this seemingly
straightforward statutory permission to file lawsuits on an animal's behalf, citizens have still been denied standing to do so. 100 Courts
often express that humans have difficulty meeting standing's injury-in-fact requirement in citizen suits. 101 Animal rights activists
hail two recent court cases as triumphs for the animal personhood movement. 102 While at first glance these cases seem to be massive victories for animal rights activists, both cases are shallow successes at best. In Palila v. Hawaii
Dep't of Land & Natural Resources, 103 the Ninth Circuit appeared to grant a bird legal status to file suit under the ESA, 104 and in Mount Graham Red Squirrel v. Madigan, 105 the Ninth Circuit allowed a lawsuit under the ESA on a
squirrel's behalf. 106 Neither case specifically addressed the standing issue, presumably because the issue was not raised. 107 In Mount Graham Squirrel, animal rights activists filed the claim under no pretense that a squirrel was
filing the suit. 108 In Palila, the Ninth Circuit stated that a finch-billed bird had legal standing to file a lawsuit, yet the court provided no justification for its departure from precedent. 109 Despite these two successes for animal
rights activists, the Ninth Circuit's most recent decision on this issue had the opposite outcome. In Cetacean Community v. Bush, 110 the Ninth Circuit dismissed an attempt by the entire population of the world's whales, dolphins,
and porpoises to bring a claim in federal court. 111 The Ninth Circuit held that the statements in Palila about standing were "nonbinding dicta," and that the bird's standing was never at issue in that case. 112 The court determined
that the Palila court's statement that the bird "winged its way into federal court as a plaintiff in its own right," was unnecessary and little more than "rhetorical flourishes." 113 The Ninth Circuit further examined the standing issue
in Cetacean Community. The court noted that it is "obvious that an animal cannot function as plaintiff in the same manner as a juridically competent human being." 114 The Ninth Circuit stated that Congress may pass legislation
that authorizes an animal to sue on its own behalf, but after analyzing the ESA, the MMPA, and the National Environmental Policy Act, 115 the Ninth Circuit determined that Congress has not yet granted animals the ability to sue in
their own name. 116 Ultimately, the Ninth Circuit agreed with the First Circuit, stating that if Congress and the President desire to take the "extraordinary" step of permitting animals to file a lawsuit, they should do so explicitly and
clearly. 117 In addition to Mt. Graham Red Squirrel, Palila, and Cetacean Community, two additional courts have refused to grant animals standing to file lawsuits under the MMPA and the ESA. In Citizens to End Animal Suffering &
Exploitation v. New England Aquarium, 118 the court held that the MMPA does not authorize suits to be brought on animals' behalf. 119 The court refused to permit an animal standing to file a lawsuit in the absence of a clear
statutory statement. 120 Similarly, in Hawaiian Crow v. Lujan, 121 the court found that the ESA authorized suits brought by any person. 122 Animal rights activists had attempted to name a species of bird as plaintiff, and the court
ordered the bird's name to be removed from the complaint. 123 The standing doctrine has consistently proven to be the largest impediment facing animal rights activists. 124 5. International Courts Have Not Granted Animals
Standing to File Lawsuits Although court decisions from other nations may not directly impact legal judgments in the United States, evaluating trends and verdicts from abroad can provide insight into legal issues at home. Recently,
a court in Argentina was presented with a habeas corpus petition on an orangutan's behalf. 125 The decision was inaccurately reported in the media as having granted basic legal rights to the orangutan. 126 Even though Wise and
the NRP initially applauded the Argentine decision, 127 upon closer review they realized, and admitted, that the opinion did not grant animals the rights that the media had initially purported. 128 In actuality, the case was simply
remanded to a different court that lacks the power to issue writs of habeas corpus, and that court will view the case through an animal cruelty lens. 129 Furthermore, it is likely that the opinion's animal rights language was merely
dicta. 130 Accordingly, animal rights activists will have difficulty using the Argentine case to further their quest to grant animals legal personhood status. III. Courts and Legislatures Should not Grant Animals Standing to File

Lawsuits A. The Common Law Treatment of Animals Should Not Be Drastically Altered By a Rogue Court The courts and the legislature consistently reiterate that
animals do not have standing to sue . 131 Although in Palila the Ninth Circuit granted a bird the ability to file suit on its own behalf, 132 in Cetacean Community, the same circuit later
unequivocally rejected and criticized Palila's dicta that purported to grant animals standing. 133 While there is a third Ninth Circuit case falling in between Palila and Cetacean Community that allowed a successful ESA claim on a
squirrel's behalf, the animal was not named as a plaintiff, and the standing issue was never raised. 134 he animal rights movement, particularly the animal personhood movement, is a liberal movement within Western tradition.
135 Therefore, if the Ninth Circuit, a widely regarded liberal circuit, 136 refuses to grant animals standing to file suit, other courts should follow the Ninth Circuit's lead. Additionally, the current cases in New York provide future
courts with three different precedents to follow. 137 When Wise and the NRP filed suit on behalf of chimpanzees in New York, the three cases were filed in different departments, and each court reached a decision on distinctive
grounds. 138 Although all three courts denied the petitions for habeas corpus, the most crushing blow 139 to the animal personhood movement was delivered by the New York Supreme Court, Appellate Division, Third Judicial
Department ("Third Judicial Department"). 140 The Third Judicial Department explicitly declined to declare that animals are persons, stating "a chimpanzee is not a "person' entitled to the rights and protections afforded by the writ
of habeas corpus." 141 Importantly, the court looked to animals' treatment in the history and tradition of the common law and determined that "animals have never been considered persons for the purposes of habeas corpus
relief, nor have they been explicitly considered persons or entities capable of asserting rights for the purpose of state or federal law." 142 The Third Judicial Department not only recognized that animals are not persons in the
framework of habeas corpus relief, but also that animals are not persons capable of possessing or asserting rights in any legal context. 143 Future courts should find the Third Judicial Department's decision persuasive when
deciding whether to grant animals legal personhood status, particularly because the decision clearly addresses and holds that animals cannot possess rights. Furthermore, courts should recognize that no animal welfare statute
currently grants animals standing to sue, 144 and extensive case law exists where courts have deferred to long-standing legislative and public policy guidelines maintaining that animals are property. 145 Likewise, courts and
legislatures have continually reaffirmed that animals do not have standing to sue. 146 If state courts , the Ninth Circuit , and the f ederal g overnment are unwilling
to extend the standing doctrine to animals, future courts faced with this issue should also refuse to grant standing to animals. To do otherwise would be a
drastic departure from law and precedent .

A---state anti-cruelty laws.

Sunstein 02, *Cass R. Sunstein Karl N. Llewellyn Distinguished Service Professor of Jurisprudence, Law
School and Department of
Political Science, University of Chicago; (2002, “The Rights of Animals: A Very Short Primer”,
https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1567&context=law_and_economics)
II. What Animal Rights Might Entail

A. The Status Quo

If we understand “rights” to be legal protection against harm, then many animals already do have
rights , and the idea of animal rights is not at all controversial . And if we take “rights” to mean a moral claim to such
protection, there is general agreement that animals have rights of certain kinds. Of course some people, including Descartes, have argued that
animals are like robots and lack emotions -- and that people should be allowed to treat them however they choose. 8 But to most people,
including sharp critics of the animal rights movement, this position seems unacceptable. Almost everyone agrees that people should not be able
to torture animals or to engage in acts of cruelty against them. And indeed, state law contains a wide range of protections
against cruelty and neglect. We can build on existing law to define a simple, minimal position in favor of animal rights: The law should
prevent acts of cruelty to animals.

In the United States, state anticruelty laws go well beyond prohibiting beating , injuring, and the like, and
impose affirmative duties on people with animals in their care. New York contains a representative
set of provisions. Criminal penalties are imposed on anyone who transports an animal in a cruel or
inhuman manner , or in such a way as to subject it to torture or suffering, conditions that can come about through neglect.9 People
who transport an animal on railroads or cars are required to allow the animal out for rest, feeding, and water
every five hours.10 Nonowners who have impounded or confined an animal are obliged to provide good air, water, shelter, and food.11
Those who abandon an animal in public places , including a pet, face criminal penalties .12 A separate provision
forbids people from torturing, beating, maiming, or killing any animal, and also requires people to provide adequate food and drink.13 Indeed it
is generally a crime not to provide necessary sustenance, food, water, shelter, and protection from severe weather.14 New York, like most
states, forbids overworking an animal, or using the animal for work when she or he is not physically fit.15 Compare in this regard
the unusually protective California statute, which imposes criminal liability on negligent as well as intentional
overworking, overdriving, or torturing of animals.16 “Torture” is defined not in its ordinary language sense, but to include any act
or omission “whereby unnecessary or unjustified physical pain or suffering is caused or permitted.”17

B---Animal Welfare Act.

Sunstein 06, *Cass R. Sunstein Karl N. Llewellyn Distinguished Service Professor of Jurisprudence, Law
School and Department of Political Science, University of Chicago; (2006, “STANDING FOR ANIMALS
(WITH NOTES ON ANIMAL RIGHTS)”, https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?
article=12461&context=journal_articles)
INTRODUCTION
In the last three decades, the protection of animals has become a pervasive goal of federal statutory law.
However controversial the idea of "animal rights" in theory, federal law has begun to recognize a wide range of animal
rights in practice. Indeed, Congress has enacted more than fifty statutes designed to protect the well-being of animals.
Of these, the most prominent is the Animal Welfare Act ( AWA ),2 which contains a wide range of safeguards
against cruelty and mistreatment, and which creates an incipient bill of rights for animals If vigorously
enforced, the AWA, alongside other enactments at the state and federal levels, would prevent a wide range of abusive practices. As so often,
however, there is a large gap between statutory text and real-world implementation. Many people have criticized the national government's
enforcement efforts under these statutes, contending that the executive branch has violated the law by issuing weak and inadequate
regulations, making the relevant statutes symbolic rather than real.' These complaints raise a central and largely unexplored question, one that
will inevitably increase in prominence over time: Under what circumstances will standing be available to those, human and non- human, who
seek to challenge the unlawful mistreatment of animals 6

C---fifty other federal laws.

Sunstein 06, *Cass R. Sunstein Karl N. Llewellyn Distinguished Service Professor of Jurisprudence, Law
School and Department of Political Science, University of Chicago; (2006, “STANDING FOR ANIMALS
(WITH NOTES ON ANIMAL RIGHTS )”, https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?
article=12461&context=journal_articles)
B. Federal Law: Species, Mammals, Horses, Others

In the last several decades, a remarkable number of federal statutes have been enacted to protect species,
animals, and animal welfare . Over fifty such statutes are now in place,39 and the number is growing . The
most famous of these statutes is the Endangered Species Act,' designed to protect threatened or endangered
species against extinction. The act, which is enforced publicly rather than privately, raises a number of knotty standing problems.4' A
great deal of litigation has involved the meaning of the Marine Mammal Protection Act,42 which imposes a
selective moratorium on the taking and importation of marine mammals and marine mammal products.43 A particular
provision outlaws commercial whaling.' It also requires the Secretary of the Interior to issue regulations to protect marine mammals from
unlawful activity. 5

Federal law contains a number of more specialized provisions. An important statute is specifically designed to
protect horses from cruel treatment , and in particular to protect the exploitation of injured horses.' The key statute involving
game parks provides, "no person shall kill any game in said park except under an order from the Secretary of the Interior for the protection of
persons or to protect or prevent the extermination of other animals or birds."47 Another statute is designed to protect the
habitats of migratory birds and mammals, including bears, moose, and wolves in the Norbeck Wildlife
Preserve.48 Federal law imposes a moratorium on the importation of raw and worked ivory to help protect the African elephant.49 It is a
federal crime to shoot birds, fish, or mammals from an aircraft, or to use an aircraft to harass birds, fish, or other animals." It is also a
federal crime to kill or harass wild horses or burros 5 and to possess, sell, buy, or transport any bald or golden eagle, alive
or dead.52 The Secretary of Agriculture is charged with ensuring that the slaughtering of animals is
" humane ,"53 and Congress lists two methods that are designed to ensure "rapid and effective" killing.54
AT: RIGHTS CREEP DA
 2AC---AT: Rights Creep DA

Regulating CAFO’s has marginal effects on the meat industry.

Ikerd 20, *John E. Ikerd is professor emeritus of agricultural economics at the University of Missouri.
He is the author of Sustainable Capitalism, A Return to Common Sense, and Small Farms are Real Farms;
(May 2020, “The Economic Realities of CAFOs”,
https://scholarscircle.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Economic-Realities-of-CAFOs.pdf)

The Economic Reality of Alternatives to CAFOs. CAFO defenders

counter with the claim that most consumers, particularly in the
U.S, will not give up eating meat, milk, and eggs regardless of other concerns . Their defenders claim there are

simply no economically viable alternatives to CAFOs. Again, this is simply not true . As I have explained, the competitive
advantages of CAFOs are short-run economic benefits that are realized primarily by the large corporate
integrators—not by consumers or producers . I personally believe it would be a critical mistake for humanity to abandon
animal agriculture, as animals have an essential role in creating a resilient, regenerative, sustainable agricultural system. As consumers
become increasingly aware of the ecological and social realities of CAFOs, I believe most will be more than willing to pay

somewhat higher prices for animal products in order to mitigate or avoid the risks to public health,
environmental degradation, animal abuse, and social injustices associated with CAFOs .

This immediately raises the question, “How much more would animal products cost if we abandon CAFOs?” Organic,
ecological, biological, biodynamic, and regenerative agriculture, as well as permaculture, holistic
management, and agroecology are some of the most prominent alternatives to industrial agriculture in
general. It’s impossible to answer the question of how much more this diversity of alternatives would cost consumers, but the increase
almost certainly would not be nearly as much as CAFO defenders have led people to believe . The
economic advantages of CAFOs are far more about scale of production , for both contract growers and corporate
processors, than lower costs of production.
The diverse, individualistic, and site-specific nature of the alternatives to industrial farming systems make it very difficult to conduct research
that allows generalized statements about relative economic efficiencies of industrial and sustainable alternatives. One
important
characteristic of the alternatives to CAFOs is alternative livestock and poultry farmers are generally
limited to producing significantly fewer animals than CAFO operation because they are more complex
and challenging to manage. This is true for industrial operations versus sustainable alternatives in general. The resulting
difference in scale of operation is very important at the farm level , but is not particularly important to
consumers at the retail level. The same is true of economic advantages for large processing plants relative to smaller processors.
Costs advantages that are critical to the competitiveness of large-scale processing and distribution are far
less important to consumers .

Some of the alternatives of CAFOs are identified as organic, humanely raised, grass-fed, pasture based, free-range—
reflecting specific consumer concerns . Although research is limited, previous studies have shown that
production costs may actually lower in in some of these alternative systems than in CAFOs. Most of
the “economies of size” in hog production, for xxxvi example, are achieved at scales much smaller than
operations classified by USDA as CAFOs. A study conducted by Iowa State University in 2001 compared costs of feeding
out xxxvii hogs in CAFOs with the costs in non-confinement , deeply bedded hoop house structures. xxxviii This alternative
is a solid-waste system often used to produce organic, humanely raised, and/or hormone and antibiotic free pork. The study indicated a
cost advantage for the hoop house system during summer months but a larger advantage for CAFOs
during the winter . The annual advantage for CAFOs amounted to just under $3.00 per head. Hogs typically are slaughtered at around
285 lb. live weight, which yields about 150 lb. of pork at retail. When the $3.00 advantage for CAFO hogs is spread over 150 retail lbs., it
amounts to about 2 cents per retail pound of pork. Retail pork prices have recently averaged more than $3.00 per lb. ,
meaning a 2 cent difference would amount to less than 1% of retail pork prices.
The primary economic advantage for the CAFO is that an individual operator may be able to produce two or three times more hogs than an alternative hog farmer. The Iowa State research mentioned above indicated about $15.00
per head annual profit for the hoop house operation compared with around $18.00 for the CAFO operation. A hoop house hog producer who markets 2,000 hogs per year, at $15.00 per head profit, would make around $30,000
total profit. The hoop house producer in this case would likely need additional sources of income to make a living. A CAFO operator might be able to produce 5,000 head, and at $18.00 per head profit, would make $90,000 total
profit. Even if a contract CAFO operator received only half of the total, with the rest going to the corporate contractor, the CAFO operator would have a $15,000 advantage over the hoop house operator.

In addition, a contract grower with a corporate production contract would receive an assured positive return per head produced, whereas
independent hoop house producers would risk economic losses from unfavorable market prices. Of course, there would also be a possibility of
greater profits for the hoop house operator. Equally important, the hoop house operation would require management skills that are not
necessary for operators of CAFOs, who pretty much produce by following corporate management instructions. The
important point for
consumers is that even if the lower costs of production for CAFOs were passed on to consumers in
terms of lower pork prices , the advantage for the CAFO operation would amount to less than 2 cents
per retail pound, less than 1% of retail pork prices. Obviously production cost and prices in 2020 are different from those in
the 2001 study. Even if the production cost advantages for CAFOs were twice as large today, the difference

would hardly be noticed at retail, as retail prices are continually fluctuating up and down in
response to changing market conditions.

The same is true of economic advantages for large processing operations . Their continuing defense and support of
CAFOs is a result of their advantages to support larger-scale processing —not cost savings to be passed on to consumers. The economic
efficiency of large processing plants depend on a steady supply of uniform animals or commodities to keep facilities running at optimal capacity.
CAFOs serve this function much more effectively than a large number of independent producers who sell their animals at a variety of open
markets. Again, it is difficult to find recent research on economies of scale in meat processing. Most of the new processing plants have been
large scale, slaughtering and processing 10,000 to 20,000 hogs per day, and few mid- size and smaller size plants are in operation for
comparison.

Based on available research, it’s probably reasonable to assume around $15.00 per head as an economic advantage for a large pork processing
plant over smaller plants that would be needed to accommodate smaller hog producers producing for local or regional markets. xxxix When this
$15.00 cost advantage is spread over 150 retail pounds, it amounts to about 10 cents per pound, or a bit over 3% of retail prices, with average
prices of pork at $3.00 per lb. This $15.00 per head advantage is mere pennies per pound for pork consumers but means $75 million per year
for a plant processing 5 million hogs per year.

Again, it is doubtful if much of this cost advantage is actually passed on to consumers. Even if the figures used
in these two comparisons are off by 50% or more, the economic reality would remain virtually unchanged . CAFOs do
not exist and processing plants are not large simply because the viable alternatives would result in
higher prices for consumers. If consumers were given a clear choice , and understood the consequences of their
choices, I believe most
American consumers would willing pay a few pennies more to help mitigate the risk
to public health, the environment, animal welfare, and quality of life in communities associated with
CAFOs. The economic reality is that CAFOs exist because the current system of animal agriculture is more profitable for the agribusiness
corporations—not because we can’t afford the more resilient, regenerative, sustainable alternatives.
The economy and business confidence are irreparably screwed---things literally can’t
get worse.
Rennison et al. 9/16/22, *Joe Rennison, covers markets and trading at the New York Times; *Karl
Russell is a graphics editor for The New York Times; (September 16th, 2022, “Stocks Slide in One of Wall
Street’s Worst Weeks This Year”, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/16/business/stock-market-
economy.html)

Stocks fell on Friday, ending one of the worst weeks of the year for Wall Street but prompting warnings
that an intractable slump for the global economy is only just beginning.

In the wake of ugly inflation numbers and reeling from the whiplash of another stock market reversal, a
parade of prominent investors and corporate executives made it clear that they believed the worst was
yet to come for the economy and financial markets.

After hitting a low in June, the S&P 500 had rallied more than 17 percent into mid-August, before losing
steam again. This week’s sell-off leaves the index just 5.6 percent above the June low. Friday’s 0.7
percent fall took the index’s weekly loss close to a 5 percent threshold it has breached only three times
this year.

Now, some of the most powerful trading houses in the world , deploying trillions of dollars on behalf of
pension funds, governments and other investors, are warning that there is more pain ahead.

“If you asked me a year ago, ‘What is the worst scenario for financial markets?’ I think things are
now worse than anything we could have imagined ,” said Nicolai Tangen, the head of
Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, the largest of its kind. The fund manages money generated by
Norway’s extensive oil and gas sales and has $1.4 trillion invested around the world.

Friday’s drop came after General Electric’s chief financial officer, Carolina Dybeck Happe, bemoaned
lingering supply chain pressures at a conference on Thursday, and the logistics giant FedEx warned of a
global slump that would hurt its profits. Together, they added to a series of corporate alarms that have
rattled confidence in the outlook for the economy . G.E.’s stock price fell 3.7 percent on Friday, while
FedEx cratered more than 21 percent. FedEx’s chief executive, Raj Subramaniam, speaking to CNBC on
Thursday, predicted a “worldwide recession.”

The fall on Friday followed the S&P 500’s worst single-day decline since June 2020, a 4.3 percent slide on
Tuesday, that came after the widely watched Consumer Price Index shattered hopes that inflation had
begun to ease. The report reignited concerns that the Federal Reserve could push the United States into
a recession as it looks to combat rising prices.

The economic concern was also evident in other corners of the financial markets . Corporate debt
prices fell and oil prices notched a third straight week of losses.

Mr. Tangen said that he didn’t think there was an investment area anywhere in the world likely to
make money in the near future. “That’s the really depressing thing,” he said.
The central issue worrying investors is how far the Fed will need to go as it looks to break the cycle of
inflation hitting the American economy. Prices began to rise last year as a result of the reopening of
businesses and pent-up consumer demand, and went up further as energy prices spiked after Russia’s
invasion of Ukraine. Tuesday’s inflation report showed it has now taken on a pervasive nature, amplified
by companies facing pressure from workers to increase wages as they grapple with the rising cost of
living.

“What we are faced with is inflation expectations that are pretty embedded ,” said Seth Bernstein, the
president and chief executive of AllianceBernstein, a fund manager with more than $600 billion in
assets. A recession is the only way to “break” them, he said.

The Fed’s primary tool to control inflation is its benchmark interest rate, which it has already raised from
near zero in March to a range of 2.25 percent to 2.5 percent. It is expected to raise rates again next
week.

Investors have raised their forecasts for how much the Fed will need to increase interest rates and how
long the central bank will keep them high, foretelling more pain for companies, lower stock prices and
higher unemployment.

Prices in futures markets that indicate forecasts for interest rates show an expected increase of three-
quarters of a percentage point to be administered by the Fed when the central bank’s officials meet next
week. Anything higher would mark a hefty move not made since 1984 and could lead financial markets
to drop further.

Overall, futures point to a peak in rates of 4.25 percent to 4.5 percent next year, a full 2 percentage
points higher than the Fed’s current policy level .

And the Fed is not alone in its campaign to elevate interest rates to combat inflation. On Thursday, the
World Bank added to recession warnings, saying that the combined effect of central banks all over the
world raising interest rates simultaneously could push the global economy into a downturn as soon as
next year.

Among the largest U.S. banks, predictions diverge. Economists at Wells Fargo and Citi expect recession.
David Solomon, chief executive of Goldman Sachs, said on Friday that his long-term view had not been
altered by the fresh inflation data this week, or the market ructions that followed. But he noted that
financial markets “are in a period of lower , longer and bumpier .”

JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley continue to predict a so-called soft-landing, whereby the Fed is able to
restrict the economy with higher interest rates enough to bring down inflation without going too far and
causing a recession.

Dan Ivascyn, chief investment officer of the bond investment house Pimco, which manages roughly $1.8
trillion, said he was “a bit more concerned” about just how broad inflation pressures across the U.S.
economy are following Tuesday’s data release.

“Investors can expect a lot more volatility in markets going into year end,” he said. “We think 2023 is
still going to be filled with lots of uncertainty .”
No correlation between economic decline and war.
Walt 20, Robert and Renée Belfer professor of international relations at Harvard University. (Stephen
M., 5/13/20, “Will a Global Depression Trigger Another World War?”, Foreign Policy,
https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/05/13/coronavirus-pandemic-depression-economy-world-war/)

On balance , however, I do not think that even the extraordinary economic conditions we are
witnessing today are going to have much impact on the likelihood of war . Why? First of all, if
depressions were a powerful cause of war, there would be a lot more of the latter. To take one example,
the United States has suffered 40 or more recessions since the country was founded, yet it has fought
perhaps 20 interstate wars, most of them unrelated to the state of the economy . To paraphrase the
economist Paul Samuelson’s famous quip about the stock market, if recessions were a powerful cause
of war , they would have predicted “ nine out of the last five (or fewer).”
Second, states do not start wars unless they believe they will win a quick and relatively cheap victory .
As John Mearsheimer showed in his classic book Conventional Deterrence, national leaders avoid war
when they are convinced it will be long, bloody, costly , and uncertain . To choose war, political leaders
have to convince themselves they can either win a quick, cheap, and decisive victory or achieve some
limited objective at low cost. Europe went to war in 1914 with each side believing it would win a rapid
and easy victory, and Nazi Germany developed the strategy of blitzkrieg in order to subdue its foes as
quickly and cheaply as possible. Iraq attacked Iran in 1980 because Saddam believed the Islamic Republic
was in disarray and would be easy to defeat, and George W. Bush invaded Iraq in 2003 convinced the
war would be short, successful, and pay for itself.

The fact that each of these leaders miscalculated badly does not alter the main point : No matter what
a country’s economic condition might be, its leaders will not go to war unless they think they can do so
quickly, cheaply , and with a reasonable probability of success .

Third, and most important, the primary motivation for most wars is the desire for security , not
economic gain . For this reason, the odds of war increase when states believe the long-term balance of
power may be shifting against them, when they are convinced that adversaries are unalterably hostile
and cannot be accommodated, and when they are confident they can reverse the unfavorable trends
and establish a secure position if they act now. The historian A.J.P. Taylor once observed that “ every
war between Great Powers [between 1848 and 1918] … started as a preventive war, not as a war of
conquest ,” and that remains true of most wars fought since then.

The bottom line: Economic conditions (i.e., a depression) may affect the broader political environment
in which decisions for war or peace are made, but they are only one factor among many and rarely the
most significant. Even if the COVID-19 pandemic has large, lasting, and negative effects on the world
economy—as seems quite likely—it is not likely to affect the probability of war very much, especially in
the short term.
AT: DA---MIDTERMS
 2AC---AT: DA---Midterms
GOP wins now---most recent polls.
Rakich 10-24, Senior Elections Analyst at FiveThirtyEight. (Nathaniel Rakich, October 24 th, “The Polls
Are Getting Better For Republicans”, FiveThirtyEight, https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/gop-polls/)

For months, Democrats were defying midterm gravity . Now, it looks like they may be coming back
down to earth.

The president’s party almost always does poorly in midterm elections , and early in the year, it looked
like that trend would hold true in 2022. But after the Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right
to an abortion in its Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization case, Democrats experienced a
boost in the polls.

The generic congressional ballot is a poll question that asks people nationwide which party they plan to
vote for for Congress (without naming specific candidates). And as recently as Oct. 13, Democrats led by
1.1 percentage points in FiveThirtyEight’s generic congressional ballot polling average. Now, however,
Republicans lead in this polling average by 0.5 points,1 suggesting the national mood has turned back
toward the GOP .

Individual polls mostly confirm this movement. I compared generic-ballot polls with a FiveThirtyEight
pollster rating of B+ or higher from October to the same polls conducted in September. On average, they
showed a 1.2-point shift toward Republicans . This included shifts of 4 points from two of the best
pollsters in the business, Monmouth University and Siena College/The New York Times Upshot.
This change has affected FiveThirtyEight’s midterm forecasts too. Democrats’ chances of holding onto
Senate control have fallen from 66-in-100 on Oct. 13 to 55-in-100 today. And Republicans have gone
from having a 69-in-100 chance of flipping the House on Oct. 13 to an 80-in-100 chance today.

Republicans’ chances in the House have risen that high because the forecast expects the final margin to
be even better for Republicans than the generic-ballot polls currently suggest. The forecast projects
that, on average, Republicans will win the national popular vote for the House by 4.0 points.

How does the forecast get from 0.5 points to 4.0 points? For one thing, Democrats aren’t fielding a
candidate in 23 House districts this year, so they won’t get any votes there. In comparison, there are
only 14 districts where Republicans aren’t fielding a candidate. However, all the uncontested districts
were already safe for the other party, so this shouldn’t affect the seat breakdown.
In addition, our average of generic-ballot polls includes polls of adults, registered voters and likely
voters. But if you’re interested in who will win an election, you’re most interested in the polls of likely
voters. And likely voter polls tend to be better for Republicans than the other two types. For example, if
we were to calculate a generic-ballot polling average using only likely voter polls , Republicans would
lead by 1.1 points , not 0.5. And here are the four most recent generic-ballot polls that have released
numbers among both registered voters and likely voters:

Finally, generic-ballot polling historically tends to get worse for the president’s party as the election
approaches . The graph below shows how the FiveThirtyEight generic-ballot polling average2 shifted in
the last 90 days of the 2006, 2010, 2014 and 2018 midterms. As you can see, the president’s party lost
ground in the final month of every year but 2018.

Of course, we’re only two weeks away from Election Day, and millions of Americans have already voted
early or absentee, but there is still time for polls to get better for Republicans. On average, in 2006,
2010, 2014 and 2018, the generic-ballot margin got 1.2 points worse for the president’s party in the final
15 days.

But that doesn’t mean the Dobbs decision didn’t make a difference. Take another look at that graph. The
2022 line (along with the 2014 line) is at the very top of the chart. In other words, Democrats may lose
ground from here on out, but they are starting from a higher baseline than usual. And without the boost
Democrats received over the summer, we may have been forecasting a so-called “red wave” — a
Republican landslide of 6-10 points. While the possibility of another polling error in Republicans’ favor
means that outcome is still on the table, it’s more likely that 2022 will be a more modest Republican
victory. For Democrats, it could have been a lot worse.

D---plan is either consistent with Biden’s Ag policy, so no link, or current regulations

thump.
Gruber 21, *Philip Gruber, News Editor @ Lancaster Farming; (July 9th, 2021, “Biden Revives
Controversial Obama-Era Ag Rules”, https://www.lancasterfarming.com/farming-news/biden-revives-
controversial-obama-era-ag-rules/article_17cb75a4-d559-5470-ad24-1391cd0859d2.html)

The Biden administration is preparing to apply its “build back better” slogan to some of the most
contentious agricultural regulations that fizzled during the Obama era.

The rules — on organic practices , meatpacking abuses and the federal government’s authority over
water — stoked heated debate during the last Democratic administration.

In the process, the rules exposed rifts between ag ricultural interests, and stirred the passions of
environmentalists and animal welfare groups .

Eventually the Trump administration killed the rules in question, most before they had even gone into effect .
But there’s new leadership in Washington, and it’s strikingly similar to Barack Obama’s team.

Joe Biden, then vice president, now holds the top job, and Tom Vilsack is once again secretary of agriculture .

Last month, Biden

officials vowed to resurrect and rewrite the flashpoint rules — and try to finish what
they started in the Obama years .
Whether they succeed on their second rodeo remains to be seen.

The most controversial regulation in this group is intended to define which water bodies the federal
government can regulate under the Clean Water Act .
Court rulings had made the exact extent of federal power unclear, but many groups didn’t like how the Obama administration attempted to
clarify matters.

The American Farm Bureau Federation, among others, thought Obama’s 2014 regulation overreached, claiming
jurisdiction over water bodies that strayed too far from the legal standard of “navigable waters .”
The Obama rule, called Waters of the United States, was quickly tied up in court challenges. The Trump administration repealed that rule and,
in June 2020, replaced it with narrower parameters.

Under Trump’s rule, the Environmental Protection Agency and Army Corps of Engineers have authority over major rivers and lakes, tributaries,
and adjacent wetlands, but not ephemeral streams or most farm and roadside ditches.

Ag groups have welcomed this interpretation, but the Biden EPA has become concerned by the number of waters that are now being ruled
outside its purview, particularly in desert states.

On June 9, EPA Administrator Michael Regan announced that his agency would craft its own waters rule.
The agency appears to be trying to split the difference between the Obama and Trump standards, and Regan promised to listen to farmers as
the new rule is developed.

Given the regulatory uncertainty that has surrounded this issue for the past decade, Brook Duer suspects the Biden team will try to revamp
what it sees as problem points rather than overhaul the whole regulation.

“They must be envisioning a compromise of some kind,” said Duer, a staff attorney at the Penn State Center for Agricultural and Shale Law.

Yet even Biden’s version of the waters rule may not be the final word.

“I don’t usually bet on court challenges a lot, but that one will 100% be challenged, whatever it is, ‘cause that’s just the history of that rule,”
said Paul Goeringer, a University of Maryland Extension legal specialist.

Like Obama’s WOTUS regulation, the Organic Livestock and Poultry Practices Rule traveled a tortured path to the federal dustbin.

The rule was proposed in April 2016 and published in final form the day before Obama left office. Though set to go into effect two months later,
it never did.

Trump instituted a freeze on pending regulations when he took office, and USDA ultimately withdrew the organic rule in 2018.

Three years later, on June 17, Vilsack announced that the agency would bring it back.

The regulation was designed to address inconsistencies between organic certifiers in how animals can be raised in organic systems.

Among the many issues raised in the original proposal, Vilsack indicated poultry housing would be a
particular focus for the new rulemaking .

Organic poultry are required to have outdoor access, and some poultry farms have been meeting this
rule with screened, covered porches attached to the poultry houses.

Acting on a recommendation from an advisory board, the Obama USDA decided those accommodations were not
outdoorsy enough.
The proposed organic livestock rule said that outdoor enclosures could not have solid walls or roofs, though they could have fencing and netting
to keep out predators and wild birds. The ground in the enclosures would have to be at least 50% soil so the chickens could dust bathe.

The new rule will likely revisit these questions of what does and doesn’t count as outdoor space, Duer said.

USDA may revive other parts of the rule as well, such as a ban on tail docking for organic livestock ,
though the agency has not said exactly what its plans are.

But no matter what the new rule looks like, Biden’s USDA is sure to overrule Trump’s justification for retracting the
old version.
The Trump administration said the federal organic law did not give USDA the power to address the animal welfare concerns described in the
rule.

Duer is skeptical that this claim would have held up in a court decision. The agency defined animal “care” very narrowly — as medical
treatment, rather than animal husbandry generally.

“I think that the overwhelming history of the organic regs is that things that deal with the care of the animals beyond strictly health care issues
are certainly permissible and have been done repeatedly,” Duer said.

The new rule will likely bring out many supporters and detractors of the earlier version.

The Center for Food Safety, which sued the Trump USDA for withdrawing the rule , said the reborn
regulation would improve the lives of millions of farm animals .

But the American Farm Bureau Federation cheered the junking of the rule in 2018. The group said the changes
would have cost some farms their organic certification, and said the rules for outdoor access could compromise biosecurity.
Like the organic livestock rule, the Farmer Fair Practices Rules got tied up in Trump’s initial regulatory freeze.

An updated interpretation of the Packers and Stockyards Act, this package of regulations was intended
to prevent large meatpackers from domineering farmers.
After Trump dropped the rules, the Biden USDA announced June 11 that it would give them another go. “The law is 100 years old and needs to take into account modern market dynamics,” Vilsack said. “It should not be used as a
safe harbor for bad actors.” One rule would make it easier for farmers to demonstrate that a meat company has treated them unfairly. As a result of some court rulings, a farmer currently needs to show that the company’s actions
harmed competition in the whole industry, not just that individual farmer. “That was a high burden for anybody to meet, and it had caused issues in at least a few cases,” Goeringer said. Fortunately for USDA, the Packers and
Stockyard Act gives the agency broad discretion in writing the rules about unfair trade practices. Duer suspects the law is so broad in part because it’s old and partly because its writers realized that circumstances could change in
ways they did not anticipate. “It’s kind of like antitrust law. We don’t want to be overly specific and therefore miss things,” Duer said. Another rule in the package would tighten rules about how poultry producers get paid. This
compensation structure, sometimes called the tournament system, is designed to pay the highest prices to the most efficient growers. But some farmers have argued that the process is easy for companies to manipulate. As
Goeringer explains the argument, “If you don’t like a grower, you can give them poor feed and not set their feed rations up properly and make them fail in the tournament system.” In comments on the rule during the Obama era,
Tyson Foods said such a punitive system would be foolish to implement. The integrator owns the chicks and has a vested interest in seeing them thrive. Compared to these per-flock payments, Duer said poultry growers’ bigger
challenge could actually come when they have to re-up their contracts. The poultry company could push growers to accept terms that are riskier than their current agreement, he said. Wait and See Biden is hardly the first
president to resurrect old proposals when his party retakes the White House. The practice has not been especially common in ag law, but that could be changing, Goeringer said — especially with an ag secretary who failed to get
some big proposals enacted the last time he was in office. Duer has a different explanation for the revival of the hot-button regulations.

Every party and president wants to undo some of its predecessor’s priorities and replace them with its
own.
This back-and-forth happens with every change of administration, but it happened relatively quickly this time because Donald Trump is the first
president in 30 years to serve one term, not two.

What’s more, Trump is the first four-year president since Jimmy Carter to be bookended by presidents of the opposite party.

“I think we’re seeing an exaggerated version of what we always see,” Duer said.
The administration has released few details about any of the revived rules, so it’s hard to say yet how the proposals could affect farmers.

Still, it’s a fair guess that any regulatory change could bring uncertainty — or at least an adjustment period — to the
ag industry .
The current curbs on meatpackers’ power may be weaker than what farmers want. But producers know what the rules are, and the standards
have been consistent and predictable for a while, Goeringer said.

As for the new waters rule, Goeringer expects the effects could vary by state. The
West will likely see meaningful changes ,
while many places could simply face continued regulatory murkiness .
In Maryland, he expects the changes could be less disruptive than elsewhere.

“We kind of know what waters are going to be hit by either the state jurisdiction or the federal jurisdiction,” Goeringer said.

In any case, the rules will take some time to develop and work through the public comment process. USDA says just developing the initial
organic livestock proposal could take six to nine months.

The wheels of government turn slowly, it seems, even when they’re bringing old proposals back around .

Lift inevitable
Strain 9-10-2021, Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He is director of economic policy studies and Arthur F.
Burns Scholar in Political Economy at the American Enterprise Institute. He is the author of “The
American Dream Is Not Dead: (But Populism Could Kill It). (Michael, “Raise the Debt Ceiling, Republicans.
You’ll Be Glad You Did.,” Bloomberg,
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-09-10/republican-debt-ceiling-brinksmanship-
could-lead-to-default)

The U.S. is flirting with default this fall, as it did twice before in the past decade. For the government to
pay its bills, Congress needs to increase the nation’s debt limit, an increasingly problematic legal
requirement imposed a century ago. Unfortunately, it’s looking like this routine function of government
will descend into a partisan fight. While there’s little doubt that the limit will eventually be raised ,
even merely pushing up against it would be damaging. It’s hard to say precisely when the government
will run out of money because the Treasury Department’s cash receipts fluctuate, particularly during the
pandemic. Treasury estimates that it will run out of funds sometime in October. More from Republicans
Need to Be More Than the Party of Trump In America’s Next War, Machines Will Do the Thinking The
Most Important Number of the Week Is 61.07 How $30-a-Pound Micro-Broccoli Will Help Feed the
World Senate Republicans have made clear that they want no part in increasing the borrowing limit to
raise the necessary cash. On Aug. 10, 46 of the chamber’s 50 Republicans released a letter informing
Senate Democrats that they won’t vote to increase the debt ceiling. Republican frustration is
understandable. Since January, Democrats have been threatening to use a procedure known as
“reconciliation” to pass a $3.5 trillion spending bill with a simple majority, rather than the 60-vote
supermajority typically required in the Senate. GOP senators are asking: If reconciliation is available to
pass, say, paid family leave and universal pre-kindergarten programs, why not force Democrats to use it
to lift the government’s borrowing limit without Republican assent? This question has answers. First, it’s
unclear whether the reconciliation rules would allow a debt-ceiling increase to be passed as a stand-
alone bill. The Senate doesn’t have a lot of experience using this procedure, and my conversations with
top aides on Capitol Hill indicate a lot of confusion on this point. Another suggestion is that Democrats
include the debt-ceiling increase in their $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill, which would create and expand
major climate and social programs and lacks any Republican support. But there’s no guarantee that the
spending bill will be able to get the unanimous Democratic support needed to pass it by a simple
majority, or that it would pass before the government would need to increase the borrowing limit to
avoid default. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi closed the door on this option on Wednesday. In addition, it’s
an odd strategy to push for including a must-pass provision in a bill that you don’t want to pass.
Republicans want to preserve the filibuster, the 60-vote threshold required for most legislation. Without
it, Democrats could run the table, passing their agenda with a simple majority in the Senate. Refusing to
raise the debt ceiling and forcing Democrats to find a way to increase it with a 51-vote majority will
substantially weaken the GOP’s claim that the Senate can carry out basic functions of responsible
governance with the chamber’s supermajority requirement in place. By refusing to help lift the debt

There’s no chance that

ceiling, the GOP would be putting the legislative filibuster at risk.

the debt ceiling won’t eventually be raised . The only question is how much
damage is incurred along the way.

Dollar heg is resilient

Doug Stokes 18. Professor of International Security and Strategy, University of Exeter. “Trump,
American hegemony and the future of the liberal international order.” International Affairs 94(1): 133-
50. Emory Libraries.

As the protector of an open, integrated international market, the American state can claim special
privileges to enable it to preserve the zone effectively, and there are a number of areas where being the
system maker gives the US huge positional advantages. The first such area we should note here is its
‘dollar hegemony’, whereby the greenback acts as the world’s default global currency: this, most
notably, allows it to run progressively larger current account deficits without having to worry about
foreign exchange reserves. This makes the US Federal Reserve the world’s de facto central bank, giving it
the luxury of unilaterally setting borrowing costs for the rest of the global economy. It is this form of
dollar hegemony, and the ‘exorbitant privilege’ it affords the American state,28 that has helped inform a
range of scholarship on American economic decline, especially in relation to a rising China and the
potential internationalization of the renminbi and the associated challenge to US monetary regimes.
According to this ‘declinist’ narrative , if the dollar loses its international reserve currency status other
aspects of US hegemony, most notably its global military primacy, will begin to crumble as other
currencies vie for international monetary leadership.29 In short, the ‘dollar’s reserve currency role is
central to America’s geopolitical preeminence and if it loses that status US hegemony will be literally
unaffordable’.30 However, not only does this ‘renminbi revisionism’ ignore the ways in which US
military primacy in east Asia helps bolster its monetary power (see below); it is not borne out by the
hard data. According to the most recently available data from the Bank of International Settlements in
its 2016 triennial survey, the dollar accounted for 88 per cent of all over-the-counter trades in foreign
exchange markets in 2016. The renminbi accounted for just 4 per cent .31 This is a huge disparity and
hardly supports the idea of an imminent end to dollar hegemony .

Dollar hegemony also has profound geopolitical implications. Specifically, the United States can fund its
overseas military operations with freshly printed dollars largely at will. Between 2003 and 2008, for
example, the ‘largest airborne transfer of currency in the history of the world’ saw the Federal Reserve
print and ship US$40 billion in cash to Iraq to help finance the war. In just ‘the first two years, the
shipments included more than 281 million individual bills weighing a total of 363 tons’.32 Dollar
dominance has thus ensured that imports, debts and overseas military–political operations could all be
paid for with greenbacks produced by the American state, which at the same time could gear its
domestic macroeconomic management exclusively to conditions within the United States without any
significant external constraint. More interestingly, dollar liquidity means that investors continue to use
US monetary regimes even in the context of major global economic instability. For example, during the
global financial crisis of 2008, not only did we not see a flight from US financial and monetary regimes,
we actually saw the reverse: a global flight of capital into US debt markets, to the extent that in some
instances US Treasury bonds had negative interest rates.33 In short, dollar hegemony and its privileges
allow the US to externalize major crises through its unilateral capacity to alter its interest rates, to force
other states to adjust accordingly, and to fund geopolitical hegemony on the cheap.

It will 100 percent get lifted

White 9-24-2021 (Ben, “Real talk on the debt limit,” Politico,
https://www.politico.com/newsletters/morning-money/2021/09/29/real-talk-on-the-debt-limit-797921)

Real talk on the debt limit — At first glance, the lack of a plan for raising the nation’s borrowing limit in
the next month or seems quite scary. A default, or even a near-default, would be catastrophic for
markets and the economy and undermine the bedrock of global finance: the Treasury bond and full faith

and credit of the United States. But a default is simply impossible . If they
are forced into it, Democrats will have no choice but to raise the limit unilaterally, through reconciliation
or some other means. They will not allow President Biden’s economy to tank under a default.
Republicans, meanwhile, could theoretically filibuster a debt limit hike in the Senate. But why would
they? The party’s desire is to simply hang the hike on Democrats alone and then run against them over
it. Filibustering a debt limit hike and forcing default would be politically catastrophic for Republicans as it
would easy for Democrats to lay all the blame on them. MM doesn’t know exactly HOW it will get done.
But it will get done .
1AR
 RIGHTS PIC
It can include bans.
Laitos 12, *Jan Laitos, Professor of Law and John A. Carver, Jr. Chair in Natural Resources and
Environmental Law, University of Denver Sturm College of Law; (2012, “The Right of Nonuse”, Sturm
College of Law, Faculty Scholarship, https://digitalcommons.du.edu/law_facpub/112/)
Granting natural resources a right of nonuse that may be asserted in the face of human use desires creates a classic Hohfeldian rights-duty
dichotomy between natural resources and humans. 50 This dichotomy is revealed after a rigorous examination of this phrase:

“Natural Resources (NR) have a right to non-use (X) with respect to humans (H).”
If NR have a right (X) that affects H, then the right may convey any (combination) of the following Hohfeldian meanings:

NR’s right to X means that H has a duty to let NR do, or benefit from, X. The existence of such a duty means that humans must let natural
resources enjoy their nonuse component when resources assert the nonuse right. This view of the right of nonuse is consistent with Jeremy

Betham’s account of legal rights. Betham said that an entity (such as the natural resource) can be said to have a
right if someone else (e.g., humans) has a duty to either perform some act, or not undertake an act
(e.g., do not use the resource), which is in the right-holder’s interest. 51

Requiring standing is nonsensical.

Skopek 13, *Jeff Skopek is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Law and the Deputy Director of the
Centre for Law, Medicine and Life Sciences; (December 6th, 2013, “Animals in Court: Does Personhood
Matter?”, https://blog.petrieflom.law.harvard.edu/2013/12/06/animals-in-court-does-personhood-
matter/)

While there are some who argue that it makes no sense to say that someone has a legal right to something if he
does not possess standing to assert that right, this line of argument is ultimately unconvincing .  I agree that if a law
is in principle unenforceable, it makes little sense to say that it confers a right.  But it is hard to see how a fact about the law’s
enforcer , rather than its enforceability , should matter in our evaluation of whether it confers
rights. There are, after all, many statutes that create duties to persons that are enforceable only by public
officials , and it seems clear that the public gained new rights through their passage .

The notion animals necessitate standing for rights to be realized relies on flimsy
theoretical foundations, because animals do not have the legal capacity to enforce
their own rights!
Stucki 20, *Dr. Saskia Stucki is a Senior Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative
Public Law and International Law (Heidelberg), where she is working on her Habilitation project on
Climate Mainstreaming; (June 26th, 2020, “Towards a Theory of Legal Animal Rights: Simple and
Fundamental Rights”, Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, Volume 40, Issue 3, Autumn 2020, Pages 533–560,
https://doi.org/10.1093/ojls/gqaa007)
(i) Will theory

According to the will theory , the ultimate purpose of rights is to promote and protect some aspect of
an individual’s autonomy and self-realisation . A legal right is essentially a ‘legally respected choice’, and the
right holder a ‘small scale sovereign’ whose exercise of choice is facilitated by giving her discretionary
‘legal powers of control’ over others’ duties.39 The class of potential right holders thus includes only
those entities that possess agency and legal competence , which effectively rules out the possibility of
animals as right holders , insofar as they lack the sort or degree of agency necessary for the will-theory conception of rights.40

However, the fact that animals are not potential right holders under the will theory does not necessarily
mean that animals cannot have legal rights altogether. The will theory has attracted abundant criticism
for its under-inclusiveness as regards both the class of possible right holders 41 and the types of rights it can
plausibly account for, and thus seems to advance too narrow a conception of rights for it to provide a theoretical
foundation for all rights.42 In particular, it may be noted that the kinds of rights typically contemplated as animal rights are
precisely of the sort that generally exceed the explanatory power of the will theory , namely inalienable,43
passive,44 public-law45 rights that protect basic aspects of animals’ (partially historically and socially mediated) vulnerable corporeal
existence.46 Such rights, then, are best explained on an interest-theoretical basis .

Hohfeld’s theory is popular, used by courts, and it was formulated with limits in mind.
Kelch ’99 — Thomas G. Kelch, J.D., Professor of Law, Whittier Law School; 1999; “ARTICLE: The Role of
the Rational and the Emotive in a Theory of Animal Rights”; 27 B.C. Envtl. Aff. L. Rev. 1; University of
Kansas Libraries, Lexis.

Perhaps the most popular way of speaking about legal rights was formulated by Wesley Hohfeld . 32 In the
Western tradition, he described legal relations in terms of various opposites and correlatives. 33 The opposites he discussed are right/no-right,
privilege/duty, [*7] power/disability, and immunity/liability. 34 The correlatives are right/duty, privilege/no-right, power/liability, and
immunity/disability. 35 In analyzing these terms, Hohfeld found that in legal discourse the term right is typically used
broadly to include any legal advantage . 36 He found this use of the term to be overbroad . Instead, he
believed that the term " right " should be restricted in use to describe those things that correlate to
duties . 37 " Right " in his theory is synonymous with " claim ." 38 Rights are simple and atomic; rights are claims
based on duties . 39

[FN 32-37]

32 Courts have utilized Hohfeld's structures for analysis of legal terms in case law. See California v.
Farmers Mkts., Inc., 792 F.2d 1400, 1403 (9th Cir. 1986) (describing property as complex of rights, powers, privileges, and immunities,
citing Hohfeld); Lake Shore & M.S. Ry. Co. v. Kurtz, 37 N.E. 303, 304 (Ind. App. 1894).

33 See WESLEY N. HOHFELD, FUNDAMENTAL LEGAL CONCEPTIONS 36 (1923).

34 See id.

35 See id.

36 Id. at 36-38, 71.

37 See id. at 38, 71-72. Some case law has reflected this idea. For example, Sowers v. Civil Rights Comm'n, 252 N.E.2d 463, 474,
holds that liberties are not properly considered rights, but rather are immunities.

[END FN 32-37]
Stucki concludes NEG on the question of correlative rights and duties --- not ALL duties
are a right, but the plan’s is! This is after the rehighlighting.
Stucki 20, *Dr. Saskia Stucki is a Senior Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative
Public Law and International Law (Heidelberg), where she is working on her Habilitation project on
Climate Mainstreaming; (June 26th, 2020, “Towards a Theory of Legal Animal Rights: Simple and
Fundamental Rights”, Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, Volume 40, Issue 3, Autumn 2020, Pages 533–560,
https://doi.org/10.1093/ojls/gqaa007)
A. Extracting ‘Animal Welfare Rights’ from Animal Welfare Laws

(i) The simple argument from correlativity

Existing animal welfare laws are not framed in the language of rights and do not codify any explicit animal rights. They do, however, impose on
people legal duties designed to protect animals—duties that demand some behaviour that is beneficial to the welfare of animals. Some
commentators contend that correlative (claim) rights are thereby conferred upon animals as the beneficiaries of such duties.62 This view is
consistent with, and, indeed, the logical conclusion of, an interest-theoretical analysis.63 Recall that rights are essentially legally protected
interests of intrinsically valuable individuals, and that a claim right is the ‘position of normative protectedness that consists in being owed a …
legal duty’.64 Under existing animal welfare laws, some goods of animals are legally protected interests in exactly this sense of ultimately
valuable interests that are protected through the imposition of duties on others. However, the inference from existing animal welfare duties to
the existence of correlative ‘animal welfare rights’ appears to rely on a somewhat simplistic notion of correlativity, along the lines of ‘where
objections in particular may be raised against the view that beneficial duties
there is a duty there is a right’.65 Two
imposed by animal welfare laws are sufficient for creating corresponding legal rights in animals.

First, not every kind of duty entails a correlative right .66 While some duties are of an unspecific and general nature,
only relational, directed duties which are owed to rather than merely regarding someone are the
correlatives of (claim) rights. Closely related, not everyone who stands to benefit from the performance of
another’s duty has a correlative right . According to a standard delimiting criterion, beneficial duties generate rights
only in the intended beneficiaries of such duties, that is, those who are supposed to benefit from duties
designed to protect their interests.67 Yet, animal welfare duties, in a contemporary reading, are predominantly
understood not as indirect duties regarding animals—duties imposed to protect, for example, an owner’s interest in her animal, public
sensibilities or the moral character of humans—but as direct duties owed to the protected animals themselves .68
Moreover, the constitutive purpose of modern animal welfare laws is to protect animals for their own sake. Animals
are therefore
clearly beneficiaries in a qualified sense, that is, they are not merely accidental or incidental, but the direct and intended primary
beneficiaries of animal welfare duties.69