Leading the Legal Fight for Animals | Jeff Kerr

Nov 11, 2025

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Animal rights are the next frontier of civil rights. Jeff Kerr, PETA's longtime Chief Legal Officer, leads the organization's bold, precedent-setting legal strategy. From the "monkey selfie" case to freeing animals from experimentation and exploitative entertainment to exposing agribusiness humane-washing, Jeff fights to secure legal recognition of animals as beings with inviolable rights. Highlights include:

How Jeff was inspired to get involved in animal law and become a lifelong vegan after attending an accidental lecture on animal rights;
Why PETA's legal strategy rejects timidity and instead boldly confronts the legal system's speciesist hypocrisy head-on;
How PETA uses bold, precedent-setting cases, like orcas at SeaWorld and a monkey's selfie copyright, to challenge the boundaries of animal personhood;
How PETA has won cases against animal cruelty in factory farming and freed thousands of animals from exotic animal dealers;
How PETA exposes humane-washing and fights ag-gag laws that conceal the violence of industrial animal agriculture;
How PETA's advocacy helped end the use of elephants, big cats, and other animals in circuses and petting zoos;
How PETA invokes free speech law to defend its right to communicate with monkeys tortured in laboratories;
Why the foundation of animal rights lies in rejecting the notion that animal "otherness" justifies human domination.

See episode website for show notes, links, and transcript:

https://www.populationbalance.org/podcast/jeff-kerr

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