JeffALDF

Fair question! We don't really work in categories, we're not working to take down all small zoos or uphold (or eliminate) all large zoos. Certainly we can agree that the larger, better resourced, bigger staffed zoos can provide more for their animals--but we evaluate the zoos individually, and sometimes even their animals individually. For example we've got a lawsuit now against the San Antonio Zoo, which isn't at all a roadside zoo like the one in the lawsuit that's the subject of this AMA. Our lawsuit against the San Antonio Zoo is only over their Asian elephant Lucky, whom they cruelly confine in total isolation from other elephants. So I think it's more fair to say that we oppose certain conditions of confinement, and we want to see zoos responding to new research about animal cognition, sentience, emotionality (is that a word?), sociality, etc. in evaluating whether asking animals to be ambassadors for their wild counterparts is fair.

Just like any reasonable person, we hate Ag-Gag laws! And absolutely we're doing something! We spearheaded a coalition to defeat the Ag-Gag laws in Idaho and Utah, and we secured the first ruling (in Idaho) that an Ag-Gag law was indeed unconstitutional. The Utah case is ongoing, and we just recently filed another lawsuit in North Carolina to defeat their law as well. It's really appalling that the animal agriculture industry wants to conceal information from well-meaning people instead of just improving their practices.

I have really mixed feelings about an animal abuser registry. In the form of a sex offender registry, that's public and requires the offender to notify neighbors, that sort of thing? Definitely not. We're not here to shame people. But in the form of a private Do-Not-Adopt list, so shelters and other entities don't unwittingly send innocent animals into the hands of maniacs? Yeah, I can get behind that. There's only one statewide registry so far (in TN), and it just came into effect on the first of this year, and NYC has a citywide registry that came into effect about a year and a half ago, so there's not yet a lot of evidence about their success or cost.

I'll just add that as a legal concept, "personhood" only means the right to bring a lawsuit, to be a plaintiff in a case to vindicate one's own legal interests. If other nonhuman entities like corporations and ships can bring lawsuits on their own behalf, why not animals? Certainly animals have legally protected interests (like the interest to be free from cruelty and neglect, enshrined in the cruelty code of every state). Legally speaking, granting an animal personhood creates no silly slippery slope problem, like opening the door for animals to vote or drive cars.

If you're asking about the other kind of personhood, I think we can all agree that Descartes was dead wrong, animals are not machines. The science is so very clear that many animals have concepts of self and other, or understand time, or experience joy, suffering, empathy, grief. Frankly anyone who credits evolution must accept that traits like sentience, consciousness, intelligence, and emotional complexity exist on a gradient. The idea that humans uniquely retain these traits is astonishingly unscientific.

We appreciate Ric O'Barry! And we applaud the (lawful) efforts of any individual or organization that opposes the cruel confinement of animals. Without a doubt the tigers and lemurs at the center of our lawsuit suffer in ways very similar to the orcas at SeaWorld and elsewhere. Our organization, ALDF, is the group that proposed that SeaWorld San Diego no longer be able to breed captive orcas, and we're working to intervene in the lawsuit that SeaWorld brought against the California Coastal Commission challenging the condition the Condition imposed on them.

I'll add that I grew up watching Flipper, and loved it! But I didn't know that animals in entertainment often suffer confinement, cruel training methods, and species-inappropriate lives. Neither did Ric O'Barry at the time, since he was training the Flipper dolphins until he saw the light. Anyhow Ric used to work for the Miami Seaquarium, and we have another ongoing lawsuit against them--also an Endangered Species Act case like the one we just won--seeking to liberate Lolita, the solitary orca that the Seaquarium holds there. The judge in our tiger and lemur case recognized that conditions of solitude hurt animals in captivity, and we're optimistic that the judge in Miami will recognize the same harm being perpetrated against Lolita there!