Peter Brandt Farmed Animal Law & Policy Fellow
Peter Brandt was an Animal Law & Policy Program Farmed Animal Law & Policy Fellow in 2017. As an adjunct professor, he also teaches a law and policy course on Animals in Agriculture at Lewis & Clark’s Northwestern School of Law.
As a managing attorney at the Humane Society of the United States, Peter supervises a team of litigators working to protect the interests of farmed animals. That work involves assisting in drafting proposed legislation, and once enacted, defending those laws against state and federal constitutional challenges.
Peter has led the HSUS litigation team in several state and federal court actions addressing factory farming’s contribution to air & water pollution and other public health threats. One of these lawsuits ended with a jury finding that an animal agricultural facility and its lake of liquefied manure qualified as a nuisance, and awarding more than half-a-million dollars in damages to the facility’s neighbors.
Peter personally has worked on successful efforts to improve the United States Department of Agriculture’s regulation of long-distance farm animal transport and the abuse of farm animals at slaughter facilities. These projects focused on how abusive transport and handling practices cause enormous animal suffering while helping to spread pathogens that seriously threaten human health, including influenza, Salmonella and E. Coli.
He also has worked on challenges to deceptive and unlawful business practices. In addition to litigation, these projects have involved successfully petitioning federal agencies to correct deceptive claims by companies regarding their treatment of farmed animals and the conditions in which they are raised.
Before attending law school Peter’s writing on animal protection issues was published in the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Examiner, and Salon.