Rumley to Discuss Property Rights, Animal Rights at Annual Symposium on Food Animal Wellbeing

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – Elizabeth Rumley, the senior staff attorney for the National Agricultural Law Center, will discuss “Property Rights vs. Animal Rights: Legal Considerations” during the Center for Food Animal Wellbeing’s fourth annual symposium on advances and current issues in food animal wellbeing. The symposium will be from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 7, with Rumley speaking at 9 a.m. The center is a unit of the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture and the University of Arkansas.

The event will be held in Old Main’s Giffels Auditorium on the University of Arkansas campus. Registration is $25. Registration information and the program are online at http://foodanimalwellbeing.uark.edu/AnnualSymposium.html. Those planning to attend should register by July 31.

A returning favorite speaker from last year’s symposium, Rumley was raised on a small family farm in Ida, Michigan, and graduated cum laude from the University of Toledo Law School. Now with the National Agricultural Law Center, her primary focus is on legal issues in animal agriculture. She is an adjunct faculty member in the University of Arkansas Center of Excellence for Poultry Science, the animal science department and the agricultural economics and agribusiness department. Additionally, she has co-taught a course titled “Animals and Agricultural Production, Law and Policy” at the University of Oklahoma College of Law and at the University of Nebraska College of Law. She teaches courses on legal issues in animal agriculture and on agriculture and the environment at the Dale Bumpers College of Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences at the University of Arkansas.

“The legal implications of property rights vs. animal rights is an area that should concern everyone in animal agriculture,” said Yvonne Vizzier Thaxton, director of the Center for Food Animal Wellbeing. “We are so fortunate to have Ms. Rumley, a specialist in animal law, to explain it to us.”

Other speakers presenting at the symposium include David Newman, North Dakota State University; Janeal Yancy, University of Arkansas; Mark Cooper, Cobb-Vantress, Inc.; Paige Glover, Aviagen Poultry; Joy Mench, University of California Davis; Temple Grandin, Colorado State University, and a speaker from the Farm Foundation.

Thaxton said the goal for the Center for Food Animal Wellbeing is to improve animal health, animal handling, food safety and productivity by developing and defining objective measurements of wellbeing including measures of behavior, stress physiology, neurophysiology, immunology, microbiology and production efficiency.