Swiss Science Prize Latsis 2025: Ceremony
6 November 2025
On 6 November, I was awarded the Swiss Science Prize Latsis in the Federal Palace of Switzerland. It was a beautiful, meaningful, and unforgettable ceremony. The award was presented by Vice President of the Federal Council, Guy Parmelin, in the presence of the President of the National Council, Maja Riniker. I am extremely grateful to the Latsis Foundation and the Swiss National Science Foundation for bestowing this honour on me. Markus Wild, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Basel, gave a beautiful laudatory speech.
The laudatory speech can be read here.
(Photos: Franca Pedrazzetti)
Defund Meat Symposium on Verfassungsblog
1 October 2025
Following up on the Defund Meat conference from January 2025, the conference papers are now collected in a special symposium on Verfassungsblog.
You can read my introductory essay 'Defund Meat: A Call for Transformative Meat Governance' here.
Latsis Swiss Science Prize 2025
16 September 2025
It is an incredible honour to have been awarded the Latsis Swiss National Science Prize 2025 for my research at the interface of animal, human, and environmental law.
For more information and a profile on my research, see the following press releases:
Swiss National Science Foundation
Latsis Foundation
ZHAW
Interview with University of Zurich
(Foto: Daniel Rihs)
Launch of the Center for Animal Rights and the Environment (CARE) at ZHAW Winterthur
13 August 2025
The Center for Animal Rights and the Environment (CARE) has been newly founded at the ZHAW School of Management and Law in Winterthur, Switzerland.
CARE is a research and learning centre dedicated to the study of animal rights and their interdependence with human rights and the environment. At CARE, we are concerned with the protection and status of animals in law and society, as well as the manifold interconnections between animal, human, and environmental rights and sustainability. Animal rights law investigates the current legal treatment of animals, the rights that animals (ought to) have, and future legal developments. Contemporary animal law increasingly operates in the context of pressing ecological challenges: zoonoses, climate change, species extinction. These require us to consider the interdependencies between humans, animals, and the environment and to develop new, holistic approaches, such as One Health or One Rights.
For more information, visit our website: www.zhaw.ch/irw/care
New Publication: Emerging Animal Rights and their Pluralistic Justifications
22 June 2025
My chapter for the Oxford Handbook of Global Animal Law (forthcoming 2026) is now available on SSRN: Emerging Animal Rights and their Pluralistic Justifications.
This chapter starts from the observation that legal animal rights are emerging in the real world, and that the real animal rights recognized in practice may differ from the ideal animal rights conceptualized in theory. One noteworthy difference between the ideal animal rights conceived by theorists and the real animal rights recognized in legal practice is the justificatory pluralism driving the emergence of the latter, as opposed to the justificatory monism that tends to ground the former. This chapter looks at the anthropocentric, zoocentric, and ecocentric rationales driving the emergence of animal rights and in doing so, seeks to signpost a more pluralistic and pragmatic foundation for real animal rights.
 | heidelberg-declaration.pdf (201.16KB) |
| heidelberg-declaration.pdf (201.16KB) |
January 2025
The Defund Meat Conference took place at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law (Heidelberg) from 15-17 January 2025.
The Vegconomist featured a conference report.
Stay tuned for updates and outputs.
| Report in Rhein-Neckar-Zeitung RNZ 21.01.25 Defund meat conference.pdf (547.38KB) |
| RNZ 21.01.25 Defund meat conference.pdf (547.38KB) |
New review of my book "One Rights"
November 2024
Dr. Vera Christopeit has reviewed my book "One Rights: Human and Animal Rights in the Anthropocene" on Tierrechtsblog.
"Warum Tiere (Menschen-)Rechte benötigen und wie sich etablierte Theorien für ihre Conclusio nutzbar machen lassen, erklärt die Autorin in vier Kapiteln auf gerade einmal 102 Seiten der auf Springer Briefs in Law erschienenen Publikation. Diese ist im Open Access abrufbar; die Lektüre ist uneingeschränkt zu empfehlen."
One Health Governance in the European Union: Scientific Advice
November 2024
On 15 November, the Scientific Advice Mechanism to the European Commission has released new recommendations on the One Health approach in the EU. Top scientists urge the European Commission to adopt integrated health policies, connecting the health of humans, animals, and the environment.
As part of the working group on One Health Governance in the EU, I contributed to the Evidence Review Report.
See here for the full Scientific Advice.
Defund Meat Conference (15-17 January 2025)
From 15-17 January 2025, I'm organizing the Defund Meat Conference in Heidelberg, Germany (with Anne Peters) .
The conference revisits the ‘meat question’ in the contemporary social, political, and legal context. Meat is an embodied symbol of the mounting and interrelated environmental and public health crises that have become characteristic of our era (which may be best described as the Anthropocene and One Health era): climate change, biodiversity loss, deforestation, pandemics, food insecurity, unhealthy and unsustainable diets, and institutionalised animal suffering. While (not) eating meat has long been cast as a private choice, it is increasingly turning into a public and political issue, as the social, ecological, and ethical costs of industrialised meat production are becoming more visible and prominent. Overwhelming scientific evidence indicates the need for sustainable food transformations and, concomitantly, a dietary transition away from animal-based foods. In consequence, the idea of a new – a transformative – meat governance with the aim of reducing overall meat production and consumption is gaining traction.
Nevertheless, meat remains the elephant in the room – or the sacred cow – especially when it comes to climate change and global public health strategies. Moreover, meat-reduction policies have not yet been instituted as integral part of the sustainable food transformation. While buzzwords such as the ‘decarbonisation’ of the economy and ‘fossil fuel divestment’ have become mainstream, comparable calls for a ‘deanimalisation’ of agriculture or for ‘defunding meat’ remain marginal. Considering livestock’s ‘long shadow’, it is time to drop the taboo: we need to talk about meat.
This interdisciplinary conference seeks to move the meat question from the margins into the spotlight of the ongoing debates on One Health, sustainability, climate change, food security, and public health. The objective is to launch a multi-disciplinary and multi-perspective scholarly debate about meat in the Anthropocene that also contributes to the public debates in society. We seek to understand better the impacts of meat production and consumption on humans, animals, and the environment, to scrutinise traditional regulatory approaches, and to envision the future shape and instruments of a transformative meat governance.
For more information, and to view the stellar program and speakers, visit the conference website.
New positions in Switzerland
October 2024
After more than eight years at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law in Heidelberg (and two years at Harvard Law School in between), I recently started a new position at the Zürich University of Applied Sciences (Switzerland) as a Senior Lecturer in Public Law. I also started a position as Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Zürich. I look forward to being part of these new academic communities - and to interacting with students!
Review of my article "Animal Warfare Law and the Need for an Animal Law of Peace"
November 2023
My article "Animal Warfare Law and the Need for an Animal Law of Peace: A Comparative Reconstruction" (American Journal of Comparative Law) was reviewed by Prof Kristen Stilt (Harvard Law School) for the Journal Jotwell.
"It is a rare event to begin reading an article and soon realize that the approach the author is taking is so novel, so creative, so analytically precise, and indeed so brilliant that it should redirect and reshape an entire field of study. I am pleased to jot about an article that does just that: Saskia Stucki’s Animal Warfare Law and the Need for an Animal Law of Peace: A Comparative Reconstruction."