Dr. Saskia Stucki

Lecturer & Researcher


Defund Meat 

(ongoing)

Hartmut Kiewert_Wiese

Heidelberg Declaration on Transforming Global Meat Governance

heidelberg-declaration.pdf (201.16KB)
heidelberg-declaration.pdf (201.16KB)


Meat is at the center of interrelated environmental and public health crises: climate change, biodiversity loss, deforestation, pandemics, food insecurity, unhealthy and unsustainable diets, and institutionalized animal suffering. While eating or not eating meat has traditionally been seen as a private choice, it is increasingly becoming a public and political issue, as the social, ecological, and ethical costs of industrialized meat production are becoming more visible and prominent. Scientific evidence is piling indicating the need for a sustainable food system and dietary transitions away from animal-based foods.
International law so far has little to offer to address these challenges and has been part of the problem rather than offering solutions. To help bring about an urgently needed transformative meat governance, on 15-17 January 2025, the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law hosted in Heidelberg a conference, entitled “Defund Meat”. More than 150 participants, from various academic disciplines and civil society, took part, in person and online.
The individual contributions by the experts will be published separately in due course. To bring together the knowledge and understanding, and to drive the transformative meat agenda forward, the organizers and speakers drafted a declaration, summarizing the key scientific findings that should propel such transformation, and setting the agenda for future policies, legal frameworks, and further research in this critical area.

Heidelberg Declaration on Transforming Global Meat Governance
In the past decades, a significant body of interdisciplinary research has been published on the negative impacts of meat production and consumption. While gaps in our knowledge remain, as scholars and scientists, on the basis of clear and compelling scientific evidence we state the following unequivocally:
The current extent of meat production and consumption has profound negative impacts on public health, the environment, workers and local communities, and animal welfare. Globally and in many regions, animal agriculture is a major driver of emerging zoonotic diseases, antimicrobial resistance, climate change, biodiversity loss, deforestation, and nitrogen pollution.
We recognise the ethical implications of, in particular, industrial meat production, and the responsibility of all relevant actors to work towards phasing out industrial meat production in favour of more sustainable food systems.
A significant reduction of meat consumption and production and a shift to more plant-based diets in high- and middle-income regions will make a positive contribution to public health, climate change mitigation, protection of the environment, and animal welfare.
Industrial meat production and consumption can be substantially reduced without threatening food security or violating the human right to adequate food.
The present global governance system is inadequate for addressing the adverse impacts of meat production. International law and practice on trade, subsidies, and investment sustain such production, and it is urgent to rework the structures and rules of international law that support the present patterns of meat production.
International law requires states to take appropriate measures to ensure that activities on their territory do not cause significant harm to other states and to areas beyond national jurisdiction. This fundamental principle applies to the negative impacts of industrial meat production, and calls for action for transitioning away from production methods that cause such transboundary impact.
To mitigate the harms of meat production, effective global governance is urgently needed. In view of the interconnected impacts of meat production on public health, climate change, the environment and animal welfare, such governance should be grounded in the concept of One Health, which recognises that such impacts should be addressed holistically.
A mix of strategies can drive the necessary shifts in consumption and production patterns. These include regulatory measures (such as higher environmental and animal welfare standards), economic measures (such as higher VAT for animal products, true cost pricing, and repurposing meat subsidies and tariffs to more sustainable and healthy alternatives), investment in alternatives (such as open-access research and commercialisation of alternative proteins), and behavioural measures (such as default plant-based meals, dietary guidelines, labels, and public awareness campaigns).
Achieving a transition away from industrial meat production and consumption will benefit from coalition building among environmental, public health, social justice, and animal welfare groups. It requires investing in a just transition for consumers, farmers, workers, and communities that may be affected by such societal change. It also requires international collaboration and support to facilitate a transition towards more secure, healthy, and sustainable food systems in lower-income regions.
It is crucial to support and invest in interdisciplinary research that furthers our understanding of the adverse impacts of industrial meat production and consumption and that develops innovative solutions for addressing such impacts.
Public and private actors at international, national, and local levels —including governments, businesses such as retailers and caterers, universities, public canteens, and international organizations— should work together to accelerate the transformation towards a sustainable food system that provides food security while protecting human health, the climate, the environment, workers and local communities, and animal welfare.

17 January 2025

Signed (in alphabetical order):

  • Prof. Einat Albin, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
  • Prof. Odile Ammann, University of Lausanne
  • Dr. Laura Burgers, University of Amsterdam
  • Dr. Elisabeth Bürgi Bonanomi, University of Bern
  • Prof. Kirsi-Maria Halonen, University of Lapland
  • Prof. Jennifer Jacquet, University of Miami
  • Dr. Dr. Stefan Mann, University of Agronomic Sciences and Veterinary Medicine, Bucharest
  • Prof. André Nollkaemper, University of Amsterdam
  • Prof. Anne Peters, Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law, Heidelberg
  • Prof. Katharina Pistor, Columbia Law School, New York
  • Prof. Cesare Romano, Loyola Law School, Los Angeles
  • Dr. Friederike Schmitz, Faba Konzepte, Berlin
  • Dr. Marco Springmann, University College London
  • Prof. Kristen Stilt, Harvard Law School, Cambridge
  • Dr. Saskia Stucki, Zürich University of Applied Sciences & University of Zürich
  • Dr. Nicolas Treich, Toulouse School of Economics
  • Cleo Verkuijl, Stockholm Environment Institute


Defund Meat Conference

15-17 January 2025, Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law (convened by Dr Saskia Stucki and Prof Anne  Peters).

The conference revisited 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 moved 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 was 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 sought 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.

The conference was generously supported by the Fritz Thyssen Foundation and the German Research Foundation.

Conference brochure
defund-meat-conference-brochure.pdf (2.93MB)
Conference brochure
defund-meat-conference-brochure.pdf (2.93MB)
Conference programme
defund meat conference programme.pdf (258.62KB)
Conference programme
defund meat conference programme.pdf (258.62KB)


Media

Rhein-Neckar-Zeitung
RNZ 21.01.25 Defund meat conference.pdf (547.38KB)
Rhein-Neckar-Zeitung
RNZ 21.01.25 Defund meat conference.pdf (547.38KB)




Publications



Oxford Handbook of Global Animal Law 

(ongoing)

Hartmut Kiewert_Crossing

This Handbook is co-edited by Anne Peters, Kristen Stilt, and Saskia Stucki and forthcoming as an open access book with Oxford University Press (2025).

The Handbook intends to be a comprehensive reference work that authoritatively establishes the new field of Global Animal Law, maps it, identifies relevant legal issues, and forms a platform for further legal research. The Handbook addresses foundational as well as cutting-edge issues of Global Animal Law. It  also identifies and analyses key principles, concepts, and actors shaping this field. It shows the impact of other disciplines and different intellectual paradigms on the formation and on our understanding of Global Animal Law. Finally, country reports, religion reports, snapshots on critical topics, and case notes provide succinct information on salient and current issues and problems.

Three author workshops took place at Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law and at Harvard Law School, with generous support of the Fritz Thyssen Foundation.


World Lawyers' Pledge on Climate Action 

(completed)

The World Lawyers’ Pledge on Climate Action is an open letter from and to the global legal community, calling for the mainstreaming of climate concerns throughout the law and legal profession. It seeks to rethink and redefine the role and responsibilities of lawyers in the climate crisis, and invites lawyers of all kinds —including practitioners, judges, scholars, civil servants, law students, and lawmakers—to integrate climate concerns into their respective areas of expertise and work. The magnitude and urgency of the climate crisis require all lawyers, not just environmental lawyers, to be part of the solution and contribute to climate-protective legal development.

The Pledge can be endorsed and signed at www.lawyersclimatepledge.org.

The World Lawyers' Pledge on Climate Action was published in Environmental Policy and Law.



Trilogy on a Legal Theory of Animal Rights 

(completed)

This research project was funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (Advanced Postdoc.Mobility grant) and was conducted at Harvard Law School and the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law (2018-2020).

The overarching goal of this project is to develop a novel and comprehensive legal theory of animal rights. While the idea of animal rights has been developed extensively in the area of moral philosophy over the past decades, and has more recently entered the arena of political theory, a comparable body of animal rights theory is lacking in legal scholarship. This project aims to fill this gap by adding to moral and political theories a distinct legal theory of animal rights. By rethinking the idea of animal rights through legal methodology and theories, it aims to furnish a coherent conceptual vocabulary for legal animal rights. Theorizing the conceptual foundations of animal rights seems particularly important given that legally recognized animal rights are beginning to emerge and materialize in case law. This project is thus also relevant for informing legal practice, as it may help guide the further institutionalization of legal animal rights and avoid a fragmented ad hoc-theory building.

The project consists of three separate but interconnected parts each fleshing out one core aspect of a legal theory of animal rights: (1) a general theory of legal animal rights, (2) a human rights theory of fundamental animal rights, and (3) a novel account of the relationship of complementarity between animal welfare law and animal rights. These subject areas will be explored through three different theoretical lenses: (1) theory of rights, (2) human rights philosophy, and (3) international humanitarian law. Methodologically, this project undertakes conceptual, comparative and normative analyses; i.e. a conceptual analysis and meta-analysis of prevailing conceptions of the legal concepts of (1) rights and (2) human rights with regard to the potential application to animals and (3) a comparative analysis of animal welfare law and international humanitarian law with a view to discovering relevant parallels and identifying regulatory and normative shortcomings.

The first part of the trilogy develops a theoretical framework for discussions of legal animal rights in general and addresses three basic questions: Can animals have legal rights (as a conceptual matter), do animals have legal rights (as a matter of positive law), and do animals need legal rights (evaluative considerations)?

The second part of the trilogy zooms in on one particular aspect of legal animal rights: human rights-like fundamental animal rights. It examines whether basic animal rights can be fitted in the human rights framework, and whether human rights and animal rights can and should be integrated.

The third part of the trilogy supplements the legal animal rights theory developed in the preceding papers by connecting it to the established field of animal welfare law. By reconceptualizing the traditionally dichotomized relationship between animal welfare law and animal rights as one of complementarity rather than incompatibility, this final piece seeks to reframe and reinvigorate a debate which is increasingly perceived as having hit an impasse caused by the welfare/rights-dualism. Inspiration for this reconfiguration will be drawn from the complex relationship between international humanitarian law and human rights as distinct but complementary legal regimes.

Publications