The National Agricultural Law Center is providing an online webinar titled, “Legal Issues in Animal Agriculture: Regulating Living Space.” The webinar will be held on May 10, 2012 from 12-1 p.m. (Eastern). The webinar is the first in a series of National Agricultural Law Center outreach activities focused on legal issues in animal agriculture. Center Staff Attorney Elizabeth Rumley will be the speaker (see Speaker Information, below).

For full information regarding the webinar, including registration, click here.

This presentation is designed to be useful to anyone — attorneys, lobbyists, federal and state policymakers, extension personnel, producers, and others — with an interest in a definitive understanding of food animal confinement laws in the United States. While designed for attorneys and non-attorneys, the presentation has been approved for 60 minutes of Continuing Legal Education credit in Arkansas. Cost of the webinar is $50.

For attorneys outside of Arkansas, the National Agricultural Law Center will happily provide any needed documentation or materials necessary for a non-Arkansas attorney to obtain Continuing Legal Education in their respective state. For assistance in this regard, please contact Center Director Harrison Pittman at hmpittm@uark.edu.

The webinar will focus on the emerging legal and policy issues dealing with farm animal confinement. The presentation focuses on the status, substance, and evolution of the laws and regulations of farm animal confinement in the United States. In the last ten years, several states have adopted statutes that regulate the amount of living space required to raise certain kinds of farm animals. Controversial ballot initiatives like California’s Proposition 2 have led to higher-profile compromises like last summer’s HSUS/UEP agreement, among other significant developments that impact the animal agriculture industry.

The webinar is provided by the National Agricultural Law Center with support from Banks Law Firm, PLLC. In addition, the Center is partnering with eXtension to provide the webinar in conjunction with the Center’s role as the lead national institution for the eXtension Agricultural Law Community of Practice.

For registration and payment, click here.

Speaker Information:

Elizabeth Rumley is a staff attorney at the National Agricultural Law Center in Fayetteville, Arkansas. At the Center, her primary research focus is on legal issues in animal agriculture, and she frequently lectures on those issues and others to audiences nationwide. Additionally, she has co-taught a course titled “Animals and Agricultural Production, Law and Policy” at the University of Oklahoma College of Law, and will be teaching a course on legal issues in animal agriculture this summer at the Dale Bumpers College of Agricultural, Food, & Life Sciences at the University of Arkansas.

Her article A Proposal to Regulate Farm Animal Confinement in the United States and an Overview of Current and Proposed Laws appeared in the Drake Journal of Agricultural Law (14 Drake J. Agric. L. 437 (Fall, 2009)) and she has co-written an article on the enforcement powers of humane society members that will be published this spring in the San Joaquin Agricultural Law Review.

At the Center Mrs. Rumley works closely with the University of Arkansas’ Center of Excellence for Poultry Science, Animal Science Department, and the Agricultural Economics and Agribusiness Department. In addition, Mrs. Rumley works closely with and is on the advisory board of the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture’s Center for Food Animal Well-Being.

She is licensed to practice law in Michigan and Ohio after earning her B.A. from Michigan State University, her J.D. cum laude from the University of Toledo College of Law, and her LL.M. in Agricultural Law from the University of Arkansas School of Law.