The Case of the Frankenchicken with Edie Bowles

Mariann Sullivan: Thrilled to have you. This case is so interesting because when you first hear about it, it sounds like you lost and then you start reading about it and it seems like you really won. And that's all of what I really want to sort out here because there's probably no bigger issue when it comes to animals and suffering than what happens to chickens raised for meat.

I guess a good place to start would be an overview of the current practices for keeping chickens raised for meat in the UK, which I don't think are dramatically different from the US and, specifically the breeding practices, because that's what's at issue here and how they affect the birds' welfare.

People listening probably know a little bit about this, but can you just lay that scene of what is the issue we're talking about?

Edie Bowles: Absolutely. And I imagine it is a very global issue. Of course, these, you know, multinational corporations that are involved in this practice, so chicken breeding does look very similar the world over. But essentially, chickens have been selectively bred over decades to reach slaughter weight in a shorter time as possible, in order to kind of yield as much meat as possible and obviously avoid a lot of the overheads of rearing these animals. But as a consequence of the selective breeding and this fast growth, chickens suffer from a range of health and welfare issues from internal organ failures, from the organs not being able to keep up with the rate of growth, through to leg issues due to small animals, essentially chicks, carrying these big bodies.

As a result of these leg issues and, you know, in some instances, broken legs, chickens not being able to reach water and food, so actually dying of starvation. The welfare issues are extreme and cause a lot of suffering. Not only do we believe that's unethical, we also believe that that's illegal.

Mariann Sullivan: And unlike in the US, there actually are some laws, and there are general provisions in the law that govern the treatment of farmed animals, I think, and there seems to be kind of this complex interplay of laws and regulations, but there's one that really stands out as being relevant here, and I think we should focus on it because we certainly don't have anything like this in the US, and that's paragraph 29, I think, of the Code of Practice. Which is a set of regulations?

Edie Bowles: Yeah, so I think that that's probably where things are slightly different in the UK compared to the U. S. So, primarily, you know, welfare law is governed by acts of parliament, by primary legislation. Those pieces of primary legislation will contain provisions that allow secondary legislation, in this case, regulation, sometimes orders, but in this specific case, a regulation, in fact. And then underneath that, you might also have a code of practice, which is more like guidance on how to comply with either the regulations or the primary legislation. So the paragraph that you're referring to is paragraph 29 of Schedule one of the Welfare of Farmed Animals Regulations. So that's the provision that's at play in this case.

Mariann Sullivan: So I was calling it code of practice, but that's more of a guidance and this is a real regulation. So it has to be followed, well, ostensibly.

Edie Bowles: So, can you tell us exactly what that provides? Because it's fairly brief and it's really interesting.

Yeah, absolutely. So the regulation at the heart of this case states that animals may only be kept for farming purposes if it can reasonably be expected on the basis of their genotype and phenotype that they can be kept without any detrimental effect on their health or welfare.

Mariann Sullivan: And I assume it's this reference to genotype and phenotype, which creates the assumption that we're talking about breeding practices here and whether they affect the animal's welfare.

Edie Bowles: Absolutely, absolutely. And there was no question throughout this whole process that, you know, fast growing breeds would fall under this provision.

Or rather, you know, chicken breeds would fall under this provision. Whether the other side agreed that fast growing chickens were falling foul of the provision is a separate issue. But, you know, on the face of it, you know, there was complete agreement that in theory, chicken breeds could fall within that provision.

Mariann Sullivan: Now, one thing that I think is interesting and probably complex for you and even more complex for us looking from the outside is that paragraph 29 seems to be derived from EU law. Has it been interpreted and implied in the EU in a way that is different from in the UK since the split?

Edie Bowles: No, not considerably.

There's, the odd word that might be different, but actually on the face of it, they mean the same. Since departing from the EU, we've retained a lot of the legislation, so we still have those provisions in domestic legislation.

Mariann Sullivan: So I know that Paragraph 29 is central here and I want to focus on it, but before we move on, I just want to make sure. Are there any other potentially relevant regulations that we should know about?

Edie Bowles: The Welfare of Farmed Animals Regulations is front and centre of this whole case, so there may be some other things coming into play, like a code of practice, but no, the relevant regulations are the Welfare of Farmed Animals Regs.

Mariann Sullivan: And what is the enforcement mechanism? I mean, we have regulations, how are they enforced? Because from what I can see, they're not being enforced, or at least some of them.

Edie Bowles: So, yeah, some of them are. So the primary enforcement body is the local authority. So the power has been devolved to local authorities. The central government does still reserve the right to enforce animal welfare law as well, or this specific animal welfare law.

But primarily, the local authority is the primary enforcement body. And indeed, they do sometimes bring prosecutions for breaches of The Welfare of Farmed Animals Regulations. However, there is data that shows that enforcement of farmed animal law is extremely poor. So that's a separate issue.

In fact, it's a very relevant issue, though, but separate to this case.

Mariann Sullivan: So, as we were discussing in the beginning, this is the way chickens have been raised for a long time. I'm sure it's gotten worse over time because scientists figure out even more dreadful things to do to animals. But, the basic scheme of these fast breeding birds, and it is interesting, I think you called them chicks. They really are chicks, even though they're enormous, they're still babies. This has been going on for a long time, but my understanding that it was a report issued by the RSPCA in 2020 that kind of made this issue come to the fore and to the attention, perhaps of you, of other lawyers who are interested in what's going on with animals.

Is that true?

Edie Bowles: Yeah, that's absolutely true. So the RSPCA released a report in 2020 called Eat, Sit, Suffer, Repeat. And it was the first report of its kind that looked holistically at welfare issues attached to fast growth. So they compared three fast growing breeds against a slower growing counterpart and found that, as was suspected, fast growing breeds suffer more welfare issues than the slower growing breed, to varying degrees across different fast growing breeds used, but overall the data was conclusive that fast growing breeds suffer more than slower growing breeds. And it was the first of its kind that looked at, you know, there'd been previous studies that had looked at specific things, maybe hot burns and leg health, but the RSPCA looked at a whole host of welfare issues.

Mariann Sullivan: Does the RSPCA have any official role?

It's a private charity?

Edie Bowles: No, they don't. They are the biggest private prosecutor in the UK and of course that falls within animal welfare. That's the area obviously that they privately prosecute, but it's a completely private right that actually every citizen has within the UK, to be able to bring private prosecution. So they're just relying on a power that I have as well. But to be honest, you know, the issue of the RSPCA being the primary private prosecutor in the country and the issue with poor enforcement are very related here, aren't they?

Because again, it paints this picture of just the neglect the animal welfare legislation has faced and of course you kind of see it at its worst with an issue like fast growth. You see an issue of complete neglect from the enforcement agencies to bring these prosecutions, instead relying on a private charity to do that. And on top of that, you see the fact that when they do bring prosecution to these public bodies, they're few and far between. And so then what you see is this real system of complacency, and you understand a bit more about how you could have a legal provision in place, like this paragraph 29, and it just never be applied in practice because of the framework that exists for farmed animal welfare law.

Mariann Sullivan: Yeah, And of course, the same situation we see in animal protection laws everywhere, to different extents. but it's hard enough to get laws passed. It's hard enough to get them interpreted and then, it's almost impossible to get them enforced.

Before we move on from the report, the rSPCA didn't just say that this was a bad way to raise chickens, but they proposed alternatives as well.

Edie Bowles: Are you referring to the fact that they use slower growing breeds?

Mariann Sullivan: Yeah, they weren't saying that we have to stop farming chickens.

Edie Bowles: No, no, but the RSPCA, they were actually, you know, they're an intervener in the case. And so they've come out very strongly against fast growing chickens.

They were the ones that authored this report. And they did, you know, speak strongly against this massive practice. But of course, the case at hand was a legal case. So, of course, we can only rely on the law as it is, and the law as it is does just allow for prohibition on animals, where their genes mean that they're prone to detriment rather than, you know, anything broader than that.

So of course, fast growing chickens seem like the most obvious example of that. Outside of that, not much was kind of said or needed to be said. Essentially, we were just going after the practice that we believe falls foul of, of that provision.

Mariann Sullivan: That's actually a positive rather than having to describe how the world could be remade if we win.

Okay, let's get to the lawsuit. The claimant is the Humane League UK. Now, Humane League is a big animal charity in the US. Is it as well in the, in the, in the UK?

Edie Bowles: Yeah, there's actually quite a few animal charities in the UK. I've been told that there's more animal charities than there are environmental charities, which is interesting. So I'm painting the picture that there's a lot of us, but no, the Humane League is absolutely a big name out there in the animal space.

Mariann Sullivan: So can you tell us what your basic claims were? I assume, or my understanding is that, your basic claim was really just laying out what paragraph 29 says.

Edie Bowles: Absolutely. So, with a judicial review, so judicial review being a challenge against a public body, arguing that some activity by the public body has been unlawful, or some decision by the public body was unlawful. With that in mind, you have to find your target, the thing that you're challenging. And so in this situation it was made a bit tricky by the fact that there was no policy statement where the government said, We think fast grown chickens are legal. Unfortunately, we weren't ever able to point to something like that. That's not unusual, it's quite common in fact, and I think it's increasingly common, especially with a lot of judicial reviews taking place, of course the government will keep their cards close to their chest, if they can. So instead we made the argument that it was clear that the government had misinterpreted paragraph 29 and as a result of this had practices and policies that flowed from that that were unlawful. So we argue that because they had misinterpreted paragraph 29, they had never brought a prosecution against fast growing breeds or because they'd misinterpreted paragraph 29, their codes of practice were inconsistent with paragraph 29. So that was kind of the, central ground of the claim. Initially, there were further grounds. There was a ground that the trigger system, which is the system in place, that monitors the welfare issues of conventionally reared chickens. We argue that this trigger system set unlawfully high thresholds for when a trigger report was triggered. So essentially every chicken, every conventionally reared chicken, which is essentially, you know, 95 percent of chickens in the UK, but every conventionally reared chicken will go through an assessment at the slaughterhouse where certain post mortem results will indicate poor welfare on farm.

That might be things like footpad issues, it might be things like emaciation, various, various indicators essentially that indicate poor welfare on farms. The government, this is a legal requirement that if there's any evidence of poor welfare indicated through these assessments, then a report needs to be triggered and sent to the government essentially to monitor, to review. However, in their own words, the government has set these thresholds of the monitoring system at, uh, in their own words, like exceptionally high or unusually high, there's two different, there's two different systems that they have with the trigger system, two different strands. So we argued that that was unlawfully high and that as a result of that, you know, lots of welfare issues of these birds were not being picked up, so that was a further ground in the case initially. And we also had a ground, a ground three in the High Court, which was kind of related to the trigger system, where we argued that as a result of this unlawfully high threshold, an unequal system was being created. Because producers that were compliant with the law were not receiving the benefits that those that weren't compliant with the law were receiving, such as higher overheads. And as a result of that, it was distorting the market. However, by the time we got to the Court of Appeal, we really did just have that, that ground one about paragraph 29 and the interpretation of paragraph 29.

Mariann Sullivan: No, I find that last argument fascinating because it is so true how the government's failure to enforce regulations totally disadvantages people who are trying to do the right thing, or at least closer to the right thing.

Edie Bowles: Absolutely.

Mariann Sullivan: All right. Who is the defendant?

Edie Bowles: The defendant is the Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, essentially a government department that deals with agriculture.

Mariann Sullivan: Is this just England? They said something about they were the applicable enforcement agent in England. Again, I'm getting into into stupid American questions.

Edie Bowles: No, not a stupid American question. We have a very complicated devolution.

Mariann Sullivan: You do indeed.

Edie Bowles: Animal welfare has been devolved to the respective countries. So this specific issue was just for England. But of course, we do have the same provision throughout the whole of the UK.

So the outcome of this case will be relevant to the rest of the UK. Indeed, it would be relevant to the rest of Europe that also has this same provision. Persuasive, of course, not binding, but relevant.

Mariann Sullivan: Interesting. Really interesting.

This the most question of all, What is your basis for like, how does the Humane League become authorized to bring this action?

I mean, you mentioned private prosecutions, but this isn't a private prosecution. I mean, that's astounding enough, and we'll get to that.

But why is a charity allowed to go to the to the courts and say the government is doing something wrong to animals?

Edie Bowles: So it's so funny because every time I go to a conference in America, there's always a session on standing. And you know, I feel so spoiled to say that that's just not something that really, really comes up. It's actually a relatively, you know, generous system where if you have an interest in the case, essentially, and the, Humane League is legitimately representing people that care about chicken welfare, and as a result of that, we're deemed to have standing.

Mariann Sullivan: And that would apply to charitable organizations, to any any organization?

Edie Bowles: Any organization, any individual, if you've got an interest in the case. You know, there are some cases where, of course, standing is more restricted, and there's always a risk that judicial review will be tightened up. So, I don't want to, kind of, I suppose, get too cocky on the old standing front, because we've been very lucky for a long time.

But of course, we're never, you know, judicial review is a threat to the government. Of course it is. It's holding the government to account. So every government that kind of comes in lately has shown some kind of tendency towards tightening up the judicial review rules. So it remains to be seen if we have this generous standing forever, but certainly now standing is one of those things that has not been an issue.

Mariann Sullivan: Oh, I can't even imagine.

All right. Now, if I understand correctly, and I'm not at all sure that I do, the Secretary of State actually asserted that you were out of time in this overall challenge because this had been in place for years. But then the Secretary essentially waived the timeliness objection, which seems to be the entire key to how this case got heard. Is that right?

Edie Bowles: So, They didn't necessarily concede that point. In fact, it did pop up throughout, it popped up throughout all of the years, you know, right up until the Court of Appeal. But, timing's an interesting one. So timing, technically, it is probably one of the more restrictive provisions of bringing a JR.

You're supposed to bring a judicial review within three months of the decision. And of course here, you're right, fast growing chickens have existed for decades and the code of practice that we argued was a representation of the misinterpretation of paragraph 29 had been around for a long time. So there were lots of things that, obviously on the face of it looked like we were out of time. However, we actually pinned the case to the RSPCA reports. So we brought the claim three months from the RSPCA report. We then, after issuing, we then entered some dialogue with the government. They wanted to kind of enter some alternative dispute resolution. So we entered some dialogue that didn't get us anywhere. And then we went back and pursued the claim. The timing issue, of course, was not a done issue. It still popped up. But again, we do have some positive case law where judges will waive the time limit if it's an ongoing breach. And in this case, we argued it was a clear example of an ongoing breach.

Mariann Sullivan: That seems so crucial. And there was a way out of this that the court didn't take. I'm really impressed with that.

All right. So in the court below, you were not successful, correct?

Edie Bowles: Correct. We weren't successful in the court below. In fact, there are quite a few courts we weren't successful in. So the way it works in the judicial review process is you apply for judicial review on paper and a judge will consider the claim on paper just from reading all the materials or at least our grounds and then some summary defense statements. And on paper we were unsuccessful, we weren't granted permission to proceed. So that's essentially it. You apply for permission. So we applied for permission. We weren't successful on paper. You then get an opportunity to go to the court for an oral hearing, again, to apply for permission. We weren't successful at that stage. We then had one last chance by going to the Court of Appeal, essentially appealing the permission decision from the High Court. And the Court of Appeal granted us permission and said we clearly had an arguable case. So then it gets sent back to the High Court and that's where you have the substantive hearing and well, we were unsuccessful in the High Court's substantive hearing.

Mariann Sullivan: And one of the reasons I think,

which I thought was really interesting, is that the court held that paragraph 29 is a criminal provision, so the burden would be on the farmer to prove the animals hadn't suffered detriment and just felt that this was extremely unfair.

I mean, I'm summarizing something I don't fully understand. So, does that get the gist of it?

Edie Bowles: That gets the gist of it, essentially. And of course, in the appeal, it was decided that it had no bearing, you know, that it was a criminal standard, that it would be on the prosecution to prove the case beyond all reasonable doubt, and it shouldn't be relevant, really.

Mariann Sullivan: Yeah, the whole idea that, not to go off on a tangent, but that because it's a criminal provision, the burden would be on the defendant, like, it made no sense to me, and then I was so excited when I was reading the Court of Appeals decision, and apparently it made no sense to them either. So I felt like I wasn't being totally stupid.

Edie Bowles: I think that there were aspects of the High Court judgment that were sometimes difficult to follow.

And I think the Court of Appeal were able to cut through a lot of that, and were able to just create a judgment that does have a very logical interpretation of the provision.

Mariann Sullivan: So tell us about the appearance in the Court of Appeal and and what happened.

Edie Bowles: Yeah, so the Court of Appeal, it was a long old period.

So like I said, you know, the RSPCA released their report in 2020. So fast forward to the, you know, to the end of 2024, we're in the Court of Appeal, which in itself was incredibly exciting. Not many animal cases have been heard that high up. So already it's a moment to be there. It was a case over two days. And Yeah, it really felt like throughout those two days, it was apparent that the judges were very engaged and that they understood what was at play. They didn't shy away from asking difficult questions and evidently from the judgment they didn't shy away from engaging with paragraph 29 and coming up with an interpretation which hasn't existed.

I mean that's like, you know, like we've just said, paragraph 29 is at the heart of this case. And what's so interesting is that, and I guess this is true the world over, and it's true, you know, from statute to statute, but you have these provisions, and actually, unless they're going to court, there often are times when it's unclear what they mean, or there's competing interpretations of what they mean. And so, Judges are in this position where they have to sometimes provide an interpretation of these provisions. But what was very unique about this case is the judges were being asked to provide an interpretation of a provision that will impact a billion animals a year. It's an incredibly influential decision and a high stakes decision, but like we've just said the judges engaged with it and they they didn't shy away from it.

Mariann Sullivan: One of the things that I saw in there that I thought was so important was that productivity, under this provision, should not be weighed against welfare. This is not a balancing act. It's a rule.

Edie Bowles: Absolutely. So when it comes to interpretation of paragraph 29 itself, I think it would have been very, very nonsensical for anyone to have read that in. However, there were lots of indications throughout that that is the way that the government was interpreting the provision, you know, in the Code to Practice, it mentions things about productivity. And indeed, in reality, the whole existence of fast growing chickens is to do with productivity. So even though the provision itself, the government didn't go as far as reading productivity into their interpretation. It is something that's obviously there existing in the background and it's obviously something that is happening in, in reality.

So I think more than anything, what was incredibly important about the judges saying that was just it was a bit of a wake up call. It was a sense that actually, no, the welfare law exists. That's where we put the marker, that's where we put the line, and you don't get to then undermine it further by saying, you know, and on top of that, you can kind of compromise it in this way or that way.

So I think it's a really important principle to just assert and to establish, so I'm really glad that they said that and I think it's going to be very useful in lots of cases, even using different welfare law. I think it's going to be really, really important to just remind people that the welfare law itself at times is the compromise, right?

And so you can't then undermine it further by reading in these commercial realities.

Mariann Sullivan: Yeah, because that undermines it completely.

Also, the court made clear, I mean, obviously this idea of any detrimental effect on the animals, the court said that doesn't mean any, but it doesn't mean as low a standard as the court below was trying to apply.

Edie Bowles: Absolutely. Absolutely.

Mariann Sullivan: Yeah. The court did something remarkable, and yet there is an enormous amount left to be done before this translates into any kind of reality.

I mean, basically, your appeal was dismissed, but the courts kind of set you on this road that means that that road might actually go somewhere.

Is that right?

Edie Bowles: Yeah, that's absolutely right. So I think that sums it up really well, you know, we lost, but there's, a win attached to this, and I think that, you know, if you go back to the reasons as to why this case was brought, you know, paragraph 29, the provision at the heart of this case, an interpretation, an understanding of what paragraph 29 means, and a belief that fast growing chickens fall foul of paragraph 29. However, we were existing within the context of judicial review challenging a public body and of course a public body only has to do what they're legally required to do, and the court found that they didn't have a policy, nor did they need a policy on fast growth. So essentially, the case was lost just on a technicality, to some extent. However, at the heart of this case was the meaning of paragraph 29, and whether that would apply to fast growing chickens. And the interpretation that we got from the Court of Appeal, we would argue, does what we say it does. It would make it untenable for fast growing chickens to be kept. So what that looks like and and of course the Court of Appeal were even more helpful than that.

The way that they broke down each aspect of paragraph 29 was incredibly helpful for a criminal court, for a prosecutor to be able to kind of actually identify a potential case and something potentially falling foul of paragraph 29. So it's an incredibly helpful judgment. Essentially, what it did do is it just put it within the purview of the criminal courts and gave very helpful guidelines on what that case might look like.

Mariann Sullivan: Yeah, It does seem possible that it would've been very hard for the court to make such a monumental decision had the real world impact been immediate. You know, the court would have been asked to put all UK chicken farmers out of business or in prison for having violated criminal laws, but the court actually found a way to set policy in motion, which now will be done.

And this is actually my next question, because you mentioned reference to private prosecutions, and I'm wondering, is that the way this will play out, or will the DEFRA, Is that's what it's called?

The department? Will they wake up and start making more bigger policy provisions based on this, or are they just going to fight it?

Edie Bowles: Great question. Answer remains to be seen. So, obviously, we would hope that this is something that the government, that DEFRA, will take on. Obviously, you want a sensible central regulator that implements the law, as it should be implemented, as it should be interpreted and applied. So, the hope is that they do step up to the plate and they do what I believe they should be doing as a regulator, making sure that animal welfare law is applied in practice. Whether that happens remains to be seen. In the event that that doesn't happen, there's various other possibilities. It could be a case of working with local authorities that have these big chicken producers within their jurisdictions.

As I mentioned at the start, local authorities are the primary enforcement body for this law. So it could be working with them, they of course could prosecute someone within their jurisdiction. Alternatively, yeah, there is always the reserved right to bring a private prosecution, should no one else bring one. So that's definitely something that's being considered. Certainly no one involved wants to rest on their laurels and wants to see this through and make sure that chickens receive the legal protections that they're entitled to.

Mariann Sullivan: Yeah. And it certainly seems like this should go forward as a policy change rather than prosecuting individual chicken farmers for doing what they thought was legal. It would be a shame if the government left you with no other way to enforce what is now the law, or at least it's open to interpretation as the law, on the way it's legal to raise chickens in the UK.

It's so interesting.

Edie Bowles: I completely agree with you. In fact, you know, of course, my constituents are my clients and of course the chickens, but I also believe that the central government, that the government has a responsibility to the farmers and to not leave them in the lurch and to not leave them facing a wave of prosecutions. So I think absolutely the most responsible thing DEFRA could be doing is considering this judgment and what it means in practice and issuing some guidance on that to help all of those involved.

Mariann Sullivan: Well, it really does seem they've been led astray as to what's legal. And, it's up to the government to do something about it.

Fascinating case. Obviously, there will be much more coming out of this case and we'll want to keep an eye on it because it's of global importance.

Tell us a little bit more before I let you go about Advocates for Animals and the work that you do.

Edie Bowles: Yes, absolutely. So, Advocates for Animals is the UK's first animal law firm, fully focused animal law firm. In fact, you know, talking of kind of conferences that I go to in the States, I'm always amazed at just how dynamic and just how active your animal law community is over there.

It's a lot smaller in the UK, which is interesting in itself, as a country that everyone kind of looks to as having these animal welfare laws, we actually do have kind of a smaller animal law community. And certainly a very small animal law practice. So Advocates for Animals was, you know, was set up to address that, essentially, in recognition of the fact that these laws exist in practice, that they weren't being enforced in practice, that there weren't many players ensuring that they were being interpreted as well as we argue that they should be. So it was set up in 2019 to address this absence, to address this gap. And since the launch, you know, we've been involved in a wide range of issues. A lot of farm law cases as well, with clients like the Humane League. I've represented planning permission cases for people challenging planning permission for zoos.

I've been involved in cases involving certain restrictions on invasive species and what that has meant from an animal welfare perspective. I've been involved in anti animal testing cases, and not only have I been involved in cases on behalf of clients across, you know, a range of industries, that's also engaged a range of different legal frameworks.

So, of course, the fast growing chicken case is obviously public law and judicial review, but I've been involved in criminal prosecutions, planning permission cases, I've been involved in just, you know, in just in written advice, consumer protection law is something else. Essentially, the way that we have interpreted the scope of animal law at Advocates for Animals, is essentially, if there's a way you can use the law to help an animal in some way, then it falls within the scope of animal law. We don't get involved in stuff that would be more kind of an internal matter for an animal charity, but certainly if there's a way of using the law to protect an animal in some way, then we try to use it and we try to ensure that animals are given full legal protection.

So Advocates for Animals, yeah, very busy, have already, you know, seen quite a lot of impact and seen development all the time. And I do think that since our launch, there are more people interested in coming into the space. There does seem to be more practitioners out there. So it's also something that is gaining momentum, which is also really great to see.

Mariann Sullivan: That is really exciting to hear. And it sounds like you have many opportunities that we don't have here to pursue legal remedies.

Edie Bowles: Absolutely. So again, having this legislation means that, like you said, there are all these opportunities. So it's such a shame for them to go to waste.

It's really great that there are lawyers like us, Advocates for Animals, but also more people coming into the space that are just making sure that those opportunities don't get lost. Because actually, quite often with law, it's not as simple as, you know, I keep on using the word interpreted, but, you know, it's not as simple as just seeing enforcement, it's also seeing the interpretation that we would argue Parliament intended, or at least the public thought was happening. And that seems to be where a lot of the opportunity lies. You know, if that interpretation is left to industry or left to the government, quite often it's a very limited interpretation, that doesn't move things forward. So actually having people watching that interpretation and challenging it, like we did with the case of paragraph 29 in the fast growing chickens, yeah, huge potential is unlocked.

Mariann Sullivan: Really really exciting work. And it's totally true that at the point where laws are passed, legislators frequently want to please their animal loving constituents and laws maybe get passed that make everybody feel good. But. they don't they don't just happen.

Edie Bowles: They don't just happen. You can never rest on your laurels, you can never get complacent.

There's always more to be done. For now, who knows what the future looks like, but for now it does feel like you always have to keep on, keep on pushing and keep on moving things forward.

Mariann Sullivan: Well, I'm really excited that you're that you're there doing it and hope we'll be in touch. Finding some work to inspire us, to make things a little better around the world.

Thanks so much for all of your work, and thanks so much for joining us today.

Edie Bowles: Well, thank you so much for having me, and, you know, right back at you, I'm always so inspired, you know, I'm inspired by your podcast, and I'm so inspired by the people in the US. They've actually been a huge source of inspiration for Advocates for Animals and, I think that seeing the community out there and seeing what the community has achieved really made the kind of vision over here seem possible.

So, yeah, mutual inspiration and mutual respect.