As I noted in this previous post, I am the new Chair of the American Bar Association (“ABA”), General Practice, Solo and Small Firm’s Division, Agriculture Law Committee. You can join the Committee and the Discussion List here. I have restructured the subcommittees as follows: 1. Ag ADR: mediation, arbitration 2. Ag Estate/Succession Planning, Family Law, and Taxation: estate planning,succession …
Livestock Feedyards and Potential Liability Issues
If you haven’t done so already, I suggest reviewing the “Livestock & Liability” article by Lauren P. Caggiano (@lcagg on Twitter) on pages 32-34 in this issue of the Feedlot magazine. In this article, I recommend that cattle feedyard operators seek counsel on environmental laws and perhaps hire a Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation (“CAFO”) consultant to devise a plan to …
Downtown Lawyers
For the last year, I have been a member of the Downtown Lawyers group here in New York City. It is comprised of attorneys who practice law in New York City in a myriad of practice areas including bankruptcy, estate planning, elder law, business law, personal injury, employment law, immigration, matrimonial law, tax law, landlord-tenant law, intellectual property, criminal law, …
Spring Cleaning: Animal Handling Procedures in Employee Handbooks
I have written blogs/articles and have spoken on livestock animal cruelty law in New York and my various recommendations for building a defense. Among them, I recommend that livestock producers have an employee handbook in place that enumerates recommended animal handling procedures and regularly train employees on those procedures. An employee handbook is not a contract but is instead a general …
Monday Links
It’s been a long while since my last “links” post so I thought I would post a few links today of posts that caught my eye. For those of you who are Mac users, I have really loved using NetNewsWire and recently downloaded the application on my iPhone 4. I hope all is well in your neck of the woods. …
Completed the Beef Quality Assurance Producer Certification Manual
As I noted in this blog a few months ago, I am currently completing the Beef Quality Assurance (“BQA”) training through the New York Beef Industry Council, Inc. Last weekend, I have reviewed the Producer Certification Manual for the Mid-Atlantic region (which includes Pennsylvania, New York, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, Maine, New Jersey and Vermont). After reviewing the materials, I …
Part III: Debrief from NYFB Farm Animal Welfare Conference
At the recent New York Farm Bureau (“NYFB”) Farm Animal Welfare Conference, Kay Johnson Smith from the Animal Agriculture Alliance was one of the keynote speakers. I was extremely impressed by her poise and presence. I love seeing such powerful, articulate women in the forefront of agriculture issues in Washington. The underlying theme of Ms. Smith’s talk was that those …
The Not-So-Simple Definition of “Agriculture Law”
As I mentioned in my previous blog, I recently joined JD Supra where my documents can be found here. Today, JD Supra featured my profile on its facebook page. I was asked what exactly agriculture law was from an editor in Florida where I did my best to answer her in limited space. Since I oftentimes receive this question (lately …