In our complex, consumerist societies, the intricacy of personal interactions and the number of goods and products available often prevents us from direct knowledge of what lies 'behind' food behaviors, ingredients, and the origins of the modern food and agriculture supply chain. Over the last decade or so, scholars, lawyers and engaged lay vegans have had many discussions about vegan rights and discrimination as issues intrinsic to animal rights, but the final frontier remains intact: the direct concerns of other animals. To give effect to the rights of animals, we must recognize and defend the human right-or duty, as many uphold-- to care about them. Including contributors from Australia, the United States, Germany, Italy, France, Canada, Portugal, and the United Kingdom, this book explores the rights of vegans and how vegans can be protected from discrimination. Using an international socio-legal lens, the contributors discuss constitutional issues, vegan legal cases, the concept of protection for vegan 'belief' in human rights and equality law, the legal requirement to provide vegan food, animal agriculture and plant-based, vegan food in the context of the human right to food, and the rights of vegans in education and in health care. This book will be of interest to practicing lawyers, legal and critical legal scholars, scholars of vegan, and critical animal studies, and commentors on socio-political issues alike.

Towards a Vegan Jurisprudence: The Need for a Reorientation of Human Rights argues that, in order to give effect to animal rights, human society is obliged to question the extent to which our social norms permit us to manifest compassionate justice to other animals. Jeanette Rowley posits a new perspective on the theory and practice of human rights to accommodate the demands of vegans for rights for nonhuman animals, recognizing the existing argument that the idea grounding human rights is our ethical responsibility to the precarious, mortal other. Rowley develops this principle to ground the rights claims of vegans in the ethics of alterity, applying the concept to nonhuman others to ground the protection of other animals and provide a new approach to human rights litigation to accommodate vegans, calling for the reconceptualization of the very idea of human rights.