In this blog, 3L staffer Jordan Guancione explores how Kentucky divorce courts should value unborn racehorses by looking to how courts have divided unvested pensions and stock options. She examines the “immediate offset” method as a potential solution for dividing an asset whose future value remains uncertain.
In this blog, 2L staffer Kristen Bailey analyzes Disney's “Living with the Land” attraction that takes guests through a tour of one of Disney's greenhouses, showcasing their innovative and sustainable agricultural practices. Disney goes above state regulations and follows stricter self-created guidelines, posing the question of whether state law adequately protects indoor agriculture when Disney is going beyond state and federal regulations to create their own. This blog argues that states should enact more specific and detailed regulations regarding indoor agricultural practices in order to best protect our environment.
In this blog, 3L staffer Lakyn LeMaster analyzes how the increasing popularity of GLP-1 medications may be reshaping consumer food habits and, in turn, impacting Kentucky’s agricultural industry. LeMaster addresses the risks that changing demands could create for Kentucky, particularly as consumers purchase less ultra-processed and fast food while showing increased interest in fresh foods. Ultimately, she argues that Kentucky’s agricultural community should proactively monitor these trends and encourage diversification to ensure producers are prepared for an evolving market.
In this blog, 2L staffer Grace Hager analyzes the escalating legal crisis facing the "Clean Beauty" industry driven by 2026 FDA findings and new state-level bans. Hager explores the debate between the industry’s current reliance on self-defined clean standards versus the growing legal demand for lab-verified transparency. Ultimately, she takes the position that retailers must assume a heightened legal risk that can no longer be hidden by vague marketing claims.
In this blog, senior staffer Amy Rice argues that the FDA should fully embrace a "method-neutral" approach by accepting New Approach Methodologies (“NAMs”) as primary evidence of drug efficacy. She contends that traditional animal testing is often an outdated and poor predictor of human outcomes, whereas modern tools like organ-on-chip models offer superior scientific precision. Ultimately, Rice asserts that regulators must move beyond historical biases to implement the FDA Modernization Acts, thereby accelerating innovation and reducing the costs of biomedical and agricultural development.
With the continuing drought in California, the agricultural industry may be fearful of losing its top spot on the ERA’s list for the top agricultural producing state— worth roughly $46 billion and employing 1.7 million people. However, one particular crop may not be as threatened as the rest—California’s celebrated grapevine.
Dr. Dickson Despommier, professor of public health at Columbia University, created the concept of “vertical farming” back in 1999. Dr. Despommier and his students discovered that with a city, like New York, instead of looking towards flat land for food growth, the city should start looking up. Dr. Despommier and his class on medical ecology estimate that 30-story vertical farm towers could feed 50,000 people.
The recent upsurge in mass numbers of unexplained bee deaths has stirred debate over what could be causing these incidents around the globe. Some scientists now believe that a specific class of pesticides called neonicotinoids might be to blame. Last December, the European Union enacted a two-year ban on three types of neonicotinoid pesticides in response to the European Food Safety Authority’s report that stated that neonicotinoids pose “high acute risks” to pollinators, likes bees. The U.S. currently has no such ban in place. However, the EPA has expressed similar apprehension over the insecticide’s long-term effects, and certain U.S. cities are currently considering instituting local bans.
San Francisco, California recently became the first city in California to implement a new state law offering a tax break to urban individuals who use their property to grow food. This new state law allows residents to use their urban property to produce food and, in return, the assessed value of their property is lowered, thereby lowering their property tax.
After years of legislative consideration, the University of Kentucky (“UK”) recently harvested in mere minutes its first legal hemp crop under the Industrial Hemp Program. In September, UK yielded ten-foot stalks at Spindletop Farm in Lexington, Kentucky. The harvest marked Kentucky’s first legal hemp harvest in seventy years. UK planted the hemp in conjunction with the Kentucky Department of Agriculture (“KDA”) under the Industrial Hemp Program (“Program”) established by the Federal Farm Bill.
With a seemingly Dionysian blessing, Kentucky has once again become a wine producing state. Prior to Prohibition, “Kentucky was the third largest grape and wine producing state in the nation.” Prohibition, which placed a cork in this production, deeply hurt Kentucky wineries with the resurgence of Kentucky wineries occurring only in the past two decades. “‘Ten years ago, Kentucky had only two or three wineries….” Now, over sixty wineries and vineyards thrive in Kentucky.
The days of the horse-drawn plow are far behind us, and the age of precision agriculture is quickly taking over. By “collecting real-time data on weather, soil and air quality, crop maturity and even equipment and labor costs and availability” farmers can make predictive decisions about how to manage their crops. Scientists around the world believe that precision agriculture will be the solution to answering the world’s food production challenges that will inevitably arise as the global population increases.
By: Alison Cox, Staff Member
A Senate committee in the Kentucky General Assembly recently approved a bill that would make it a crime to film farm operations on private property without the owner’s consent. The Senate Agriculture Committee attached this legislation to House Bill 222, a bill designed to set euthanasia standards for shelter animals.
The new language has created public policy concerns by animal rights activists, as well as questions of constitutionality. Kentucky State Representative Joni Jenkins said that the language added by the Senate committee made the bill “more complicated, and maybe even unconstitutional.”
The Kentucky Legislature won’t pass House Bill 222 easily due to high public scrutiny.
This new language would subject a person to a Class B misdemeanor, punishable by up to 90 days in jail and a $250 fine, for secretly recording farm operations on private property.
The bill, however, does not apply to law-enforcement officials and farming operations on public property.
The Humane Society has dubbed this bill the latest issue of “ag-gag” legislation.
The Human Society defines an “ag-gag” bill as any bill that seeks to criminalize whistle-blowing on factory farms, and as a result keep Americans in the dark about where their food is coming from.
Matt Dominguez of the Humane Society has said such bills, “go to show how much the industry has to hide.”
Not only will the bill potentially keep Americans in the dark, but it may also be a violation the First Amendment, as the bill is very much directed at restricting speech. The First Amendment does not free undercover investigators from civil or criminal liability, even if they ultimately produce an accurate video that serves the public good. But, this type of bill represents the broadest approach to “ag-gag” laws because these laws could potentially implicate a wide range of otherwise innocent activities and may face strong First Amendment challenges for overbreadth and government restraint of content of expression.
Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam vetoed a proposed “ag-gag” law after the Tennessee Attorney General called the bill “constitutionally suspect.”
The Tennessee bill was just one of fifteen so called “ag-gag” bills that were both introduced and defeated in 2013.
However, in February 2014, Idaho became the seventh state to pass “ag-gag” legislation into state law
. The Idaho legislation criminalizes unauthorized recording inside agricultural facilities, punishable by up to one year in jail and a $5000 fine.
Though the Kentucky bill is controversial, the bill has found support. Kentucky Farm Bureau has supported the provision as a necessity to protect Kentucky farmers.
However, there are serious implications to public policy if farmers’ rights are protected in this way. The farmers may be able to be protected through other means.
The public policy concerns and the suspect constitutionality of the Kentucky provision seem to outweigh the argument of protecting the farmer’s rights, but the question remains as to whether Kentucky will join eleven states that failed to pass proposed “ag-gag” legislation in 2013 or whether it will join the likes of Idaho and pass the controversial legislation.
_________________
Cho Park, Critics: Kentucky Senators ‘Snuck’ ‘Ag-Gag’ Into Animal Rights Bill, ABCNews (Mar. 28, 2014),
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/critics-kentucky-senators-snuck-ag-gag-animal-rights/story?id=23098835
.
Id.
Jack Brammer & Janet Patton, Kentucky bill would prohibit filming of farm operations without owner’s consent, Kentucky.com (Mar. 25, 2014),
http://www.kentucky.com/2014/03/25/3160704/kentucky-bill-would-prohibit-filming.html
.
Id.
Park, supra note 1.
Anti-Whistleblower Bills Hide Factory-Farming Abuses from the Public, The Humane Society (Mar. 25, 2014),
.
Brammer & Patton, supra note 3.
Jessalee Landfried, Bound & Gagged: Potential First Amendment Challenges to "Ag-Gag" Laws, 23 Duke Envtl. L. & Pol'y F. 377, 395 (2013).
Taking Ag Gag to Court, Animal Legal Defense Fund,
http://aldf.org/cases-campaigns/features/taking-ag-gag-to-court/
(last visited Mar. 31, 2014).
Anti-Whistleblower Bills Hide Factory-Farming Abuses from the Public, The Humane Society (Mar. 25, 2014),
.
Ag-Gag Bills at the State Level, ASPCA,
(last visited Mar. 31, 2014).
Id.
Kentucky ‘Ag Gag’ Bill Targets Undercover Animal Investigation Videos On Farms, Huffington Post (Mar. 25, 2014, 5:59 PM),
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/25/kentucky-ag-gag_n_5030196.html
.
Id. (discussing the fifteen proposed ag-gag bills introduced in eleven states in 2013).
