The Law Is on the Animals’ Side: Legal Impact for Chickens’ Room for Funding & Impact (2025)

By alene @ 2025-11-17T05:01 (+49)

TL;DR: Legal Impact for Chickens (LIC) is a nonprofit law firm fighting factory-farm cruelty. In our four years in existence, LIC has: 

• proven in court that animal protection organizations like LIC have the power to enforce California’s animal cruelty law against agriculture companies,
• prompted California’s largest poultry producer to announce it has made animal-welfare reforms, and
• stopped a DC butcher shop from selling foie gras.

We’re now fundraising $690,000 to fill our gap for our 2026 planned budget of $2 million. 

(That said, the full amount LIC could potentially absorb is uncapped within a reasonable basis. Additional funding would allow us to scale faster by hiring more lawyers and litigating more lawsuits at once. LIC currently has more promising lawsuit ideas than resources to pursue them.)

I. Why sue over animal cruelty?

In the long run, companies and individuals benefit by following the law. But they don’t always see this in the short run.

Experience shows that companies and executives will follow a law if—and only if—someone actually enforces that law. 

For instance, animal cruelty is a crime. Yet a LIC-sponsored investigation caught California’s largest poultry producer driving forklifts over birds. This presumably occurred because company leaders felt like no one was looking. 

As a nonprofit law firm, LIC thus litigates cases to bring corporate America into line with what our law already requires: the humane treatment of animals.

II. What we’ve accomplished recently

EA Forum readers have grown LIC from a solo project in 2021 to a team of six today. We now have five full-time litigators and a legal operations specialist. 

Here are some highlights from the past year at LIC:

1. Proving animal-protection organizations like LIC can sue ag companies for cruelty: In 2024, LIC filed an animal-cruelty suit against Alexandre Family Farm for pouring salt into cows’ eyes, dragging disabled animals across concrete, starving cattle, and more. Alexandre filed a demurrer arguing that LIC lacks the power to enforce California’s cruelty law. In a victory for animals and for the rule of law, the Humboldt County Superior Court overruled defendant Alexandre’s demurrer, allowing LIC’s cruelty case to proceed! See LIC v. Alexandre Family Farm, LLC, 2025 WL 1928044 (Cal.Super.). The well-reasoned eight-page ruling acknowledged LIC’s power, as a California society for the prevention of cruelty to animals (SPCA), to prevent cruelty through civil litigation: “[T]he Court finds that an SPCA filing and prosecuting a civil action to enjoin violations of animal cruelty laws . . . is one of the multiple avenues for the enforcement of California’s animal cruelty laws.” Unhappy with this result, Alexandre petitioned the California Court of Appeal to intervene in the lawsuit. Happily, in 2025, the Court of Appeal summarily denied Alexandre’s writ petition! See Alexandre Family Farm v. Superior Court of Humboldt Cnty, No. A173676, 2025 WL 2826613 (Cal. Ct. App. Sept. 11, 2025) (order denying petition for writ of mandate, prohibition, or other appropriate relief). The case has now returned to Humboldt County Superior Court, where the parties have begun discovery.
2. Foie gras off the shelves: LIC filed a false-advertising lawsuit on behalf of fellow nonprofit Animal Outlook against a Washington, DC butcher shop that was marketing foie gras as “humane.” The result was immediate: Once the shop got notice of our suit, it stopped selling foie gras.
3. Exposing cruelty at a major poultry producer: We commissioned an undercover investigation of Foster Farms, California’s largest chicken producer. Foster Farms reportedly released a statement that, as a result of the LIC-sponsored investigation, Foster Farms has “‘implemented’” new animal-welfare procedures. These reportedly included companywide animal welfare training, creating a new chief animal welfare officer role and new animal welfare director roles, and “[i]ncreased” animal welfare audits and Professional Animal Auditor Certification Organization (PAACO) staff.
4. Pushing for transparency: In Aug 2025, we represented a Tyson shareholder in suing America’s largest poultry company for information about the company’s treatment of chickens and workers. The lawsuit is ongoing.

III. Short Timelines:

No one knows what the world will be like in ten or fifteen years. For those with short AI timelines who want to help animals, it makes the most sense to focus on ways to benefit animals in the next five years.

LIC believes that civil litigation for animals is a promising intervention given short timelines. True, lawsuits often take three years or so. But a win in a lawsuit can result in a court order to improve the treatment of animals immediately. 

IV. Potential criticism: Is there a risk to improving farmed animal welfare?

Most EA Forum readers probably agree that farmed animal welfare matters. But it’s not the only thing that matters. EA Forum author Vasco Grilo has also expressed concern for the welfare of wild animals, such as soil nematodes. He writes:

I estimate animal farming:

Decreases the living time of (wild) soil nematodes, mites, and springtails hugely more than it increases that of directly affected animals.

Increases the welfare of soil nematodes, mites, and springtails hugely more than it changes that of directly affected animals.

In other words, Vasco propose that these small wild animals likely have net negative lives, and would be better off not born.

So, this begs the question: Should an EA-minded nonprofit seek to improve farmed animal welfare? Could improving farmed animals’ lives have negative externalities by allowing more habitat for wild animals who have net negative lives?

Of course, the opposite argument could also be made. An environmentalist could argue that people should do whatever they can to fight against animal agriculture in any way possible, to ensure maximum natural habitat.

LIC believes that our work mostly sidesteps this issue. We aren’t trying to shut down animal agriculture. We are only working to improve the welfare of animals used for food. 

That said, of course there is a chance that companies treating animals better could result in fewer animals being used for food. For instance, the better animals are treated, the fewer will die before slaughter. Thus, treating animals better can result in producing the same amount of food with fewer animals. And on the margin, that could result in less land being used for animal agriculture, and more land being preserved as nature. Therefore, someone who views nature as primarily a cause of suffering may still worry about LIC’s approach of improving animal welfare. That said, LIC is primarily focused on improving the welfare of small animals, especially chickens. These animals take less space to farm than larger animals, and thus improving the welfare of these small animals will have even less of an impact on the environment. 

V. LIC's funding gap and plans for growth

LIC’s planned 2026 budget is $2 million. This is to execute our current plan by continuing to expand our team, continuing to litigate our three ongoing lawsuits, and developing and filing additional cases. Thus far in 2025, LIC has raised $1.3 million. LIC’s gap for our planned 2026 budget is $690,000. 

That said, as mentioned above, LIC’s growth can scale even more with additional funding. The number of promising lawsuit ideas we're aware of far exceeds our capacity, and will continue to far exceed our capacity even if we grow by an order of magnitude. There is a lot of litigation to be done for farmed animals.

Thank you for considering LIC!

We’re so grateful to the EA community for making LIC possible. And thank you for considering funding our 2026 work.

If you have any questions or suggestions, please reach out.  

And for ways to donate, please visit legalimpactforchickens.org/donate. 

Thank you for reading, and for everything you do to make the world better!

Love,
Alene & LIC