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The University of Ottawa’s law faculty is set to offer its first seminar course in animal rights this fall.

All 12 spaces in the optional course are already full, said Justine Perron, who will be co-teaching the course with lawyer Nicholas Jobidon.

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Perron, who founded the Animal Protection Association at the university while she was a student there, said she got interested in animal rights after seeing videos of the treatment of animals in the food and entertainment industries.

“After seeing the reality of the situation I couldn’t live without questioning those practices that I was encouraging every day without even noticing.”

One way to create change is to tackle these issues at the legal level, she said. “I hope more lawyers will have the knowledge in that sphere of law and be more interested in that cause.”

Perron, who graduated from the University of Ottawa in June and is now studying for the Quebec bar exam, plans to broadly examine the civil code and the Criminal Code. Each student in the class will choose a subject — topics will likely range from raising animals for food and fur to animals used for research and entertainment — and do presentations and write research papers on these subjects.