Commodity status of animals

The commodity status of animals is the legal status as property of most non-human animals, particularly farmed animals, working animals and animals in sport, and their use as objects of trade.Rhoda Wilkie, "Animals as Sentient Commodities" , in Linda Kalof (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Animal Studies, Oxford University Press (forthcoming; Wilkie's article, August 2015). Rhoda Wilkie, "Sentient Commodities: The Ambiguous Status of Livestock," Livestock/Deadstock: Working with Farm Animals from Birth to Slaughter, Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2010, pp. 115–128; 176–177. Gregory R. Smulewicz-Zucker, "The Problem with Commodifying Animals," in Gregory R. Smulewicz-Zucker (ed.), Strangers to Nature: Animal Lives and Human Ethics, Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2012, pp. 157–175. . That companion animals are commodities, Lori Gruen, Ethics and Animals, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011, p. 156.Rosemary-Claire Collard, Jessica Dempsey, "Life for Sale? The Politics of Lively Commodities", Environment and Planning, 45(11), November 2013. "United Nations Commodity Trade Statistics Database" , UN ComTrade. "Health standards: commodity-based approach" , OiE, World Organization for Animal Health. In the United States, free-roaming animals (ferae naturae) are (broadly) held in trust by the state; only if captured can they be claimed as personal property.Joan E. Shaffner, An Introduction to Animals and the Law, Palgrace Macmillan, 2001, pp. 19–20.

Animals regarded as commodities may be bought, sold, given away, bequeathed, killed, and used as commodity producers: producers of meat, eggs, milk, fur, wool, skin and offspring, among other things.Rosemary-Claire Collard, Kathryn Gillespie, "Introduction," in Kathryn Gillespie, Rosemary-Claire Collard (eds.), Critical Animal Geographies, London: Routledge, 2015, p. 2.Francione 2004, p. 116. The exchange value of the animal does not depend on the quality of life.Cassuto 2009, p. 314.

The commodity status of livestock is evident in auction yards, where they are tagged with a barcode and traded according to certain qualities, including age, weight, sex and breeding history.Wilkie 2010, pp. 73ff, 79–81.Kathryn Gillespie, "Nonhuman animal resistance and the improprieties of live property," in Irus Braverman (ed.), Animals, Biopolitics, Law, Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2015, pp. 117–118; also see the section "The Animal-as-Commodity," p. 121ff. In commodity markets, animals and animal products are classified as soft commodities, along with goods such as coffee and sugar, because they are grown, as opposed to hard commodities, such as gold and copper, which are mined.Patrick Maul, Investing in Commodities, Hamburg: Diplomica Verlag GmbH, 2011, p. 8, table c.

Researchers identify viewing animals as commodities by humans as a manifestation of speciesism. The vegan and animal rights movements, chiefly the abolitionist approach, of the twentieth century call for eliminating the commodity or property status of animals.

History and law

Animals, when owned, are classified as personal property (movable property not attached to real property/real estate). The word cattle derives from the French word cheptel or Old French word chatel, or personal property.Wilkie 2010, pp. 115–116; "Chattel" , Legal Information Institute, Cornell University Law School.

Historian Joyce E. Salisbury writes that the relationship between humans and animals was always expressed in terms of control, and the idea that animals become property by being domesticated. She notes that Saint Ambrose (340–397) held the view that God controlled wild animals while humanity controlled the rest. Isidore of Seville (560–636) distinguished between "cattle", a term for animals that had been domesticated, and "beasts" or wild animals, as did Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274).Joyce Salisbury, The Beast Within: Animals in the Middle Ages, Routledge, 2012 , p. 10, 13–15.

The English jurist William Blackstone (1723–1780) wrote of domesticated animals, in Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765–1769):

In such as are of a nature tame and domestic (as horses, kine [cows], sheep, poultry, and the like), a man may have as absolute a property as in any inanimate beings ... because these continue perpetually in his occupation, and will not stray from his house or person, unless by accident or fraudulent entitlement, in either of which cases the owner does not lose his property ...William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, Volume 1, Callaghan, 1884 [1765–1769], p. 389, cited in Wilkie 2010, p. 116.

That wild animals belong in common to everyone, or to the state, and can become personal property only if captured, is known as the "animals ferae naturae" doctrine. Blackstone wrote of wild animals that they are either "not the objects of property at all, or else fall under our other division, namely, that of qualified, limited, or special property, which is such as is not in its nature permanent, but may sometimes subsist, and at other times not subsist."Blackstone 1884, p. 390.

Commodification The commodification of animals is one of the earliest forms of commodification, which can be traced back to the time when domestication of animals began. It includes the use of animals in all forms, including use of animals for food, medicine, fashion and cosmetics, medical research, labor and transport, entertainment, wildlife trade, companionship, and so forth. Scholars say that the commodification of nonhuman animals in food systems is directly linked to capitalist systems that prioritize "monopolistically inclined financial interests" over the well-being of humans, nonhumans, and the environment. Over 200 billion land and aquatic animals are killed every year to provide humans with animal products for consumption, which many scholars and activists have described as an "animal holocaust". The extensive use of land and other resources for the production of meat instead of grain for human consumption is a leading cause of malnutrition, hunger, and famine around the world.

Sentience

Writing about wild animals being imported into France in the 18th century, historian Louise Robbins writes that a "cultural biography of things" would show animals "sliding in and out of commodity status and taking on different values for different people" as they make their way from their homes to the streets of Paris.Louise E. Robbins, Elephant slaves and pampered parrots: Exotic animals and their meanings in eighteenth-century France, University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1998, p. 10. Sociologist Rhoda Wilkie has used the term "sentient commodity" to describe this view of how the conception of animals as commodities can shift depending on whether a human being forms a relationship with them.Wilkie 2010, p. 115ff. Geographers Rosemary-Claire Collard and Jessica Dempsey use the term "lively commodities".

Political scientist Sami Torssonen argues that animal welfare has itself been commodified since the 1990s because of public concern for animals. "Scientifically-certified welfare products", which Torssonen calls "sellfare", are "producible and salable at various points in the commodity chain", subject to competition like any other commodity.Sami Torssonen, "Sellfare: A History of Livestock Welfare Commodification as Governance" , 71(1), Fall 2015. Social scientist Jacy Reese Anthis argues that, while there is no immanent right for animals or humans to not be commodified, there are strong practical reasons to oppose any commodification of animals, not just that which is cruel or egregious.

Commodification of nonhuman animals is one of the primary impacts of the animal–industrial complex. In the book Education for Total Liberation, Meneka Repka cites Barbara Noske as saying that the commodification of nonhuman animals in food systems is directly linked to capitalist systems that prioritize "monopolistically inclined financial interests" over the well-being of humans, nonhumans, and the environment. Richard Twine furthers this stating that "corporate influences have had a direct interest through marketing, advertising, and flavour manipulation in constructing the consumption of animal products as a sensual material pleasure."

Commodity status of animals

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