The commodity status of animals is the legal status as

property Property is a system of rights that gives people legal control of valuable things, and also refers to the valuable things themselves. Depending on the nature of the property, an owner of property may have the right to consume, alter, share, re ...

of most non-human animals, particularly farmed animals,

working animal A working animal is an animal, usually domesticated, that is kept by humans and trained to perform tasks. Some are used for their physical strength (e.g. oxen and draft horses) or for transportation (e.g. riding horses and camels), while oth ...

s and

animals in sport Animals in sport are a specific form of working animals. Many animals, at least in more commercial sports, are highly trained. Two of the most common animals in sport are horses and dogs. Types of animal sporting events There are many types o ...

, and their use as objects of trade.Rosemary-Claire Collard, Jessica Dempsey
"Life for Sale? The Politics of Lively Commodities"
''Environment and Planning'', 45(11), November 2013. 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 Personal property is property that is movable. In common law systems, personal property may also be called chattels or personalty. In civil law (legal system), civil law systems, personal property is often called movable property or movables—a ...

.Joan E. Shaffner, ''An Introduction to Animals and the Law'', Palgrace Macmillan, 2001, pp. 19–20. Animals regarded as

commodities In economics, a commodity is an economic good, usually a resource, that specifically has full or substantial fungibility: that is, the market treats instances of the good as equivalent or nearly so with no regard to who produced them. Th ...

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.&nbs
2
The

exchange value In political economy and especially Marxian economics, exchange value () refers to one of the four major attributes of a commodity, i.e., an item or service produced for, and sold on the market, the other three attributes being use value, econo ...

of the animal does not depend on quality of life. The commodity status of livestock is evident in auction yards, where they are tagged with a

barcode A barcode or bar code is a method of representing data in a visual, Machine-readable data, machine-readable form. Initially, barcodes represented data by varying the widths, spacings and sizes of parallel lines. These barcodes, now commonly ref ...

and traded according to certain qualities, including age, weight, sex and breeding history. In

commodity market A commodity market is a market that trades in the primary economic sector rather than manufactured products. The primary sector includes agricultural products, energy products, and metals. Soft commodities may be perishable and harvested, w ...

s, animals and

animal product An animal product is any material derived from the body of a non-human animal or their excretions. Examples are meat, fat, blood, milk, eggs, honey, and lesser known products, such as isinglass, rennet, and cochineal. The word animals inc ...

s are classified as

soft commodities Soft commodities, or softs, are commodities such as coffee, cocoa, sugar, corn, wheat, soybean, fruit and livestock.Patrick Maul, ''Investing in Commodities'', diplom.de, 2011, p8 table c. The term generally refers to commodities that are grown, ra ...

, 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. Researchers identify viewing animals as commodities by humans as a manifestation of

speciesism Speciesism () is a term used in philosophy regarding the treatment of individuals of different species. The term has several different definitions. Some specifically define speciesism as discrimination or unjustified treatment based on an indivi ...

. The

vegan Veganism is the practice of abstaining from the use of animal products and the consumption of animal source foods, and an associated philosophy that rejects the commodity status of animals. A person who practices veganism is known as a ve ...

and

animal rights movement The animal rights movement, sometimes called the animal liberation, animal personhood, or animal advocacy movement, is a social movement that advocates an end to the rigid moral and legal distinction drawn between human and non-human animals, ...

s, chiefly the abolitionist approach, of the twentieth century calls 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 In English common law, real property, real estate, immovable property or, solely in the US and Canada, realty, refers to parcels of land and any associated structures which are the property of a person. For a structure (also called an Land i ...

/ real estate). The word ''

cattle Cattle (''Bos taurus'') are large, domesticated, bovid ungulates widely kept as livestock. They are prominent modern members of the subfamily Bovinae and the most widespread species of the genus '' Bos''. Mature female cattle are calle ...

'' derives from the French word '' cheptel'' or

Old French Old French (, , ; ) was the language spoken in most of the northern half of France approximately between the late 8th [2-4; we might wonder whether there's a point at which it's appropriate to talk of the beginnings of French, that is, when it wa ...

word ''chatel'', or personal property. 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 Ambrose, Saint Ambrose (340–397) held the view that God controlled wild animals while humanity controlled the rest.

Isidore of Seville Isidore of Seville (; 4 April 636) was a Spania, Hispano-Roman scholar, theologian and Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Seville, archbishop of Seville. He is widely regarded, in the words of the 19th-century historian Charles Forbes René de Montal ...

(560–636) distinguished between "cattle", a term for animals that had been domesticated, and "beasts" or wild animals, as did

Thomas Aquinas Thomas Aquinas ( ; ; – 7 March 1274) was an Italian Dominican Order, Dominican friar and Catholic priest, priest, the foremost Scholasticism, Scholastic thinker, as well as one of the most influential philosophers and theologians in the W ...

(1225–1274). The English jurist

William Blackstone Sir William Blackstone (10 July 1723 – 14 February 1780) was an English jurist, Justice (title), justice, and Tory (British political party), Tory politician most noted for his ''Commentaries on the Laws of England'', which became the best-k ...

(1723–1780) wrote of domesticated animals, in ''

Commentaries on the Laws of England The ''Commentaries on the Laws of England'' (commonly, but informally known as ''Blackstone's Commentaries'') are an influential 18th-century treatise on the common law of England by Sir William Blackstone, originally published by the Clarend ...

'' (1765–1769):

In such as are of a nature tame and domestic (as horses, kine ows 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 ...

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."

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. 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. 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. Social scientist

Jacy Reese Anthis Jacy Reese Anthis ( ; born December 16, 1992) is an American social scientist, writer and co-founder of the Sentience Institute with Kelly Witwicki. He previously worked as a Senior Fellow at Sentience Politics, and before that at Animal Char ...

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."

History and law

Sentience

See also

Notes

Footnotes

References

Further reading