Table of Contents
- The Parallel Harms Suffered by Environmental Justice Communities and Animals in CAFOs 60
- Sentience and Its Discontents 63
- The Legal Exclusion of Animals from Environmental Justice 71
- Towards Solutions for Farmed Animal Protection 87
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I am referring not only to humans not regarded as humans, and thus to a restrictive conception of the human that is based upon their exclusion. It is not a matter of a simple entry of the excluded into an established ontology, but an insurrection at the level of ontology, a critical opening up of the questions, What is real? Whose lives are real? How might reality be remade?
—Judith Butler1
Industrial animal agriculture is a silent killer at a staggering scale.2 It takes the lives of ten billion land animals in the United States yearly and eight times that figure globally.3 All but one percent of farmed animals in the United States spend the entirety of their short lives in concentrated animal feeding operations (“CAFOs”)—the large-scale, industrial farms that give animals the food necessary to survive while producing byproducts and muscle for human consumption.4 Animal advocates have called factory farming among the worst crimes in human history, yet the operation is not only perfectly legal
1 JUDITH BUTLER, PRECARIOUS LIFE: THE POWERS OF MOURNING AND VIOLENCE 33 (2004).
2 A note on language: I use “industrial animal agriculture” and “factory farming” interchangeably, as both highlight the sheer scale of these operations. I use “Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs)” in reference to the specific sites that confine farmed animals.
3 Livestock and Meat Domestic Data: Meat Statistics Table, Recent: Table 2—Livestock and Poultry Slaughter, ECON. RSCH. SERV.,
U.S. DEP’T AGRIC. (Sept. 30, 2025), https://www.ers.usda.gov/data- products/livestock-and-meat-domestic-data/livestock-and-meat- domestic-data (summarizing total land animal slaughter measured in pounds); Andrea J. Garmyn, More than Meat: Contributions of Livestock Systems Beyond Meat Productions, 11 ANIMAL FRONTIERS 3, 3–5 (2021).
4 Hannah Ritchie, How Many Animals are Factory-Farmed?, OUR WORLD IN DATA (Nov. 2024), https://ourworldindata.org/how-many- animals-are-factory-farmed/. Though animals certainly suffer in ranches and small farms, this article focuses on CAFOs, which raise almost all farmed animals in the country. However, this Article affirms that animals raised and slaughtered in ranches and small farms are also deserving of the social and legal protections detailed in the argument.
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but also widely sanctioned as a sociocultural matter. After all, nine in ten Americans include meat in their diets.5
The industry’s harms reach far and wide. To the animals, CAFOs are systemically cruel. Farmed animals live at the height of squalor, often in manure-covered spaces so small they cannot fully stretch their limbs.6 Slaughter methods, which require animals to be “stunned” before their throats are slit, often fail, leading to brutally painful deaths.7 The harms extend beyond the animals themselves. The industry substantially relies on undocumented labor to do the least pleasant and most psychologically traumatizing work on the killing floor.8 The pollution spewing from CAFOs degrades the air quality and poses severe health risks to surrounding communities.9 The
5 Yuval Noah Harari, Industrial Farming is One of the Worst Crimes in History, THE GUARDIAN (Sept. 25, 2015), https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/sep/25/industrial-farming- one-worst-crimes-history-ethical-question; Jennifer Berg, Nearly Nine in Ten Americans Consume Meat as Part of their Diet, IPSOS (May 12, 2021), https://www.ipsos.com/en-us/news-polls/nearly-nine-ten- americans-consume-meat-part-their-diet.
6 Inhumane Practices on Factory Farms, ANIMAL WELFARE INST., https://awionline.org/content/
inhumane-practices-factory-farms.
7 Lukas Jasiunas, How Effective Is Captive Bolt Stunning?, FAUNALYTICS (May 2, 2017), https://faunalytics.org/effective-captive- bolt-stunning/ (stating that 13.6% of bulls might be inadequately stunned). Studies have also expressed difficulty in even assessing the effectiveness of stunning. See, e.g., Anika Lücking, Helen Louton, Martin von Wenzlawowicz, Michael Erhard & Karen von Holleben, Movements after Captive Bolt Stunning in Cattle and Possible Animal- and Process-Related Impact Factors—A Field Study, 14 ANIMALS (Apr. 4, 2024); see also Josefine Jerlström, Charlotte Berg & Anna Wallenbeck, Unnecessary Suffering During the Slaughter of Cattle and Pigs: Mapping Stun Quality and Associations to Stun-to-Stick Intervals, 6 FRONTIERS IN ANIMAL SCI. (2025); Sara J. Shields & A. B.
M. Raj, A Critical Review of Electrical Water-Bath Stun Systems for
Poultry Slaughter and Recent Developments in Alternative Technologies, 13 J. of Applied Animal Welfare Sci. 281 (2010).
8 Courtney G. Lee, Racist Animal Agriculture, 25 CUNY L. REV. 199 (2022).
9 Chris McGreal, How America’s Food Giants Swallowed the Family Farms, THE GUARDIAN (Mar. 9, 2019, 11:30 EST),
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/mar/09/american-
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industry is also pernicious at a global scale, having become one of the major sources of greenhouse gas emissions.10
Critiques to the industry have varied in their focus. One strand of critique seeks to improve animals’ living conditions, reduce the number of animals slaughtered, and persuade people to shift towards veganism.11 A second line of critique looks to combat the industry’s substantial effects on climate change.12 More recently, a third focus has emerged: environmental justice. The harms inflicted by CAFOs against humans are not unknown to the environmental justice movement, which traces its roots to the civil rights era and aims to improve the livelihoods of marginalized communities inhabiting the most polluted, environmentally dangerous zones.13
food-giants-swallow-the-family-farms-iowa; Michael Greger & Gowri Koneswaran, The Public Health Impacts of Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations on Local Communities, 33 FAM. & CMTY. HEALTH 11–20 (2010).
10 WORLD ANIMAL PROT., HOW FACTORY FARMING EMISSIONS ARE WORSENING CLIMATE DISASTERS IN THE GLOBAL SOUTH 1 (2023).
11 Several prominent organizations in the United States seek to advance the cause of farmed animal welfare: People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (“PETA”), https://www.peta.org/; the Nonhuman Rights Project (“NHR”), https://www.nonhumanrights.org/; the Animal Legal Defense Fund (“ALDF”), https://aldf.org/; and the Humane League, https://thehumaneleague.org/.
12 See, e.g., Gowri Koneswaran & Danielle Nierenberg, Global Farm Animal Production and Global Warming: Impacting and Mitigating Climate Change, 116 ENV’T HEALTH PERSPS. 578 (May 2008); Georgina Gustin, Factory Farms Put Climate at Risk, Experts Say in Urging Health Officials to Speak Out, INSIDE CLIMATE NEWS (May 23, 2017), https://insideclimatenews.org/news/23052017/factory- farms-cafos-threaten-climate-change-world-heath-organization; Lei Zhang et al., A Systematic Review of Lifecycle GHG Emissions from Intensive Pig Farming: Accounting and Mitigation, 907 SCI. TOTAL ENV’T, at 11 (Oct. 25, 2023).
13 See, e.g., Preface to GLOBAL MEAT: SOCIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL
CONSEQUENCES OF THE EXPANDING MEAT INDUSTRY, at xi (Bill Winders
& Elizabeth Ransom eds., 2019). The editors situate their discussion of the meat industry in terms of the growth of CAFOs and the resulting harms to industry workers and rural communities. For discussion that links the environmental justice movement to the racial justice movement, see Tseming Yang, Old and New Environmental Racism, 2024 UTAH L. REV. 109 (2024); Paul Mohai, David Pellow & J. Timmons
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Though various scholarly interventions have highlighted the factory farming industry’s injustices that affect both humans and animals, none has explicitly argued that farmed animals are environmental justice communities. Some interventions certainly emphasize these interlocking injustices, such as the vast swath of animal rights literature explaining the moral worth of animals, or the scholarship addressing industrial animal agriculture reform through emissions or animal welfare.14 Others advocate for holistic reform, pushing for an intersectional view of animal agriculture that is grounded on the notion that justice extends beyond animal welfare to also encompass environmental justice, workers’ rights, public health, and a non-anthropocentric approach to the climate justice movement.15 I seek to build on this literature by emphasizing
Roberts, Environmental Justice 34 ANN. REV. ENV’T & RES. 405 (2009); Laura Pulido, Geographies of Race and Ethnicity II: Environmental Racism, Racial Capitalism and State-Sanctioned Violence, 41 PROGRESS HUM. GEOGRAPHY 524 (2017).
14 For animal rights literature, see, e.g., PETER SINGER, ANIMAL LIBERATION (1975); GARY L. FRANCIONE, ANIMALS AS PERSONS: ESSAYS ON THE ABOLITION OF ANIMAL EXPLOITATION (2008) [hereinafter ANIMALS AS PERSONS]; TOM REGAN, THE CASE FOR ANIMAL RIGHTS (1983); MARTHA C. NUSSBAUM, JUSTICE FOR ANIMALS: OUR COLLECTIVE
RESPONSIBILITY (2023). For literature that emphasizes the climate harms of industrial animal agriculture, see, e.g., Nelson Iván Higuita, Regina LaRocque & Alice McGushin, Climate Change, Industrial Animal Agriculture, and the Role of Physicians—Time to Act, 13 J. CLIMATE CHANGE & HEALTH (2023); Elizabeth Bristow, Global Climate Change and the Industrial Animal Agriculture Link: The Construction of Risk, 19 SOC’Y & ANIMALS 205, 205–24 (2011). For animal welfare literature, see, e.g., DAVID FRASER, UNDERSTANDING ANIMAL WELFARE: THE SCIENCE IN ITS CULTURAL CONTEXT (1st ed. 2008); MARIAN STAMP DAWKINS, WHY ANIMALS MATTER: ANIMAL CONSCIOUSNESS, ANIMAL WELFARE, AND HUMAN WELL-BEING (2012); ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK OF
ANIMAL WELFARE (Andrew Knight, Clive Phillips & Paula Sparks eds., 2023).
15 See, e.g., Laura Fox, The Intersectionality of Environmental Justice, Other Societal Harms, and Farmed Animal Welfare, 17 ENV’T JUST. 101 (2024). For other critiques of human exclusivity in industrial animal agriculture, see, e.g., Angie Pepper, Beyond Anthropocentrism: Cosmopolitanism and Nonhuman Animals, 9 GLOB. JUST.: THEORY PRAC. RHETORIC 114, 114–33 (2016); Petra Tschakert et al., Multispecies Justice: Climate-Just Futures With, For and Beyond
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the explicit link between environmental justice and farmed animals. Indeed, animals lie at the heart of the industry’s existing environmental justice harms: their slaughter traumatizes workers, their methane-laden belches pile onto the growing volume of greenhouse gas emissions, and the size and scale of the operation driving their exploitation imposes substantial burdens on surrounding communities.
To illuminate an understanding of environmental justice that includes animals raised in CAFOs, I focus on the recognition of animals’ sentience. The scientific community still debates the exact meaning of sentience, but the term is generally understood to encompass animals’ ability to experience different emotional states, including the capacity to suffer.16 To account for animals’ sentience is to look towards a framing of justice that does not allow for the systemic suffering of vulnerable creatures.17 If justice-related questions centered first and foremost on animals’ sentience, the hidden thread connecting animal welfare, animal rights, workers’ rights, and climate justice would become visible, and the resulting potential for justice would be more powerful than any critique focusing on individual facets of the industry. Nor would such an approach detract from a focus on bringing justice to humans. Rather, a justice framework that includes animals would broaden the focus on justice, benefiting not just animals but also the humans who are adversely affected by industrial animal agriculture.
Humans, WIRES CLIMATE CHANGE (Dec. 10, 2020); Zipporah Weisberg & Carlo Salzani, No Climate Justice Without Justice for Animals, THE PARIS INST. (June 28, 2023), https://parisinstitute.org/no-climate- justice-without-justice-for-animals/; Angie Pepper, Adapting to Climate Change: What We Owe to Other Animals, 36 J. APPLIED PHIL. 592, 592–607 (2019); McKiver v. Murphy-Brown, LLC, 980 F.3d 937
(4th Cir. 2020).
16 See, e.g., JANE KOTZMANN & MB RODRIGUEZ FERRERE, THE LEGAL RECOGNITION OF ANIMAL SENTIENCE: PRINCIPLES, APPROACHES AND APPLICATIONS 1–7 (2024).
17 WORLD ANIMAL PROT., Animal Sentience, https://www.worldanimalprotection.org/our-campaigns/sentience/ (last visited Nov. 10, 2025). Sentience is distinct from cognition, which characterizes animals’ abilities to process and store information. For more discussion, see Amelia Cornish et al., Demographics Regarding Belief in Non-Human Animal Sentience and Emotional Empathy with Animals: A Pilot Study Among Attendees of an Animal Welfare Symposium, ANIMALS (Oct. 4, 2018).
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This Article is divided into four substantive parts, with the fourth also serving as a conclusion. Part I identifies and examines the direct connection between farmed animals and existing environmental justice communities. I highlight the commonalities between the harms animals suffer in CAFOs and those inflicted on humans by CAFOs, either directly or indirectly, laying the groundwork for an environmental justice framework that includes animals. Part II turns to sentience, which I contend is sufficient to include animals in a broader environmental justice framework. In conversation with prominent scholars from the last half century, I survey different moral and legal mechanisms by which others have envisioned recognizing animals’ sentience in a meaningful way, including equal consideration, legal personhood, quasi-personhood, and legal “beingness.” I argue that a personhood approach is best suited to yield justice to animals but that it should be imbued with a legal subjectivity that considers the uniqueness of animals as nonhuman beings. Part III shifts to the legal landscape, demonstrating how the law has failed to protect animals in the United States and therefore has inhibited animals from becoming part of environmental justice communities. I trace the history of animal welfare laws and policies in the United States, arguing that an animal welfare approach, grounded in human exceptionalism, not only causes more suffering than relief for animals, but also exists primarily for humans’ benefit. Ultimately, though, animal “welfare” is too narrow to fully consider the related contexts of environmental and climate justice considerations. I then turn to the legal recognition of sentience, a more hopeful approach that has gained some traction in the United States—and even more so in other jurisdictions. I finally evaluate the degree of success that sentience recognition has yielded for animals generally and for farmed animals specifically, contending that while sentience recognition has much to accomplish, it still serves as a powerful signal that could yield meaningful improvements for animals and the rest of us.
I conclude by briefly reflecting on other factors holding back our ability as a society to link farmed animals in CAFOs to environmental justice before envisioning what environmental justice could look like when farmed animals are central to the movement. I maintain that the legal recognition of animals’ sentience will be a necessary first step to gain more visibility for laws that primarily aim to benefit animals. The remaining
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discussion takes an optimistic shape, detailing what a non- anthropocentric vision of environmental justice could achieve.
Environmental Justice Communities and
Animals in CAFOs
The term “environmental justice communities” has become shorthand to describe low-income neighborhoods, many of them composed of people of color, who live near sources of pollution and who suffer injuries—incurred through the legacy of systemic racism—related to health, access to high-quality food and water, and protection against disaster events, among other things.18 To achieve environmental justice is no small task, if such a thing is possible, but it involves eradicating the sources of suffering and redressing injuries. In the case of CAFOs, those who work onsite, as well as surrounding rural communities, can be considered environmental justice communities due to the environmental hazards and reduced quality of life resulting from activities occurring within CAFOs.19 Industrial animal agriculture inflicts an extreme physical and emotional toll on those who so closely interact with suffering animals for a living.20 CAFOs also infringe on the lives of people surrounding these factories, which came into clear focus when rural communities campaigned
18 For discussion on what constitutes environmental justice as it currently stands, see, e.g., Merlin Chowkwanyun, Environmental Justice: Where It Has Been, and Where It Might Be Going, 44 ANN. REV. PUB. HEALTH 93 (2023). For discussions that are less recent but no less relevant, see, e.g., LUKE W. COLE & SHEILA R. FOSTER, FROM THE GROUND UP: ENVIRONMENTAL RACISM AND THE RISE OF THE ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE MOVEMENT (2001); Robert D. Bullard &
Beverly Hendrix Wright, Environmentalism and the Politics of Equity: Emergent Trends in the Black Community, 12 MID-AM. REV. SOCIO. 21, 21–37 (1987); Exec. Order No. 12898, 59 FR 7629 (Feb. 11, 1994).
19 Steve Wing & Susanne Wolf, Intensive Livestock Operations, Health, and Quality of Life Among Eastern North Carolina Residents, 108 ENVTL. HEALTH PERSP. 233 (2000); Gowri Koneswaran & Danielle Nierenberg, Global Farm Animal Production and Global Warming, 18 ENV’T. HEALTH PERSP. 578 (2008).
20 Ivy Pepin, What’s It Like to Be a Pig Farmer?, THE HUMANE LEAGUE (Oct. 3, 2022), https://thehumaneleague.org/article/pig- farmer.
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against Iowa’s largest hog farmers based on the damage they caused to human health, property values, and even the farm economy.21 This Part draws two clear parallels that illuminate the relationship between the harms suffered by animals raised in CAFOs and those experienced by environmental justice communities. These connections are critical because they foreground an understanding of environmental justice that includes animals raised in CAFOs.
First, both animals in CAFOs and environmental justice communities suffer adverse health outcomes. For humans, meat processing plants remain among the most dangerous jobs one can have, with workers reporting an astounding number of severe injuries that include chemical burns and amputations.22 Studies have also shown that these workers experience psychologically deleterious consequences from their work, including post-traumatic stress disorder and high rates of depression.23 Health harms extend to surrounding communities, as those living near CAFOs are more at risk of contracting illnesses, including drug-resistant bacteria, zoonotic diseases, waterborne illnesses caused by nitrates from animal manure, and respiratory illnesses from fumes.24 Animals suffer as well,
21 Gacke v. Pork Xtra, L.L.C., 684 N.W.2d 168, 172–78 (Iowa
2004).
22 Debbie Berkowitz & Patrick Dixon, An Average of 27 Workers a Day Suffer Amputation or Hospitalization, According to New OSHA data from 29 States: Meat and Poultry Companies Remain Among the Most Dangerous, ECON. POL’Y INST.: WORKING ECON. BLOG (Mar. 30,
2023), https://www.epi.org/blog/an-average-of-27-workers-a-day- suffer-amputation-or-hospitalization-according-to-new-osha-data- from-29-states-meat-and-poultry-companies-remain-among-the-most- dangerous/.
23 See, e.g., Angela Baysinger & Lori R. Kogan, Mental Health Impact of Mass Depopulation of Swine on Veterinarians During COVID-19 Infrastructure Breakdown, FRONTIERS IN VETERINARY SCI. (Apr. 5, 2022), https://doi.org/10.3389/fvets.2022.842585 (detailing the psychological harms inflicted on veterinarians who were engaged in the work of depopulating hog farms through euthanasia when many of the factory workers contracted COVID-19); Jessica Slade & Emma Alleyne, The Psychological Impact of Slaughterhouse Employment: A Systematic Literature Review, 24 TRAUMA, VIOLENCE & ABUSE 429, 429–40 (July 7, 2021).
24 See, e.g., Margaret Carrel et al., Residential Proximity to Large
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with dozens of diseases routinely infiltrating CAFOs and many animals suffering these life-threatening illnesses without veterinary relief.25 Loneliness, sadness, boredom, discomfort, fear, deprivation, and other psychological tolls manifest in maladaptive behaviors such as aggression and learned helplessness.26 Animals are also subject to painful mutilations such as tail docking and beak cutting without pain relief, leaving them trembling on the ground for days.27 They are then injected with hormones that increase their muscle mass shortly before slaughter, resulting in tremors and lesions on their bodies.28 All living beings connected to CAFOs will inevitably suffer severe physical and psychological pain.
Second, environmental justice communities and animals are both treated with alarming disrespect by the law (Part III will explore the manifestations and implications of this treatment for animals in greater depth). For humans, the National Labor Relations Act of 1935, which allows workers to form unions and to strike, does not protect agricultural workers.29 As a result, factory farm working environments have been linked to an astounding number of workers’ rights violations.30 Government agencies have also not prioritized the health of surrounding
Numbers of Swine in Feeding Operations Is Associated with Increased Risk of Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus Colonization at Time of Hospital Admission in Rural Iowa Veterans, 35 INFECTION CONTROL & HOSP. EPIDEMIOLOGY 190, 190–92 (Feb. 2014); D. LEE MILLER & GREGORY MUREN, CAFOS: WHAT WE DON’T KNOW IS
HURTING US (Leah Stecher ed., 2019).
25 U.S. DEP’T AGRICULTURE, Livestock and Poultry Disease, ANIMAL & PLANT HEALTH INSPECTION SERV. (July 22, 2025),
https://www.aphis.usda.gov/livestock-poultry-disease; JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER, EATING ANIMALS 129–37 (2009).
26 Jean-Jacques Kona-Boun, Anthropogenic Suffering of Farmed Animals: The Other Side of Zoonoses, ANIMAL SENTIENCE (2020), at 5.
27 ANIMAL WELFARE INST., supra note 6.
28 Emergency Petition to Food & Drug Administration to Suspend Ractopamine Use, ANIMAL LEGAL DEF. FUND (June 3, 2020), https://aldf.org/case/emergency-petition-to-food-drug-administration- to-suspend-ractopamine-use/.
29 National Labor Relations Act, 29 U.S.C. §§ 151–169 (1935).
30 HUM. RIGHTS WATCH, BLOOD, SWEAT, AND FEAR: WORKERS’ RIGHTS IN U.S. MEAT AND POULTRY PLANTS (2005),
https://www.hrw.org/report/2005/01/24/blood-sweat-and-fear/workers- rights-us-meat-and-poultry-plants.
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communities. One notable example occurred in 2023, when the Environmental Protection Agency rejected a petition to revise the Clean Water Act to aid environmental justice communities near CAFOs, instead designating a subcommittee to review the issue.31 In an eerie parallel to the National Labor Relations Act, the Animal Welfare Act of 1966, which regulates the treatment of animals in research, exhibition, transport, and several other functions, excludes animals used in agriculture for food.32 In short, the law deliberately overlooks both environmental justice communities and animals.
The existence of farmed animals enables these issues. Society condones their mass extermination, seeing little issue with their confinement and slaughter. And the conditions of both life and death for animals are nothing short of inhumane, because animals are considered disposable property with no legal rights. Human workers enter this cruel operation, and nearby communities receive its contaminating byproducts. But if animals themselves were to be considered environmental justice communities, not just mere pieces of property that exist for humans’ benefit, the public debate around industry reform could potentially shift. Part II considers animals’ sentience as a robust basis for how animals raised in CAFOs would fit into a new environmental justice framework that aims to bring justice to animals as well as humans.
Sentience and Its Discontents
While most people today would say that animals possess emotions and personalities, this was not always the case.33 The dominant view through the first half of the twentieth century was one attributed to Descartes, stating that animals “desire
31 U.S. ENV’T PROT. AGENCY, FINAL RESPONSE TO 2017 PETITION
(Aug. 15, 2023), https://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/wp- content/uploads/2023/08/Final-Response-to-2017-CAFO- Petition6863.pdf.
32 Animal Welfare Act, Pub. L. No. 89-544, 80 Stat. 350 (1966).
33 Jan Hoole, Here’s What the Science Says About Animal Sentience, THE CONVERSATION (Nov. 24, 2017, 6:32 EST),
https://theconversation.com/heres-what-the-science-says-about- animal-sentience-88047.
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nothing, fear nothing, know nothing.”34 Whether or not Descartes actually said these words, this view evolved into the behaviorist theory, which concluded that reflexes, rather than emotions, drove animals’ behaviors.35 These early views assumed animals were incapable of feeling pain and provided a moral foundation for the growth of the industrial animal agriculture industry. This Part surveys how scholars have understood animals’ sentience, tracing back to the roots of animal advocacy through the present day. In reviewing major developments in the field, it affirms that an animal rights approach better recognizes animals’ sentience than an animal welfare approach.
Early animal rights advocates recognized that animals may be capable of suffering, which spawned the first efforts to protect animals. The first Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, motivated by abuses to carriage horses, began in the United Kingdom in 1824, with a United States chapter forming in 1866.36 However, it was not until 1966 that animal agriculture formally entered the conversation, when the book Animal Machines detailed how animals suffer during factory farming through harrowing imagery of calves suffering in veal crates, birds crammed up against each other in battery cages, and myriad other forms of suffering.37 The government of the United Kingdom responded by setting up the Brambell Committee, during which Professor Roger Brambell presented the “Report of the Technical Committee to Inquire into the Welfare of Animals Kept Under Intensive Livestock Systems.”38 From this report emerged the globally influential Five Freedoms that have formed the moral basis of the farmed animal welfare movement
34 Peter Harrison, Descartes on Animals, 42 THE PHIL. Q., 219, 219–27 (1992).
35 Helen Proctor, Animal Sentience: Where Are We and Where Are We Heading?, 2 ANIMALS 628, 628– 38 (2012).
36 The History of the RSPCA, ANIMAL LEGAL & HIST. CTR., MICH.
STATE UNIV. (1972), https://www.animallaw.info/article/history-rspca; AM. SOC’Y FOR PREVENTION OF CRUELTY TO ANIMALS, We Are Their
Voice, https://www.aspca.org/about-us/.
37 RUTH HARRISON, ANIMAL MACHINES 98 (1964).
38 Technical Committee, Report of the Technical Committee to Enquire Into the Welfare of Animals Kept Under Intensive Livestock Husbandry Systems, 1965, Presented to Secretary of State for Scotland and Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, https://edepot.wur.nl/134379.
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since the 1960s: animals should be able “to stand up, lie down, turn around, groom themselves and stretch their limbs.”39
Since then, biological and psychological research has made significant developments in revealing characteristics of animals’ sentience. For instance, studies have found cows possess at least some self-awareness, even if they lack a biographical sense of self.40 Pigs have symbolic language comprehension, a sense of time, spatial reasoning, and an inventive sense of play.41 Chickens are just as emotionally and socially complex as many mammals, demonstrating basic arithmetic capacities, self- awareness, referential communication, and logical inferencing.42 Even fish, commonly understood to be emotionally uninteresting, possess individual personalities.43 Based on these findings, almost forty researchers in 2024 signed the New York Declaration on Animal Consciousness, which emphasized the “strong scientific support” that mammals and birds are conscious and noted the “realistic possibility” that all vertebrates are conscious, which could include creatures like insects and octopuses.44 The statement concluded by declaring it to be irresponsible to ignore the possibility of consciousness in making decisions regarding animals.45
Animals’ sentience is reason enough to consider nonhuman
animals worthy of moral and legal protections. Scientific
39 Melissa Elischer, The Five Freedoms: A History Lesson in Animal Care and Welfare, MICH. STATE UNIV. (Sept. 6, 2019), https://www.canr.msu.edu/news/an_animal_welfare_history_lesson_o n_the_five_freedoms.
40 Gary Comstock, Concerning Cattle: Behavioral and Neuroscientific Evidence for Pain, Desire, and Self-Consciousness, in THE OXFORD HANDBOOK OF FOOD ETHICS 139–69 (Anne Barnhill et al. eds., 2018).
41 LORI MARINO & CHRISTINA M. COLVIN, THINKING PIGS: COGNITION, EMOTION, AND PERSONALITY 6–9 (2016).
42 Lori Marino, Thinking Chickens: A Review of Cognition, Emotion, and Behavior in the Domestic Chicken, 20 ANIMAL COGNITION 127, 141 (2017).
43 Maria Filipa Castanheira et al., Can We Predict Personality in Fish? Searching for Consistency Over Time and Across Contexts, PLOS ONE 1, 8 (Apr. 16, 2013), https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0062037.
44 New York Declaration on Animal Consciousness, N.Y.U. ¶ 3 (Apr. 19, 2024),
https://sites.google.com/nyu.edu/nydeclaration/declaration.
45 Id. ¶ 4.
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evidence has demonstrated that animals experience stress at the brink of slaughter: cows have fled slaughterhouses; chickens experience acute stress while being shackled; and pigs visibly panic when placed in the restrainer, a crate that keeps them still while being stunned and slaughtered.46 These facts should cause moral alarm. Put simply, if animals desire to continue existing, they are sentient and therefore should have the right to continue existing. This logic should fundamentally alter how people approach the treatment of animals, especially those awaiting their slaughter in CAFOs.
Scholarship has wrestled with the question of sentience through its discourse on animal rights. Unlike an animal welfare approach, which identifies targeted ways to make farmed animals’ short lives minimally better, an animal rights approach seeks recognition of animals as beings deserving of the right not to be slaughtered, certainly, but also the right not to be confined, tortured, forcibly impregnated, or separated from family. To make the difference more concrete, an animal welfare solution to the conditions facing farmed hens may advocate for cage-free facilities; an animal rights solution would resolve that no egg- laying chickens should be exploited at all. Animal welfare approaches work within the system, while animal rights approaches reject that system. Scholars have debated the exact parameters of the rights owed to animals, ranging from the right not to be exploited as property to the right to liberty and bodily integrity.47 For the purposes of this article, “rights” refer to
46 FARM SANCTUARY, 40 Cows Flee L.A. Slaughterhouse; Compassion Brings Two to Sanctuary (July 1, 2021), https://www.farmsanctuary.org/news-stories/40-cows-escape- slaughterhouse/; See E.M.C. Terlouw et al., Pre-Slaughter Conditions, Animal Stress and Welfare: Current Status and Possible Future Research, 2 ANIMAL, 1501, 1504–05 (2008).
47 Gary Francione is a prominent legal scholar and philosopher who has differentiated between animal welfare and animal rights. See, e.g., GARY L. FRANCIONE, WHY VEGANISM MATTERS: THE MORAL VALUE
OF ANIMALS (2020); Gary L. Francione, Animal Rights and Animal Welfare, 48 RUTGERS L. REV. 397 (1996). For an example that frames rights as bodily integrity, see Raffael Fasel & Charlotte E. Blattner, Swiss Court Rules Citizens Allowed to Vote on Primate Rights, NONHUMAN RIGHTS PROJECT (Mar. 22, 2019),
https://www.nonhumanrights.org/blog/citizens-allowed-to-vote-on- primate-rights/ (describing the goal to give “constitutional rights to life and bodily and mental integrity”).
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animals’ entitlement not to be confined, tortured, or regarded as mere things without autonomy—essentially, rights not to be subjected to the activities that cause their suffering and death in industrial agriculture.
The animal rights discourse launched into the mainstream about five decades ago when Peter Singer, an Australian political philosopher heralded as one of the founders of the modern animal rights movement, published Animal Liberation.48 In this short volume, Singer argues against speciesism—discrimination based on species—that can be likened to racism or sexism.49 He urges equal consideration for how humans treat humans and nonhuman animals alike, and he advocates against the consumption of animal products because of animals’ capacity for pain, rather than their cognitive abilities.50 Animal Liberation gave way to a stream of animal rights discourse that emphasizes equal rights.51 Tom Regan, a moral philosopher best known for his 1985 book, The Case for Animal Rights, argues for totally eliminating factory farming, the use of animals in scientific experiments, and hunting, since animals are “subjects of lives,” and therefore possess moral rights.52 He contends that the correct response to institutional reform is not to tidy it up, but to eliminate industrial factory farming altogether.53 Gary Francione has extensively explored the implications of this principle through the concept of legal personhood, which has become a defining feature of animal rights scholarship over the last twenty-five years. He argues that animals should have the right to moral and legal personhood status and should not be considered property to be exploited at will.54 He critiques incrementalist animal welfare
48 Peter Singer, BRITANNICA (Oct. 15, 2025),
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Peter-Singer.
49 PETER SINGER, ANIMAL LIBERATION 185, 220–21 (2d ed. 1990).
51 There is some philosophical disagreement about whether animals should be considered on equal moral grounds or in a hierarchy. Shelly Kagan, for example, argues for a hierarchical, differentiated approach to animal rights. See SHELLY KAGAN, HOW TO COUNT ANIMALS, MORE OR LESS (2019).
52 REGAN, supra note 14, at 243–48.
54 ANIMALS AS PERSONS, supra note 14, at 33.
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laws and regulations, suggesting that they are of little utility if animals still maintain property status.55
Recent scholarship has begun to situate animal rights theory in an appropriate, actionable political context. These theories stem from the fact of animals’ sentience, resisting the legal property status that most jurisdictions impose upon animals. Alasdair Cochrane, for example, argues that animals’ sentience is a sufficient condition to determine a shared set of rights between humans and nonhuman animals, and that there is a need for a global political order to defend those rights.56 To Cochrane, the political implications for sentience center the equal moral worth of human and nonhuman animals in the very DNA of political systems.57 Theories like Cochrane’s—ones built on the negative rights not to be killed, confined, or tortured—is that they offer little guidance for how we should treat animals. In the absence of exploitation, what kind of moral and political framework should govern how humans and animals relate to each other? Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka explore precisely this gap, sketching out a relational approach between humans and animals that includes domesticated animal citizens and wild animal sovereignty.58 Their argument also responds to the political reality of the animal rights world: when brought to the public, the topic of animal rights has been a political non- starter.59 Their solution considers animal rights within a framework of democratic justice and human rights, rejecting the false binary in which humans live in civilization and animals in the wild.60
Other scholars argue for different legal designations that
recognize animals’ sentience. Angela Fernandez advocates for a
56 ALASDAIR COCHRANE, SENTIENTIST POLITICS: A THEORY OF
Global Inter-Species Justice 14–35 (2018).
57 Id. at 2. It is worth noting that some scholars have contested the all-purpose function sentience recognition has come to possess. Federico Zuolo challenges the notion that sentience itself can form a moral basis for animal equality. He engages directly with Alasdair Cochrane and Peter Singer, arguing that both possess weak egalitarian credentials. See Federico Zuolo, Misadventures of Sentience: Animals and the Basis of Equality, 9 ANIMALS (SPECIAL ISSUE) 1044 (2019).
58 SUE DONALDSON & WILL KYMLICKA, ZOOPOLIS: A POLITICAL THEORY OF ANIMAL RIGHTS 13 (2011).
60 Id. at 11, 16.
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quasi-person approach, functioning on a sliding scale ranging from property to personhood.61 She proposes this view in response to the “shades of grey” that legal personhood can be, operating as a series of interconnected types of legal persons.62 This view opens itself to criticism on the ground that it is much easier to view animals as close to property status as possible. Her proposed sliding scale risks not sliding at all, and instead depends on the goodwill of individual legal actors to push animals from property to non-property status. Maneesha Deckha offers a compelling alternative view: a novel legal designation of animals’ beingness as the most influential legal status that recognizes animals for who they truly are, while contesting the anthropocentric legal ontology that has produced the binary of animal personhood versus property status.63 Like Fernandez, Deckha recognizes animals’ biological distinctness from humans and thus imagines their rights in a more nuanced way than the property-person distinction allows.64 She critiques the personhood argument for its colonial logic, exemplified by the Nonhuman Rights Project’s focus on “human” animals (e.g., nonhuman primates) to the exclusion of others (e.g., chickens).65 The greatest strength of Deckha’s argument is in its non- anthropocentrism, which instructs us to consider the rights of
61 Animals as Property, Quasi-Property or Quasi-Person, BROOKS INST.: ANIMAL LAW FUNDAMENTALS (2021),
https://thebrooksinstitute.org/resources/videos/animal-law- fundamentals/animals-property-quasi-property-or-quasi-person.
62 Angela Fernandez, Animals as Property, Quasi-Property or Quasi-Person, at 62 (unnumbered working paper) (on file with Brooks Institute), https://thebrooksinstitute.org/sites/default/files/2024- 06/Animals%20as%20Property%2C%20Quasi- Property%20or%20Quasi-Person.pdf (last accessed Oct. 25, 2025).
63 MANEESHA DECKHA, ANIMALS AS LEGAL BEINGS: CONTESTING ANTHROPOCENTRIC LEGAL ORDERS 8–9 (2021).
65 For more critiques of personhood, see COLIN DAYAN, Personhood, in CRITICAL TERMS FOR ANIMAL STUDIES 267 (Lori Gruen, ed., 2018); ROBERTO ESPOSITO, PERSONS AND THINGS: FROM THE BODY’S
POINT OF VIEW (2015). For critiques of rights, see Josephine Donovan, Animal Rights and Feminist Theory, 15 SIGNS 350 (1990); MARY ANN GLENDON, RIGHTS TALK: THE IMPOVERISHMENT OF POLITICAL
DISCOURSE (1993); MARK TUSHNET, An Essay on Rights, in THEORETICAL AND EMPIRICAL STUDIES OF RIGHTS 211 (Laura Beth Nielsen ed., 2007); CHRISTOPH MENKE, CRITIQUE OF RIGHTS
(Christopher Turner trans., 2020).
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animals in a way that does not necessitate analyzing how
animals’ rights compare to those of humans.
The best vision that links the normative rights of farmed animals to environmental justice falls somewhere between Francione’s argument for personhood and Deckha’s argument for beingness. The advantage of the personhood view is that it affords animals a defined set of rights, such as due process and equal protection.66 Indeed, personhood is already being applied to a growing number of entities, such as rivers and municipalities, and can afford specific legal protections in areas such as tort and criminal law.67 But it may be politically alienating for anyone who considers animals to be fundamentally different from humans, even though personhood is, as Fernandez puts it, merely “an empty vessel into which certain rights can be poured.”68 Another drawback of the personhood framework is its origin in white, male landowners, making it both patriarchal and anthropocentric. Beingness, on the other hand, situates animals in their unique biological and environmental context. It considers the particular characteristics of breathing creatures as the basis for a new vision of law and ethics.69 Though this view may be seen as radical in political spheres, at least in part because it is not legible to legal systems, it is critical because it does not rely on an anthropocentric legal order that compares all rights to human rights, nor on a colonial legal order that values some people’s rights over others. Beingness instead allows rights to be defined in each species’ own terms. The optimal environmental justice outcome for animals should therefore be imbued with the legal subjectivity and relationality stemming from beingness, but should also center legal personhood because it is already legible.
As scholarship has demonstrated, the recognition of
animals’ sentience is a necessary condition for animals to be
66 Legal person, LEGAL INFO. INST.: WEX (June 2023),
https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/legal_person.
67 The legal rights of nature, which aim to confer legal personhood status on elements of natural ecosystems, is a topic of ongoing discussion. For an overview of such developments, see DANIEL P. CORRIGAN & MARKKU OKSANEN, RIGHTS OF NATURE: A RE- EXAMINATION (2021).
68 Fernandez, supra note 62, at 29.
69 DECKHA, supra note 63, at 122.
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considered part of our moral community, and therefore to recognize the beingness of each animal. Following from Part I, the acknowledgement of animals’ sentience alone strengthens the connection between animals and environmental justice communities, both of whom suffer in similar ways. The personhood approach to recognizing animals’ sentience deepens this connection by establishing a common language that could describe both animals’ rights and environmental justice communities’ rights. Yet, with the legal subjectivity embedded in Deckha’s theory of beingness, there is still room for a differentiated approach in fighting for the different rights of animals and humans. In effect, beingness operates as a moral lens to view the rights afforded by legal personhood status, severed from the implicit impulse to assess those rights in strictly human terms. It is a semantic shift, but an important one—it casts legal personhood in a way that allows animals to be viewed on their own terms. The legal recognition of animals’ sentience is the mechanism by which beingness can truly be actualized.
Part III turns to the legal landscape, explaining how the law has both explicitly and implicitly failed to recognize animals’ sentience, both within and outside industrial animal agriculture. In doing so, that part will demonstrate how far the United States stands from an animal-inclusive vision of environmental justice—even further for farmed animals than others.
Environmental Justice
Laws in the United States have excluded animals from environmental justice in two major ways, and this Part details the current landscape. Section III.A argues that animal welfare reforms, which seek to improve animals’ lives, are fundamentally premised on viewing animals as property, a view that weakens the connection between animals and environmental justice communities. Section III.B contends that while there has been some legal recognition of animals’ sentience—and with this recognition, a more hopeful view that animals are more than property—such advances have not (yet) generated meaningful improvements in most animals’ lives. This Part discusses legal developments for a broader swath of
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animals than those raised in CAFOs. In doing so, it surveys the efforts that could eventually extend to farmed animals, while also highlighting how an animal-inclusive vision of environmental justice is distant at best.
Animal “Welfare” Laws
There is no international agreement regarding animal welfare.70 Welfare incentives for powerful United States companies are weak, and the industry has achieved a remarkable ability to avoid accountability and operate largely in secret.71 However, there have been two attempts worth noting. The first is the International Convention for the Protection of Animals, drafted in 1988 and never adopted, which sought to standardize humane animal treatment. The second is the Universal Declaration of Animal Welfare, which has similarly not been adopted by the United Nations.72 Individual countries like the United States are thus left without any internationally upheld welfare standard.
Within the United States, efforts to protect farmed animals’ welfare have achieved very little. Some have gone as far as to say that farmed animals have no legal protection at all.73 The Animal Welfare Act of 1966, as discussed in Part I, excludes animals used for agriculture.74 Additionally, several other laws prioritize economic gain while regarding animals as property to
70 Jane Kotzmann & Cassandra Seery, Dignity in International Human Rights Law: Potential Applicability in Relation to International Recognition of Animal Rights, 26 MICH. STATE INT’L L. REV. 1, 28 (2017).
71 Lina Cohen, Ag Boards Think They Should Be Exempt From the Freedom of Information Act, MERCY FOR ANIMALS (May 5, 2016), https://mercyforanimals.org/blog/ag-boards-think-they-should-be- exempt-from-2/; Peter Lehner & Carrie Apfel, It’s Time to Put an End to Industrial Agriculture’s Relentless Pursuit of Secrecy, EARTHJUSTICE (Dec. 22, 2022), https://earthjustice.org/experts/peter-lehner/its-time- to-put-an-end-to-industrial-agricultures-relentless-pursuit-of-secrecy.
72 Jane Kotzmann & Nick Pendergrast, Animal Rights: Time to Start Unpacking What Rights and for Whom, 46 MITCHELL HAMLINE
73 DAVID J. WOLFSON & MARIANN SULLIVAN, ANIMAL RIGHTS: CURRENT DEBATES AND NEW DIRECTIONS 206 (Cass R. Sunstein &
Martha C. Nussbaum eds., 2005).
74 Animal Welfare Act, Pub. L. No. 89-544, 80 Stat. 350 (1966).
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be disposed of at will. For example, the Twenty-Eight Hour Law of 1873, the first nationwide piece of animal protection legislation, prohibits livestock from being transported across state lines for more than twenty-eight consecutive hours without “feeding, water, and rest.”75 Violation of this law results in no more than a $500 civil penalty, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture records show only ten enforcement inquiries over the twelve-year period of 2006 to 2018.76 What is most notable about this law is its underlying incentive: to maximize profit for the animals’ owners. If farmed animals do not starve to death, they may continue to be viable meat for human consumption. Another law notable for its ineffectiveness is the 1958 Humane Methods of Slaughter Act, which requires the humane treatment, handling, and quick death of animals used for food. Before being shackled or cut, farmed animals must be gassed, electrocuted, or shot to render them insensitive to pain.77 This law lacks an enforcement provision.78 All fifty states have also implemented their own anti-cruelty laws, but these laws exempt the most common industrial animal agriculture practices.79
Despite these laws’ wholesale failures to protect farmed
animals, there has been one landmark category of legislation to
75 Farmed Animals in Transport: The Twenty-Eight Hour Law, ANIMAL WELFARE INST.,
https://awionline.org/sites/default/files/publication/digital_download/a wi-animals-in-transport-the-twenty-eight-hour-law.pdf.
76 ANIMAL WELFARE INST., A REVIEW: THE TWENTY-EIGHT HOUR LAW AND ITS ENFORCEMENT 2 (2022),
https://awionline.org/sites/default/files/publication/digital_download/a wi-animals-in-transport-the-twenty-eight-hour-law.pdf.
77 Humane Methods of Livestock Slaughter Act, 7 U.S.C. § 1902 (2018).
79 See, e.g., NEV. REV. STAT. § 574.200(1)(c) (2015) (“The provisions of NRS 574.050 to 574.510, inclusive, . . . do not [i]nterfere with the right to kill all animals and fowl used for food”); 510 ILL. COMP. STAT. 70/13 (2015) (“Nothing in this Act affects normal, good husbandry practices ”); COLO. REV. STAT. § 18-9-201.5(1) (2017) (“Nothing in
this part 2 shall affect accepted animal husbandry practices utilized by any person in the care of companion or livestock animals or in the extermination of undesirable pests ”). For a ranking on the efficacy
of these laws, see 2024 U.S. Animal Protection Laws Rankings: The Best and Worst States and Territories for Animal Protection Laws, ANIMAL LEGAL DEF. FUND, https://aldf.org/project/us-state-rankings/.
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improve welfare conditions in CAFOs, headlined by California’s Prop 12. This ballot initiative, proposed in 2018, bans intensive cage confinement and the sale of food animals raised in intensive confinement.80 Egg-laying hens, pigs, and veal calves are required to be able to turn around, stretch out, and lie down.81 Pregnant pigs, for example, require twenty-four square feet of space and cannot be housed in “gestation crates,” or cages roughly the size of their own bodies.82 Any non-compliant farm owner is guilty of a misdemeanor.83 Several other states have attempted to enact legislation like Prop 12. Massachusetts’ Question 3, for example, also imposes minimum requirements for animal confinement (after having been unsuccessfully challenged in federal district court in Triumph Foods v. Campbell).84 Fifteen other states have passed similar laws.85
80 Hannah Truxell, What You Need To Know About California Prop 12 and the Supreme Court Case, THE HUMANE LEAGUE (July 31, 2023), https://thehumaneleague.org/article/prop-12-supreme-court.
83 CAL. DEP’T. AGRIC., PROPOSITION 12 ESTABLISHES NEW STANDARDS FOR CONFINEMENT OF CERTAIN FARM ANIMALS; BANS SALE OF CERTAIN NON-COMPLYING PRODUCTS. INITIATIVE STATUTE,
https://www.cdfa.ca.gov/ahfss/pdfs/regulations/LAO-Prop12.pdf.
84 Court Upholds Massachusetts Farm Animal Protection Law, HUMANE WORLD FOR ANIMALS (July 22, 2024),
https://www.humaneworld.org/en/news/court-upholds-massachusetts- farm-animal-protection-law.
85 See, e.g., ARIZ. REV. STAT. ANN. § 13-2910.07 (2018) (prohibits
people from confining pregnant pigs or veal calves in a way that prevents full limb extension); COLO. REV. STAT. §§ 35-21-201-09 (2020) (sets new standards for egg-laying hen confinement); 302 KY. ADMIN. REGS. § 21:030 (2021) (phases out veal crates by 2018). There is a fuller list of such legislative measures at Farm Animal Confinement Bans by State, AM. SOC’Y FOR THE PREVENTION OF CRUELTY TO ANIMALS,
https://www.aspca.org/improving-laws-animals/public-policy/farm- animal-confinement-bans (last visited Oct. 23, 2025). At the federal level, there have routinely been efforts targeting states’ initiatives to prohibit interstate commerce of agricultural products produced in conditions that did not meet welfare standards. See, e.g., Protect Interstate Commerce Act of 2018, H.R. 4879, 115th Cong. (2018) (introduced in the House to target states’ initiatives to prohibit interstate commerce of agricultural products produced in conditions that did not meet welfare standards).
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Though Californians voted in favor of Prop 12 in 2018 with sixty-three percent of the vote, the National Pork Producers Council and the American Farm Bureau Federation contested the proposition, arguing that it violated the Dormant Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution.86 The Dormant Commerce Clause limits the power of states to regulate commerce outside of their borders and thus preserves a national market for goods and services.87 In National Pork Producers v. Ross, the central legal concern was whether California was imposing its moral and policy preferences on other states by prohibiting the sale of farmed animals raised in conditions of confinement.88 The Supreme Court narrowly upheld the constitutionality of Prop 12, and animal activists rejoiced.89
The Supreme Court’s decision to uphold Prop 12 appeared to be a victory for animal rights activists, with the Humane Society praising Prop 12 as the “the nation’s strongest law on farm animal welfare.”90 But there are two important reasons why this so-called victory should be called into question. First, it may not last long. The proposed Ending Agricultural Trade Suppression Act could jeopardize or nullify hundreds of state agriculture laws, including ones like Prop 12 and Question 3.91
86 BALLOTPEDIA, California Proposition 12, Farm Animal Confinement Initiative (2018), https://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_12,_Farm_Animal_Con finement_Initiative_(2018) [https://perma.cc/53PT-F65L].
87 U.S. CONST. art. I, § 8, cl. 3.
88 Nat’l Pork Producers Council v. Ross, 598 U.S. 1142, 1150
(2023).
90 Kitty Block & Sara Amundson, Help Stop ‘Fix’ in Farm Bill that Would Undercut Strongest Farm Animal Welfare Law in US, HUMANE WORLD FOR ANIMALS (May 10, 2024),
https://www.humanesociety.org/blog/stop-threat-proposition-12- strongest-farm-animal-welfare-law.
91 Farm Bill Update November 2024, INDIGENOUS FOOD & AGRIC. INITIATIVE (Nov. 7, 2024),
https://www.indigenousfoodandag.com/news/farm-bill-update- november-2024/; KELLEY MCGILL, BROOKS MCCORMICK JR. ANIMAL L. & POL’Y PROGRAM, HARVARD L. SCH. LEGISLATIVE ANALYSIS OF S. 2019/H.R. 4417: THE ‘ENDING AGRICULTURAL TRADE SUPPRESSION ACT,’
at 3 (Chris Green ed., 2023), https://animal.law.harvard.edu/wp- content/uploads/Harvard-ALPP-EATS-Act-Report.pdf; Animal Law
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Second, it is questionable that Prop 12, Question 3, and other pieces of similar legislation should be considered victories in the first place. For pigs, the improvement is minimal: their psychological needs are more complex than a twenty-four-foot space can meet, and they will still be forcibly impregnated, removed from their piglets, and eventually eaten.92
The poor welfare conditions of factory farming are obscured from public view. So-called “ag-gag” laws, which have been in place since the 1990s, continue to make it illegal to document the activity inside factory farms and slaughterhouses without the permission of the owner, so as to protect the company against “economic harm.”93 If farm workers violate animal welfare standards, which they often do, it is exceedingly difficult to catch them in the act.94 Advocacy groups such as Direct Action Everywhere have broken ag-gag laws to rescue farmed animals, and many have faced criminal charges as a result.95
Even if animal welfare standards were higher, they would remain unduly narrow. Suppose all broiler chickens were permitted to wander on a bucolic pasture—though still limited in their mobility and subject to pain due to genetic modifications96—before being hung upside down and flung to
Symposium 2024: State Confinement Laws and the Future of Farmed Animal Policy, ANIMAL LEGAL DEF. FUND, https://aldf.org/article/animal-law-symposium/als2024/#s3 (last visited Oct. 24, 2025).
92 Justin Marceau & Doug Kysar, The Supreme Court’s Ruling on Prop 12 is a Win Against Factory Farming. But the Pigs’ Lives Will Still Suck, VOX (May 12, 2023, at 12:45 MDT), https://www.vox.com/future- perfect/23721488/prop-12-scotus-pork-pigs-factory-farming-california- bacon.
93 Seth Millstein, Ag-Gag Laws, and the Fight Over Them, Explained, SENTIENT MEDIA (May 17, 2024),
https://sentientmedia.org/ag-gag-laws/.
94 Justin F. Marceau, Ag Gag Past, Present, and Future, 38 SEATTLE U. L. REV. 1317 (2015).
95 See Wayne Hsiung, The Piglet Who Made it in the New York Times, DIRECT ACTION EVERYWHERE (Oct. 27, 2021),
https://www.directactioneverywhere.com/dxe-in-the-news/the-piglet- who-made-it-in-the-new-york-times; Animal Rights Activists: Direct Action Everywhere, SONOMA CNTY. FARM BUREAU (Apr. 2025), https://sonomafb.org/portfolio-items/direct-action-everywhere/.
96 Toby G. Knowles et al., Leg Disorders in Broiler Chickens:
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their deaths in an electrical bath. Or consider a pig who has slightly more space to turn around during their brief life, which ultimately does not matter if that same pig languishes in cramped conditions, standing on slatted floors that stand above a vast pit of manure, all while contracting zoonotic diseases.97 Even when a dairy cow wanders free, the result is the same: the cow is taken to be slaughtered once milk production slows, typically at a fifth of the cow’s natural lifespan,98 the worker on the killing floor experiences psychological trauma,99 and the raising and killing of the animal contributes to the 231 billion pounds of methane emitted into the atmosphere annually by global beef and dairy production.100 To the extent that factory farms are incentivized to improve animal welfare, it is only because happier farm animals make for better meat.101
The animal welfare conversation is starkly disconnected from environmental justice and climate justice goals. On the surface, animal welfare laws acknowledge animals’ sentience by attempting to ease animals’ pain. Unfortunately, legal
Prevalence, Risk Factors and Prevention, 3 PLOS ONE (2008), https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0001545.
97 Christopher G. Davis et al., U.S. Hog Production: Rising Output and Changing Trends in Productivity Growth, ECON. RSCH. SERV., U.S. DEP’T AGRIC., at 8, 36 (Aug. 2022),
https://ers.usda.gov/sites/default/files/_laserfiche/publications/104437/ ERR-308.pdf?v=72804; Chao-Nan Lin et al., Editorial: Zoonotic Diseases Among Pigs, FRONTIERS VETERINARY SCI., AT 1 (Jan. 2023,
https://doi.org/10.3389/fvets.2022.1122679.
98 Dairy Cows: How Long Do Dairy Cattle Live? Do They Suffer?, THE HUMANE LEAGUE (Aug. 8, 2021),
https://thehumaneleague.org/article/dairy-cows.
99 Jessica Slade & Emma Alleyne, The Psychological Impact of Slaughterhouse Employment: A Systematic Literature Review, 24 TRAUMA, VIOLENCE & ABUSE 429 (2023),
https://doi.org/10.1177/15248380211030243.
100 Ligia C. Moreira, Guilherme J.M. Rosa & Daniel M. Schaefer, Beef Production from Cull Dairy Cows: A Review from Culling to Consumption, J. ANIMAL SCI. (July 2021); Agriculture and Aquaculture: Food for Thought, U.S. ENV’T PROT. AGENCY (Oct. 2020), https://www.epa.gov/snep/agriculture-and-aquaculture-food-thought.
101 Temple Grandin, The Effect of Stress on Livestock and Meat Quality Prior to and During Slaughter, 1 INT’L J. STUDY ANIMAL PROBS. 313, 313 (1980); Alayna DeMartini, Happy Cows Mean Better Meat, COLL. FOOD, AGRIC., & ENV’T SCI., OHIO STATE UNIV. (June 18, 2018),
https://cfaes.osu.edu/news/articles/happy-cows-mean-better-meat.
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protections become more about giving animals a few more feet of cage space to move around and do extremely little to ameliorate the broader harms inflicted by the industry. Consider an analogous hypothetical response to environmental justice communities: Suppose the government gave modest funds to a community residing in a town near a petrochemical plant to commute to a non-polluted place for a few hours per week. The community would breathe better air for a finite period, and one may argue their overall lives would improve. But the root of the harm remains: these communities still live near pollution. This example aims to underscore the absurdity of animal “welfare” laws. Indeed, an animal welfare approach fundamentally misses the point of taking animals’ sentience seriously because it focuses on determining what constitutes a reasonable amount of animal exploitation and not on whether animal exploitation can be justified in the first place. In these laws’ focus on cage space and “reasonable” exploitation, distance forms between farmed animals and environmental justice concerns that impact these animals, humans, and the climate.
Legal Recognition of Sentience
The legal recognition of sentience is a powerful alternative to animal welfare laws. Although there is no federal recognition of animals’ sentience in the United States, several states are discussing the legal recognition of animals’ sentience. Vermont law defines animals as “all living sentient creatures, not human beings.”102 New York’s 2022–2023 legislative session included a bill that would affirm animals’ sentience while establishing that nonhuman animals can be victims of crimes.103 Oklahoma introduced a “Dog and Cat Bill of Rights” in 2023, recognizing the complex feelings of these two common household pets.104 These legislative proposals, though still quite limited, hold the potential to shift the paradigm for animals in the United States, moving animals’ interests from the margins to the center. That said, other states are poised to bar the recognition of animals’ sentience, such as Utah, where agriculture and energy
102 VT. STAT. ANN. tit. 13, § 351 (2017).
103 Res. 0260, N.Y. City Council, 9796th Sess. (N.Y. 2022); Assemb. B. A41, 2023–2024 N.Y. State S., Reg. Sess. (N.Y. 2023).
104 H.B. 1992, 59th Leg., 1st Sess. (Okla. 2023).
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companies have lobbied to block legal personhood status for nonhuman animals.105
The most progressive state for sentience recognition is Oregon, which has recognized animal’s sentience since 2013.106 State law in Oregon asserts that animals are “sentient beings capable of experiencing pain, stress and fear,” and that they “should be cared for in ways that minimize pain, stress, fear and suffering.”107 This marks a departure from animal welfare legislation that seeks to protect animals’ owners, instead centering animals as the beneficiaries of the law. Animals are not considered legal persons, but instead a special kind of property. The law raises critical questions related to what kinds of rights nonhuman animals should have and whether those rights could include personhood status.
A consequential Oregon case, State v. Nix, considered whether victims of abuse must be legal persons.108 The case arose one year after Oregon formally recognized animals’ sentience, upon the discovery that Arnold Weldon Nix, a farm owner, had abused and neglected over twenty of his animals, mostly horses and goats.109 When the case reached the Oregon Supreme Court, the legal issue was whether Nix would be charged with one punishable offense or twenty.110 The decision was guided by Oregon’s merger statute, which states that “[w]hen the same conduct or criminal episode violates two or more statutory provisions and each provision requires proof of an element that the others do not, there are as many separately punishable offenses as there are separate statutory violations.”111 Nix claimed that since animals are not legal persons, each individual animal should not be considered a separate victim; instead, he committed one criminal act applying to his property.112 The Oregon Supreme Court determined that
105 UTAH CODE ANN. § 63G-32-102 (West 2024).
106 OR. REV. STAT. § 167.305 (2023).
108 State v. Nix, 334 P.3d 437, 438 (Or. 2014), vacated, 345 P.3d
416 (Or. 2015). Although this case was ultimately vacated for procedural reasons, it is still a persuasive one in the history of sentience recognition.
111 OR. REV. STAT. § 161.067 (2023).
112 Nix, 334 P.3d at 438–39.
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victims do not have to be legal persons, meaning that Nix would be charged with twenty separate counts of animal abuse.113 This ruling is significant because even though the court declined to hold that animals had the status of legal persons, it still formally recognized that animals can experience pain and abuse by considering each one a victim. The court acknowledged its distinct approach compared to the anti-cruelty laws implemented by many states in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, which “were intended to deter immoral conduct; the emphasis still was not on the animals themselves.”114 The case demonstrates that sentience recognition, enshrined in Oregon law, can function as a tool for animal protection, albeit an indirect one, that in this case only benefited animals after they endured severe abuse and neglect. Animals are subjects of rights instead of legal persons, which limits the effectiveness of this legal structure.115
One notable case exposes the limits of animal sentience recognition in Oregon. In 2017, the Animal Legal Defense Fund filed a lawsuit on behalf of Justice, an eight-year-old horse severely abused by his owner.116 The lawsuit sought to have his abuser, Gwendolyn Vercher, compensate Justice for the horse’s lifelong medical care, repairing frostbite, starvation, and severe liver issues, among other ailments produced by his owner’s mistreatment.117 Though a plaintiff must be a legal person filing a complaint against the violation of their legal rights, Nix constituted a powerful precedent for the Animal Legal Defense Fund because it presented the possibility that an animal’s status as a victim could permit suit against their abuser.118 Yet in Justice v. Vercher, the Oregon Court of Appeals held that Justice could not bring the cause of action because he was not a legal
115 See also State v. Newcomb, 359 Or. 756 (2016) (the court recognized that animals remain property and focused on whether a person had a protected property interest in a vial of blood taken by the state from the defendant’s emaciated dog without a warrant).
116 Justice the Horse Sues Abuser, ANIMAL LEGAL DEF. FUND (Mar.
7, 2023), https://aldf.org/case/justice-the-horse-sues-abuser/.
118 Nix, 334 P.3d at 438; see, e.g., Vukovich v. Custer, 107 N.E.2d
426, 427 (Ill. App. Ct. 1952).
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person: he could not bear duties and thus did not have rights.119 Animals were instead “‘things’ over which persons may exercise qualified rights.”120 In 2023, a set of amici curiae legal scholars, including Deckha and Fernandez, argued as amici curiae that the court of appeals had neither defined legal rights nor cited academic or judicial authorities on the nature of those rights.121 They contended that anti-cruelty legislation should confer Justice personhood status for the narrow purpose of suing for negligence and this would not necessarily grant personhood status for any other reason.122 The legal brief highlights the gap between the judicial decision and scholarly expertise on personhood. Even when Justice should have been recognized as a legal person whose lawsuit was not dismissed, according to scholarly consensus, he was not.
Justice the horse has not been the only animal plaintiff in United States history. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (“PETA”), the Animal Legal Defense Fund, and the Nonhuman Rights Project have filed a slew of cases on behalf of animal plaintiffs—all of which sought not only to recognize animals’ sentience, but also to elevate animals from property to legal persons in states that did not recognize sentience at all.123
119 Justice ex rel. Mosiman v. Vercher, 518 P.3d 131, 141 (Or. App.
2022).
121 Amended Brief for Kathryn H. Clarke et al. as Amici Curiae Legal Scholars with Expertise in Legal Personhood and Rights in Support of Petition for Review at 3, Justice ex rel. Mosiman v. Vercher, 370 Or. 789 (2023) (S069799).
123 For Nonhuman Rights Project work, see, e.g., People ex rel. Nonhuman Rts. Project, Inc. v. Lavery, 998 N.Y.S. 2d 248, 249, 252 (N.Y. App. Div. 2014); Nonhuman Rts. Project, Inc. ex rel. Kiko v. Presti, 124 A.D.3d 1334 (N.Y. App. Div. 2015); Nonhuman Rts. Project, Inc. v. Stanley, 16 N.Y.S. 3d 898, 900, 918 (N.Y. Sup. Ct. 2015);
Nonhuman Rts. Project, Inc. v. R.W. Commerford & Sons, Inc., 216 A.3d 839, 840, 846 (2019); Nonhuman Rts. Project, Inc. v. Breheny, 197
N.E. 3d 921, 923, 931–32 (N.Y. 2022); Petition for a Common Law Writ of Habeas Corpus at 5, Nonhuman Rts. Project, Inc. v. Fresno’s Chaffee Zoo Corp., No. F085722 (Cal. App. Dep’t Super. Ct. May 3, 2022); Nonhuman Rts. Project, Inc. v. Cheyenne Mountain Zoological Soc’y, 562 P.3d 63, reh’g denied (Feb. 10, 2025); Petition for a Common Law Writ of Habeas Corpus, Nonhuman Rts. Project, Inc. ex rel. Mari v.
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Some of these plaintiffs were individual animals,124 while others were entire species.125 Courts refused to grant the animals habeas relief, and found they lacked any legal rights or standing.126 One particularly devastating defeat for animal rights advocates was when a district court dismissed a lawsuit filed by PETA against SeaWorld’s confinement of orcas, holding that the orca plaintiffs lacked standing.127 PETA argued that the confinement violated the Thirteenth Amendment.128 It is difficult to bring these kinds of cases to court because animals
Honolulu, (No. 1CCV-23- 0001418) (Haw. Cir. Ct. Oct. 31, 2023);
Complaint for Writ of Habeas Corpus at 8–10, Nonhuman Rts. Project, Inc. ex rel. Prisoner A (aka Louie) v. DeYoung Family Zoo (No. 23- 17621-AH) (Mich. Cir. Ct. Dec. 4, 2023). For PETA cases, see, e.g., Tilikum ex rel. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, Inc. v. Sea World Parks & Ent., Inc., 842 F. Supp. 2d 1259 (S.D. Cal. 2012); Naruto
v. Slater, 888 F.3d 418 (9th Cir. 2018). For Animal Legal Defense Fund cases, see, e.g., Animal Legal Def. Fund v. Cal. Exposition & State Fairs, 192 Cal. Rptr. 3d 89, 99 (Cal. Ct. App. 2015); Animal Legal Def. Fund v. Mendes, 72 Cal. Rptr. 3d 553, 559–61 (Cal. Ct. App. 2008).
124 See, e.g., Citizens to End Animal Suffering & Exploitation, Inc.
v. New England Aquarium, 836 F. Supp. 45 (D. Mass. 1993); Lewis v. Burger King, 344 F. App’x 470 (10th Cir. 2009); Naruto v. Slater, 888 F.3d 418 (9th Cir. 2018); Legal for Cloud v. Yolo Cnty., No. 218CV09542JAKMAA, 2018 WL 11462074 (C.D. Cal. Dec. 3, 2018).
125 See, e.g., Jones v. Butz, 374 F. Supp. 1284 (S.D.N.Y. 1974);
Jones v. Beame, 380 N.E.2d 277 (N.Y. 1978); N. Spotted Owl (Strix Occidentalis Caurina) v. Hodel, 716 F. Supp. 479 (W.D. Wash. 1988);
N. Spotted Owl (Strix Occidentalis Caurina) v. Lujan, 758 F. Supp. 621 (W.D. Wash. 1991); Hawaiian Crow (‘Alala) v. Lujan, 906 F. Supp. 549 (D. Haw. 1991); Mt. Graham Red Squirrel v. Madigan, 954 F.2d 1441 (9th Cir. 1992); Am. Bald Eagle v. Bhatti, 9 F.3d 163 (1st Cir. 1993); Palila v. Haw. Dep’t of Land & Nat. Res., 852 F.2d 1106, 1106–07 (9th Cir. 1988). Animal plaintiffhood is discussed at length in Matthew Liebman, Animal Plaintiffs, 108 MINN. L. REV. 1707 (2024).
126 See, e.g., Rachel Reed, The Court Simply Refused to Extend to Happy the Elephant the Opportunity to Prove, Through Her Lawyers, that She Deserves Her Freedom, HARV. L. TODAY (June 7, 2022), https://hls.harvard.edu/today/the-court-simply-refused-to-extend-to- happy-the-elephant-the-opportunity-to-prove-through-her-lawyers- that-she-deserves-her-freedom/.
127 PETA, Tilikum v. Seaworld Case Summary, https://www.peta.org/features/peta-foundation-legal/case- summaries/tilikum-v-seaworld/ (last visited Oct. 26, 2025).
128 Id.
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are not regarded as legal persons and therefore do not have standing.129 The closest case was when chimpanzees Hercules and Leo, aided by the Nonhuman Rights Project, almost became the first nonhuman animals in the world to be granted a habeas corpus hearing regarding the legality of their imprisonment.130 The court ultimately held that the chimpanzees were not legal persons,131 although the chimpanzees’ “owners” eventually agreed to place them in an animal sanctuary in 2018.132 Cases like these have prompted worthwhile debate about whether animals should have standing and thus be regarded as legal persons.
Some have argued that by denying animals standing, courts have embraced a restrictive definition of personhood that prohibits most animals from being plaintiffs.133 Importantly, sentience recognition does not guarantee plaintiff status. Indeed, Justice the horse’s lawsuit was dismissed in a state where sentience is recognized, while Hercules and Leo were seemingly close to being granted a writ of habeas corpus despite New York’s absence of sentience recognition. For this reason, it is tempting to dismiss sentience recognition as a viable legal tool to achieve personhood status. But as Oregon law and the Oregon Supreme Court’s decision in Nix demonstrates, sentience recognition at least holds the potential to create valuable precedent with respect to animal rights. It just has not yet done so effectively.
Elsewhere, the legal recognition of animals’ sentience is on the rise.134 The European Union acknowledged animals’ sentience in the Treaty of Amsterdam in 1997.135 Even when the
129 Cass R. Sunstein, Can Animals Sue?, in ANIMAL RIGHTS: CURRENT DEBATES AND NEW DIRECTIONS (2012).
130 Nicole Pallotta, Though Denied by New York Court of Appeals, Habeas Corpus Claim for Chimpanzees Prompts Reflection, ANIMAL LEGAL DEF. FUND (Sept. 7, 2018), https://aldf.org/article/though- denied-by-new-york-court-of-appeals-habeas-corpus-claim-for- chimpanzees-prompts-reflection/.
133 Liebman, supra note 125.
134 Ross Kelly, Recognition of Animal Sentience on the Rise, VIN NEWS SERVICE (May 14, 2020),
https://news.vin.com/default.aspx?pid=210&Id=9639465.
135 EUR. CT. OF AUDITORS, ANIMAL WELFARE IN THE EU, (Jan.
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United Kingdom withdrew from the European Union, the United Kingdom kept the clause on animals’ sentience in its own domestic law.136 Bolivia and Ecuador have used animal rights language in their constitutions.137 The Swiss Constitution recognizes “the dignity of living beings as well as the safety of human beings, animals and the environment.”138 Article 3 of its Animal Welfare Act of 2005 defines dignity as the “inherent worth” of an animal that “must be respected.”139 Likewise, India has constitutionally recognized animals as sentient beings through Supreme Court interpretation.140
This legal recognition of animal sentience has the potential to strengthen animal protection by progressively affording them more rights, as exemplified by several cases abroad. Two such cases come from Argentina. The Abogados y Funcionarios de Defensa Animal issued a habeas corpus lawsuit on behalf of Cécilia the chimpanzee, who lived in captivity. The Argentinian court granted Cécilia’s petition for a writ of habeas corpus and declared her a nonhuman legal person; she was eventually rehomed to an animal sanctuary.141 In another Argentinian case,
2018),
https://www.eca.europa.eu/lists/ecadocuments/bp_animal_welfare/bp_ animal_welfare_en.pdf.
136 Committee of the Whole House European Union (Withdrawal) Bill, cl. 4 (2017) (UK) (“Obligations and rights contained within the EU Protocol on animal sentience set out in Article 13 of title II of the Lisbon Treaty shall be recognised and available in domestic law on and after exit day and shall be enforced and followed accordingly.”).
137 BOLIVIA CONSTITUCIÓN POLÍTICA DEL ESTADO, art. 33 (2009),
translated in CONSTITUTIONS OF THE WORLD (Max Planck Institute, Oxford Univ. Press, Inc, 2019) (Bol.), https://ecnl.org/sites/default/files/files/2021/BoliviaConstitution.pdf.; Ecuador, Constitución de Ecuador de 2008, arts. 71, 73, translated in POLITICAL DATABASE OF THE AMERICAS (Georgetown Univ., 2011)
https://pdba.georgetown.edu/Constitutions/Ecuador/english08.html.
138 Federal Constitution of the Swiss Federation, Apr. 18, 1999, art. 120, translated in FEDLEX (Swiss Confederation, 2024) (Switz.), https://www.fedlex.admin.ch/eli/cc/1999/404/en.
139 Animal Welfare Act, Dec. 16, 2005, SR 455, art. 3, translated in FEDLEX (Swiss Confederation, 2023) (Switz), https://www.fedlex.admin.ch/eli/cc/2008/414/en.
140 Animal Welfare Bd. Of India v. A. Nagaraja, (2014) 7 S.C.C. 547, 580–82 (India).
141 Lauren Choplin, Chimpanzee Recognized As Legal Person,
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a family court designed a visitation agreement for the two dogs of a divorced couple, guided by the status of dogs as family members.142 Elsewhere, in Switzerland, a citizens’ initiative demanded and won the right to vote for bodily integrity for nonhuman primates. While voters ultimately voted against the initiative, it revealed the possibility that a democratic vote, as opposed to courts, could secure animal rights.143 These cases outside the United States are significant because they provide a somewhat clearer vision of the types of rights that could be granted to animals whose sentience has been enshrined in law, versus in the United States where sentience largely remains unrecognized. Importantly, even this relatively limited progress has primarily benefited primates or dogs, animals who have already garnered more sympathy than farmed animals.
Ultimately, where farmed animals are concerned, sentience recognition has not accomplished much at all. If binding animal welfare legislation faces such setbacks in its enforcement,144 how could the legal recognition of animals’ sentience be any more effective? In determining the efficacy of sentience recognition, scholars have landed on both sides, assessing the issue in terms of semantic and symbolic meaning as well as the procedural limitations.145
NONHUMAN RTS. PROJECT (Dec. 5, 2016),
https://www.nonhumanrights.org/blog/cecilia-chimpanzee-legal- person/. Notably, the Nonhuman Rights Project used this example in preparation to defend Tommy the chimpanzee, the organization’s first client. Unfortunately, Tommy died before legal proceedings were held, memorialized in Tommy: The NhRP’s First Client, NONHUMAN RTS. PROJECT, https://www.nonhumanrights.org/client/tommy/.
142 Mara Resio, Tenencia de Mascotas: Fallo Inédito de la Justicia para Dos Perros y sus Amos Divorciados, CLARIN (Oct. 16, 2022, at 15:02 CET), https://www.clarin.com/sociedad/kiara-popeye-perros- regimen-visitas-matrimonio-divorcio_0_ssUfCPAVWZ.html.
143 SWISSINFO, Voters Decline to Give Limited Rights to Non- Human Primates (Feb. 13, 2022), https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/politics/voters-decline-to-give-limited- rights-to-non-human-primates/47343656.
144 Cass R. Sunstein, Enforcing Existing Rights, 8 ANIMAL LAW, at ii (2002),
https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1226 9&context=journal_articles.
145 Jane Kotzmann, Recognizing the Sentience of Animals in Law:
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Clearly, sentience recognition has much stacked against it, but with creative lawyering, this legal principle can achieve much. It may be tempting to dismiss the legal recognition of sentience as merely symbolic, a legislative move that pays lip service to animal rights while simultaneously failing to meaningfully provide justice for animals, especially farmed ones subject to systematic extermination. But it is unwise to give up on sentience recognition for two reasons. First, as seen in Oregon as well as outside the United States, sentience recognition has the potential to create legal and cultural precedent that could open the door to personhood status for animals. That individual animals have been considered victims and subjects of rights is basic yet significant. This recognition puts animal sentience on the radars of more than just activist groups, while media coverage brings sentience from the courtroom and the ivory tower to the public square. Moreover, by overwhelming courts with cases—even ones that are likely to be rejected on procedural grounds—groups such as the Animal Legal Defense Fund, PETA, and the Nonhuman Rights Project have spurred substantial public debate. Today, the Animal Legal Defense Fund is challenging Tyson Foods’ “climate-smart” beef claims for violating consumer protection laws by conveying false or misleading information to consumers.146 Imagine if one day this legal group involved beef cows as putative plaintiffs. Such cases could de-center humans as the primary beneficiaries of anti- cruelty laws, even if these cases do not make it to court.
A Justification and Framework for Australian States and Territories, 42 SYDNEY LAW REVIEW 281 (2020) (arguing that Australia’s efforts to legally recognize animals’ sentience are largely symbolic but welcome nonetheless); M.B. Rodriguez Ferrere, The (Symbolic) Legislative Recognition of Sentience, 28 ANIMAL L. REV. 117 (2022) (casting doubt on the power of legal sentience recognition to enact meaningful improvements to animals’ lives); Eva Bernet Kempers, Transition rather than Revolution: The Gradual Road towards Animal Legal Personhood through the Legislature, 11 TRANSNATIONAL ENV’T LAW 581, 582 (2022) (arguing for legislative change rather than judicial recognition of animals as persons).
146 Challenging Tyson Foods Over Deceptive ‘Net-zero’ and ‘Climate-smart’ Beef Claims, Environmental Working Group v. Tyson Foods, Inc., ANIMAL LEGAL DEF. FUND (Sept. 18, 2024),
https://aldf.org/case/challenging-tyson-foods-over-deceptive-net-zero- and-climate-smart-beef-claims/.
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Second, sentience recognition could do significant work in reframing environmental justice goals. As a principle, it interprets animals as beings, not things, worthy of consideration for their capacity to suffer and feel pain. This is a critical prerequisite to even begin considering animals, especially farmed ones, as part of environmental justice communities who deserve healthier, longer lives. It cements the link between farmed animals and environmental justice communities, two groups who suffer and deserve legal rights. And it puts into practice—even if imperfectly—the blend of personhood and beingness laid out by those who envision a better world. Even if sentience recognition does not appear to be a victory at first, it could shift the discourse from a narrow focus on “humane” living conditions to a much broader justice framework that considers animals as unique beings within environmental justice communities who are worthy of strong but distinct legal protections, healthier lives, and fewer harms to the environment. Importantly, it would affirm that animals are beings with moral worth, not food, products, or bodies to exploit—stretching from the smallest family farm to the largest CAFO.
Towards Solutions for Farmed Animal Protection
The Barriers That Remain
Even with the potential of sentience recognition, the landscape of possible solutions for animals appears bleak at first. Animal welfare reforms in the United States experience significant pushback, while also enabling the ongoing mass abuse of farmed animals used for food. On the other hand, animal rights theory has been more ambitious in its vision of a better world, but the legal recognition of animals’ sentience, in the scant few jurisdictions where it has been incorporated into law, has generated only small improvements to a few specific animals’ livelihoods, and essentially none for farmed animals.
Animal advocacy efforts have also been relatively limited.
Founded in 1980, PETA hints at radical advocacy by “oppos[ing]
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speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview.”147 The organization is even known for confronting factory farming directly through undercover investigations of common industry practices.148 Many other large animal advocacy groups, however, are selective in their messaging, appealing to the lowest common denominator of animal advocates. The Humane Society has a robust initiative devoted to ending the dog meat trade in Asia, detailing the brutalities of a trade that is essentially identical to factory farming elsewhere.149 Yet ironically, its messaging against factory farming is far more subdued: the organization advocates for “more humane” farming practices, while preserving the industry as a whole.150 Similarly, the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals advocates for “an end to the cruelest factory farming practices, and adequate funding for a more humane food system”—but importantly, in a way that enables the preservation of that very food system.151 Suffice it to say, except for a few initiatives such as the Great Ape and Nonhuman Rights Project,152 animal rights have barely penetrated the mainstream political discourse, especially in the United States.153
147 PETA, PETA’s Mission Statement, https://www.peta.org/about- peta/.
148 Jan Dutkiewicz, You’re Wrong about PETA, VOX (Aug. 8, 2024, at 4:00 MDT), https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/364284/peta- protests-animal-rights-factory-farming-effective.
149 Ending the Dog and Cat Meat Trade, HUMANE WORLD FOR ANIMALS, https://www.humaneworld.org/en/issue/ending-cat-dog- meat-trade.
150 See Animal Welfare Issues We’re Fighting to Solve, HUMANE WORLD FOR ANIMALS, https://www.humaneworld.org/en/issues.
151 See Protecting Farm Animals, AM. SOC’Y FOR THE PREVENTION OF CRUELTY TO ANIMALS, https://www.aspca.org/protecting-farm- animals.
152 For extended discussion about these efforts, see Paola Cavalieri & Peter Singer, The Great Ape Project: Premises and Implications, 23 ALTERNATIVES TO LAB’Y ANIMALS 626 (1995); Angela
Fernandez, Legal History and Rights for Nonhuman Animals: An Interview with Steven M. Wise, 41 DALHOUSIE LAW J. 197 (2018).
153 There have been some small but significant mainstream efforts to influence culture change. See, e.g., Earthlings (2005) (examines the detrimental effects of using animals for food, clothing, and scientific research).
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It is also true that the realities of animal agriculture remain largely obscured from public view. In addition to the ag-gag laws discussed in Part III, businesses have distorted the ethical credibility of factory farming through non-governmental certifications. These certifications “humane wash” industrial animal agriculture, luring consumers into a false sense of assurance that meat and dairy production is morally sound while further distancing them from the grislier reality of factory farms. For instance, free-range egg farming means chickens have access to the outdoors, yet most of the time still live their short lives in tortuously crowded indoor conditions.154 In fact, most do not go outside for the entirety of their six-and-a-half- week lives, rendering the label meaningless.155 Certified Humane, another popular certification, requires that animals’ care, from birth to slaughter, meets a minimum care standard.156 Yet this certification is tenuous at best, exemplified by Farm Forward’s investigation that found widespread abuse and deception in Alexander Family Farm, LLC, a Certified Humane, “regenerative” operation.157 These certifications’ primary objective is to give consumers reassurance that they are consuming meat, dairy, and eggs in a way that inflicts minimal harm on animals, yet rarely is this actually the case. Because these certifications are misleading, they incentivize cruelty by fueling demand from a consumer base who cannot know what happens behind CAFOs’ closed doors.
Finally, the cultural barriers may be the steepest. While this article argues that animals should be included into environmental justice communities by way of recognizing their sentience, the logical implication is that people stop consuming
154 Trisha Calo, Cage-Free vs. Free Range—and Other Egg Carton Labels—Explained, CERTIFIED HUMANE (Feb. 10, 2023), https://certifiedhumane.org/cage-free-vs-free-range/.
155 Kenny Torrella & Marina Bolotnikova, Undercover Audio of a Tyson Employee Reveals ‘Free-Range’ Chicken is Meaningless, VOX (Aug. 2, 2023, at 12:13 MDT), https://www.vox.com/future- perfect/23724740/tyson-chicken-free-range-humanewashing- investigation-animal-cruelty.
156 Overview, CERTIFIED HUMANE,
https://certifiedhumane.org/overview (last visited Dec. 20, 2025).
157 FARM FORWARD, Dairy Deception: Corruption and Consumer Fraud at Alexandre Family Farm (Apr. 2024), https://www.farmforward.com/publications/dairy-deception- corruption-and-consumer-fraud/.
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all animal products. Even in the absence of formal legal recognition, people are still capable of shaping their behavior to protect the lives and livelihoods of animals. But the consumption of animal products is so culturally ingrained that even those aware of the brutality and environmental implications of factory farming still consume them.158 Many people would prefer not to engage critically with the processes that produced the food they eat and products they wear, while still others argue that any degree of focus on animal ethics is absurd.159
B. A New Frame for Justice
I envision a world-building approach to re-frame how humans and farmed animals relate to each other.160 What should animal rights theory, the legal recognition of sentience, and other levers of change yield, in service of including animals raised in CAFOs into environmental justice communities? It is very difficult to envision a transformative future that is bound to the legal, policy, and cultural constraints of the past and even the present. Yet, building upon the theoretical and legal tools already discussed, there are hopeful implications. In a non- anthropocentric view of environmental justice that benefits both humans and animals, I angle towards the abolition of industrial animal agriculture through four key dimensions.
The first dimension is legal. In Part III, I demonstrated that sentience recognition has not yet done a successful job protecting animals, which may make this aspect of the argument surprising. But I maintain that the legal recognition of sentience is a first, crucial step in mobilizing other animal rights. Only rights-based language can articulate what kinds of freedoms might be possible for animals, as welfare language has
158 Evon Scott, Giorgos Kallis & Christos Zografos, Why Environmentalists Eat Meat, PLOS ONE (July 2019) at 1.
159 See, e.g., Elisa Aaltola, Animal Ethics and the Argument from Absurdity, 19 ENV’T VALUES 79 (2010).
160 My approach takes inspiration from Olúfémi Táíwò’s Reconsidering Reparations. Táíwò’s argument is remarkable in its expansiveness. He views reparations for slavery as an essential construction project that will yield climate justice, offering a compelling model for imaginative solution-making even if reparations seem politically infeasible at present. My concluding remarks are well beyond the bounds of feasibility, but nonetheless critical.
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repeatedly proven to serve human interests, not animal interests. In practice, recognizing sentience might begin with an international agreement on animal rights, one that might be compared to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.161 This agreement would set forth a common standard for animal protection, perhaps prompting other jurisdictions to institute their own recognition of animals’ sentience. This common standard would necessarily include animals raised in CAFOs.
But legal signaling can only go so far. Lawyers sympathetic to the cause must also litigate. In the tradition of PETA, the Nonhuman Rights Project, and the Animal Legal Defense Fund, new lawsuits can break new ground beyond the most easily anthropomorphized animals (e.g., chimpanzees, elephants), towards ones that are widely regarded as disposable (e.g., cows, pigs, and chickens). These efforts place faith in the partial power of a top-down approach to change. Legislation and litigation possess inherent worth, both garnering more sympathy among judges and advocating that the cause of farmed animals is a worthwhile one. These legal developments will also spur media coverage that translates obscure concepts into legible ideas for people open to learning more about animal sentience and responding to that knowledge accordingly.
The second dimension—perhaps both the most critical and the most difficult—is social. Sentience recognition, animal personhood, and litigation efforts inscribe animals’ worth into the law, but the reach of these activities can only extend so far. These legal acts must be supported by a strong foundation of social support of animal protection, which necessarily implies veganism. Indeed, this foundation of support will also increase the presence of sympathetic lawyers who litigate and legislate. A well-trodden yet important route is activism, following the footsteps of organizations like Mercy for Animals162 and Direct Action Everywhere,163 as well as student advocacy groups like
161 See The Foundation of International Human Rights Law, UNITED NATIONS, https://www.un.org/en/about- us/udhr/foundation-of-international-human-rights-law.
162 MERCY FOR ANIMALS, Animals Suffer Miserably at Factory Farms, https://mercyforanimals.org/.
163 DIRECT ACTION EVERYWHERE, Until Every Animal is Free, https://www.directactioneverywhere.com/ (“Direct Action Everywhere is a global network of activists working to achieve revolutionary social and political change for animals in one generation.”).
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Allied Scholars for Animal Protection.164 Narrative change- making is required to shift public opinion to consider all animals moral persons—from chimpanzees to insects.165 Some of this narrative change can be achieved through initiatives that awaken people to the pernicious harms of the industry.166 It will also be critical to debunk the fallacies promoted by “certified humane” and “cruelty-free” products, which conceal mass atrocity under the guise of ethical consumer behavior. Instead, the focus needs to be on achieving multispecies environmental justice, while simultaneously recognizing and dismantling the interlocking environmental injustices—pollution, worker abuse, contributions to climate change, and others—in industrial animal agriculture. Farmed animal abuse also inflicts significant harm on humans, stretching from the traumas of the killing floor to the deleterious health consequences from chronic consumption of processed animal products, from the pollution infiltrating rural communities to the greenhouse gases accumulating in the atmosphere. To be successful, animal rights advocacy should emphasize its role in mitigating this broader constellation of harms to animals, humans, and the environment.
The third dimension is economic. A shrinking factory farming industry would remove a major source of protein, and many people’s livelihoods depend on the meat and dairy industry. A just transition away from industrial animal agriculture would certainly not be easy, nor would it be swift. But if done right, a just transition would shift governmental support away from meat, eggs, and dairy, and towards alternative protein industries, while extending aid to those who would be most adversely affected by the transition. A growing alternative protein industry would create new jobs across the
164 Defend Animals: Change Starts On Your Campus, ALLIED SCHOLARS FOR APPLIED PROT., https://www.alliedscholars.org/ (“Our vision is the abolition of speciesism and exploitation of human and nonhuman animals.”).
165 Insect sentience has received some scientific attention; many insects may not have consciousness, per se, but they can detect and encode negative stimuli. See, e.g., Morten Overgaard, Insect Consciousness, 15 FRONTIERS IN BEHAVIORAL NEUROSCIENCE (May
2021). This is sufficient for inclusion in our moral community.
166 For extended discussion, see Iselin Gamber, I Want You To Panic: Leveraging the Rhetoric of Fear and Rage for the Future of Food, 17 J. FOOD L. & POL’Y 41 (2021).
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value chain, so long as there are sufficient re-skilling efforts for those who would be entering those jobs.167 As such, there must be adequate investment in alternatives such as cultivated proteins.168 Lobbying efforts should be directed against the banning of lab-grown meat—an alternative to animal products that circumvents torture and slaughter—that is currently facing significant legislative pushback in the United States.169 To shift towards alternative proteins while achieving food justice will be a paramount consideration, focused not just on filling a protein gap, but also on the distribution of alternative proteins in a way that will benefit everyone, not just upper-income individuals.170 In practice, grocery stores and restaurants should expand their plant-based offerings; in food deserts with fewer options, multinational chains and small businesses alike should secure the availability of substantive plant-based meals. It will be critical not to position these products as mere “alternatives” to the real thing, either a sacrifice to the experience of eating or deficient in key nutrients. Rather, these products should be positioned as the most compatible with a more sustainable future, while also being delicious and nutritionally complete.
The final dimension is an integrated framing of justice. This is the moral baseline, the engine of action that considers animal rights not just in conversation with environmental justice, but as a critical component of it. It is important to consider the cause of farmed animals not as an isolated matter, reduced to an issue of welfare or quarantined from environmental justice conversations. The cultural momentum produced by this realization—that the cause of farmed animals is woven into a
167 See, e.g., CLEO VERKUIJL ET AL., A JUST TRANSITION IN THE
MEAT SECTOR: WHY, WHO, AND HOW?, (2022); Rodrigo Luiz Morais-da-
Silva et al., The Expected Impact of Cultivated and Plant-Based Meats on Jobs: The Views of Experts from Brazil, the United States and Europe, HUM. & SOC. SCI. COMMC’N (Aug. 29, 2022),
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-022-01316-z.
168 Massachusetts, for example, is increasing its funding for cultivated proteins. An Act Relative to Strengthening Massachusetts’ Economic Leadership, ch. 238, Acts of 2024 (Mass.).
169 See Alexis Andrews, Lab-Grown Meat: Ban or Buy?, ANIMAL LEGAL & HIST. CTR. (2024), https://www.animallaw.info/article/lab- grown-meat-ban-or-buy.
170 For an extended discussion of the issue, see Isabel Baudish et al., Power & Protein—Closing the ‘Justice Gap’ for Food System Transformation, ENV’T RSCH. LETTERS (Aug. 2024), at 1.
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broad range of justice issues—should implicate everyone, forming a broad coalition of supporters who envision a better world for animals, people, and the environment. Yet just as the environmental justice movement centers the rights of humans, this expanded environmental justice movement should have as its second center the recognition of nonhuman animals’ sentience, as well as the right to life afforded by such a designation. If farmed animals are moral and legal beings, industrial animal agriculture will be untenable, and dismantling the industry will become a moral imperative.
Together, these four dimensions envision a world that welcomes farmed animals into environmental justice communities, broadening the movement for justice and fusing together a series of otherwise siloed efforts. The movements for environmental justice and animal rights need not pit humans against animals, nor the needs of some communities against those of others, nor the gravity of local environmental concerns against broader planetary ones. Instead, these efforts form a more expansive agenda of mutually reinforcing goals, with localized pockets of advocacy that can cross-pollinate ideas and grow together.
Farmed creatures—who are smart, curious, and playful— enter the world with a death sentence. With a clear link between their sentience and the moral concerns of environmental justice, a more robust, interconnected vision for justice forms. While the road to justice will be long, there is nevertheless hope that one day animals will be free.