Agfdhyk

Part of a series on
Discrimination
General forms Age Caste Class Color Disability Genotype Hair texture Height Language Looks Mental condition Race / Ethnicity / Nationality Rank Religion Sex Sexual orientation Size Species
Specific forms
Social Acephobia AIDS stigma Adultism Anti-albinism Anti-autism Anti-homelessness Anti-intellectualism Anti-intersex Anti-left handedness Anti-Masonry Antisemitism (Judeophobia) Aporophobia Audism Biphobia Clannism Cronyism Drug use Elitism Ephebiphobia Fatism Gerontophobia Heteronormativity Heterosexism Homophobia Leprosy stigma Lesbophobia Misandry Misogyny Nepotism Pedophobia Pregnancy Reverse Sectarianism Sexism Shadeism Supremacism Black White Transphobia Non-binary Transmisogyny Vegaphobia Xenophobia
Religious Ahmadiyya Atheism Bahá'í Faith Buddhism Catholicism Christianity Modern Hinduism Persecution Falun Gong Islam Persecution Judaism Persecution Jehovah's Witnesses LDS or Mormon Neopaganism Eastern Orthodox Oriental Orthodox Rastafarianism Protestantism Shia Sufism Zoroastrianism
Ethnic/National Albanian African American Arab Armenian Australian Austrian British Canadian Catalan Chilean Croat Chinese Dutch English Estonian European Filipino Finnish French German Greek Haitian Hazara Hindus Hispanic Hungarian Igbo Indian Iranian or Persian Irish Israeli Italian Japanese Jewish Khmer Korean Kurds Malay Mexican Middle Eastern Mongolian Pakistani Pashtun Polish Portuguese Quebec Romani Romanian Russian Scottish Serb Slav Somali Soviet Thai Turks Ukrainian Vietnamese Western
Manifestations Animal cruelty Animal industrial complex Animal testing Blood libel Blood sport Carnism Compulsory sterilization Counter-jihad Cultural genocide Democide Disability hate crime Educational Economic Eliminationism Employment Enemy of the people Ethnic cleansing Ethnic hatred Ethnic joke Ethnocide Forced conversion Freak show Gay bashing Gendercide Genital mutilation Genocide examples Glass ceiling Group libel Hate crime Hate group Hate speech Homeless dumping Housing Indian rolling LGBT hate crime Lavender scare Lynching Meat eating Mortgage Murder music Occupational segregation Persecution Pogrom Purge Race war Red Scare Religious persecution Scapegoating Segregation academy Sex-selective abortion Slavery Slut-shaming Religious terrorism Religious violence Religious war Trans bashing Victimisation Violence against women White flight White power music Wife selling Witch-hunt
Policies Segregation age racial religious sexual Age of candidacy Blood purity Blood quantum Crime of apartheid Disabilities Jewish Catholic Ethnocracy Ethnopluralism Gender pay gap Gender roles Gerontocracy Gerrymandering Ghetto benches Internment Jewish quota Jim Crow laws Law for Protection of the Nation McCarthyism MSM blood donor controversy Nonpersons Numerus clausus (as religious or racial quota) Nuremberg Laws One-drop rule Racial quota Racial steering Redlining Same-sex marriage (laws and issues prohibiting) State atheism State religion Sodomy law Ugly law Voter suppression
Countermeasures Affirmative action Animal rights Anti-discrimination law Cultural assimilation Cultural pluralism Desegregation Diversity training Empowerment Feminism Fighting Discrimination Human rights Intersex rights LGBT rights Masculism Multiculturalism Nonviolence Racial integration Self-determination Social integration Toleration Vegetarianism Veganism
Related topics Allophilia Anthropocentrism Anti-cultural sentiment Assimilation Bias Christian privilege Data discrimination Dehumanization Diversity Ethnic penalty Eugenics Intersectionality Madonna–whore complex Male privilege Masculism Multiculturalism Neurodiversity Oikophobia Oppression Police brutality Political correctness Polyculturalism Power distance Prejudice Racial bias in criminal news Racism by country Religious intolerance Second-generation gender bias Snobbery Social exclusion Social stigma Stereotype threat White privilege
Discrimination portal
v t e

Liniers cattle market, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2009

The commodity status of animals refers to the legal status as property of most non-human animals, particularly farmed animals, working animals and animals in sport, and their use as objects of trade.^{[1][2][3][n 1]} In the United States, Free-roaming animals (ferae naturae) are (broadly) held in trust by the state; only if captured can be claimed as personal property.^[6]

Animals regarded as commodities may be bought, sold, given away, bequeathed, killed, and used as commodity producers: producers of meat, eggs, milk, fur, wool, skin and offspring, among other things.^[7][8] The exchange value of the animal does not depend on quality of life.^[9]

The commodity status of livestock is evident in auction yards, where they are tagged with a barcode and traded according to certain qualities, including age, weight, sex and breeding history.^{[10][11][n 2]}

In commodity markets, animals and animal products are classified as soft commodities, along with goods such as coffee and sugar, because they are grown, as opposed to hard commodities, such as gold and copper, which are mined.^{[12][n 3]}

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

History and law

Animals, when owned, are classified as personal property (movable property not attached to real property/real estate).^{[n 4]} The word cattle derives from the French word cheptel or Old French word chatel, or personal property.^[15]

Historian Joyce Salisbury writes that the relationship between humans and animals was always expressed in terms of control, and the idea that animals become property by being domesticated. She notes that Saint Ambrose (340–397) held the view that God controlled wild animals while humanity controlled the rest. Isidore of Seville (560–636) distinguished between "cattle", a term for animals that had been domesticated, and "beasts" or wild animals, as did Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274).^[16]

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

In such as are of a nature tame and domestic (as horses, kine [cows], sheep, poultry, and the like), a man may have as absolute a property as in any inanimate beings ... because these continue perpetually in his occupation, and will not stray from his house or person, unless by accident or fraudulent entitlement, in either of which cases the owner does not lose his property ..."^[17]

That wild animals belong in common to everyone, or to the state, and can become personal property only if captured, is known as the "animals ferae naturae" doctrine.^[6] Blackstone wrote of wild animals that they are either "not the objects of property at all, or else fall under our other division, namely, that of qualified, limited, or special property, which is such as is not in its nature permanent, but may sometimes subsist, and at other times not subsist."^[18]

Sentience

Writing about wild animals being imported into France in the 18th century, historian Louise Robbins writes that a "cultural biography of things" would show animals "sliding in and out of commodity status and taking on different values for different people" as they make their way from their homes to the streets of Paris.^[19] Sociologist Rhoda Wilkie has used the term "sentient commodity" to describe this view of how the conception of animals as commodities can shift depending on whether a human being forms a relationship with them.^[20] Geographers Rosemary-Claire Collard and Jessica Dempsey use the term "lively commodities."^[2]

Political scientist Sami Torssonen argues that animal welfare has itself been commodified since the 1990s because of public concern for animals. "Scientifically-certified welfare products," which Torssonen calls "sellfare," are "producible and salable at various points in the commodity chain," subject to competition like any other commodity.^[21]

See also

Notes

References

Further reading

External links

• 
  "United Nations Commodity Trade Statistics Database", UN ComTrade (live animals; meat and edible offal; fish; dairy products; products of animal origin)

Books, papers

• Pedersen, Helena; Staescu, Vasile. "Conclusion: Future Directions for Critical Animal Studies," in Nik Taylor, Richard Twine (eds.), The Rise of Critical Animal Studies: From the Margins to the Centre, London: Routledge, 2014, pp. 262–276.


• 
  Francione, Gary. Animals, Property and the Law, Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1995.


• 
  Richards, John F. The World Hunt: An Environmental History of the Commodification of Animals, University of California Press, 2014.


• 
  Steiner, Gary. Animals and the Limits of Postmodernism, New York: Columbia University Press, 2013.