What if Animals Had the Same Rights as Humans?

08.11.2023 - 18:29 / modernfarmer.com

For most people, it can be hard to imagine a society framed around animal rights. What would it look like? How would it work? And why, given humankind’s historic reliance on animals for food and resources, might we even consider it?

In his new book, What are Animal Rights For?, author Steve Cooke acknowledges this point straightaway. Norms surrounding how we treat animals are deeply entrenched, so a world where no one eats animals—and in fact, those animals have legal personhood—is so far afield from anything we are familiar with that it is hard to wrap our minds around.

But there is a long history of different groups and belief systems that value kindness toward animals or believe in the rights of animals, going back millenia. When it comes to what is codified into law today, the US has laws affording certain protections to animals, but they only go so far. Meanwhile, a movement to give animals the rights of personhood—a legal acknowledgment of the possession of rights—is unfolding globally. Around the world, this designation has been granted to animals, waterways, corporations and more.

Cooke, an associate professor of political theory at the University of Leicester, believes that a world based on animal rights is the type of world we should work toward. As far from our current reality as it is, he hopes that his book will give people some of the tools they need to start imagining that world.

This book, which will be featured in a launch event November 15, is part of Bristol University Press’ What is it For? series, which asks tough questions about what a better future could look like. 

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Modern Farmer: Your book advocates for a society built around nonhuman animal