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Consider the case of Happy, an Asian elephant at the Bronx Zoo. The Nonhuman Rights Project (NhRP) filed a habeas corpus petition—traditionally a legal tool for an imprisoned person to challenge unlawful detention—on her behalf, arguing that her cognitive complexity and autonomy warranted release to a sanctuary. The New York Court of Appeals, the state’s highest court, ultimately ruled against Happy. She remains at the zoo. But the dissenting opinion was extraordinary: Judge Jenny Rivera argued that the majority’s logic was “circular,” refusing to consider Happy’s personhood simply because the law had never done so before.

The movement, articulated most forcefully by philosopher Tom Regan (who argued that animals are “subjects-of-a-life”) and legal scholar Steven Wise, calls welfare a halfway house to hypocrisy. “A larger cage is still a cage,” goes their mantra. Rights advocates argue that sentient beings—especially great apes, elephants, dolphins, and dogs—possess inherent value. To use them as property, no matter how kindly, is a form of tyranny. For the rights advocate, the sow’s crate is an atrocity; but so, too, is the free-range farm where the pig is eventually stunned, bled, and dismembered. Bestiality -Bestialita- - Peter Skerl 1976 -Vhs...

On the surface, welfare has won significant victories. The European Union has banned battery cages for hens and gestation crates for sows. Dozens of countries have recognized animals as sentient beings in their civil codes. Major corporations, from McDonald’s to Unilever, have pledged to source only cage-free eggs or crate-free pork. The very phrase “humane slaughter” is now a marketing label. Consider the case of Happy, an Asian elephant