Granting Personhood to an Elephant is Terrifying
By Jen Hill
The New York State Court of Appeals is currently hearing an animal rights case that while initiated in a zoo setting could have far reaching implications in the animal husbandry and production world. Radical animal rights group Nonhuman Rights Project are suing the Bronx Zoo demanding that Happy the Elephant be granted human rights status and moved to an elephant sanctuary where, they claim, she would be happier. Happy, an Asian elephant, was brought to the US as a calf in the early 1970’s. She performed in a variety of acts during the 80’s, when such things were allowed. In 2002 the elephants at the Bronx Zoo were separated into individual pens after they began attacking each other, leading to the euthanasia of one. Happy has been solitary since. Can’t you just hear Sarah McLachlan singing in the background?
At the center of the extremist animal group’s claim is the premise that Happy is an autonomous, self-aware person. They came to this conclusion by placing a mirror in front of the elephant and declaring that when she looked into the glass Happy was able to recognize herself. According to the study, which was conducted by a graduate Psychology student at Emory University, Happy sniffed and investigated the mirror and then repeatedly placed and removed her trunk from her mouth, which they claim means she saw the reflected elephant as herself. The study theorizes that if she hadn’t recognized the elephant in mirror as herself she would’ve tried to interact with it in a playful manner. This determination of self-awareness led Nonhuman Rights to base their legal argument on habeas corpus, claiming that because Happy is a person she is therefore being detained unlawfully. The idea that such an argument could even be considered should worry all producers and consumers of meat everywhere.
The slippery slope argument is not hard to see here. Other animal activist groups have already said that they are watching this case closely and should Nonhuman Rights succeed they will immediately begin filing numerous other suits demanding the release and relocation of animals in captivity. Monkeys are key on their list, as they claim it will be easy to prove cognitive awareness in primates. Nobody in their right mind would assume that this push for animal rights will stop at the zoo gate. If the court rules that zoo animals are cognitively complex animals who should be granted human rights the next step will be to end animal agriculture.
The militant activist movement is not unique to the northeast. The last two years have seen radical bill proposals that would gut animal agriculture in both Oregon and Colorado. These bills would’ve classified animal slaughter as aggravated abuse and redefined artificial insemination and castration as sexual assault, while disallowing slaughter before the animal has lived out a minimal percentage of it’s “natural lifespan”. The Colorado bill was thrown out for language discrepancies and the Oregon version has yet to make it out of the signature stage. However, I believe that these were test cases, allowing animal activist groups to essentially take the temperature of the public for such far reaching legislation while moving the Overton Window of what agriculture is willing to discuss and potentially compromise on.
It’s hard to say we couldn’t have seen this coming. In a world of gray where it is accepted that men who identify as women are allowed to compete in women’s sports despite their biological parts and pieces, it’s not much of a stretch to an elephant is a person and entitled to habeas corpus.