Labour Entitlements for Labouring Farm Animals

Jonathan F. Harris noted that labour law is a field that encompasses a wide range of the laws of work. Indeed, the laws of work – and the broad category of “labour rights” – rest on several legal foundations. These include those established in human rights instruments, those arising from contracts of employment, those set in collective agreements, and those embedded in labour-protective legislation, among others. While these foundations may overlap and meet each other, they also remain distinct. In this blog, I focus on the category of labour-protective legislation, arguing that it is best understood in terms of entitlements. I further suggest that this conception can serve to extend labour protections not only to a wider range of human labourers but also to labouring farm animals.

The provision of labour entitlements to labouring farm animals offers a “third way” within animal rights discourse – positioned between advocates of the welfare paradigm and those calling for the recognition of fundamental rights, rooted in the concept of animal personhood. Labour entitlements offer a promising, pragmatic path for establishing critical protections for animals in the industry – recognising both their contribution to the economy and the highly exploitative conditions in which they are situated – and can help reshape the meat industry itself.

I begin by outlining what I mean by labour entitlements, then explain how this approach creates an opening to extend labour rights to groups currently excluded from the scope of labour law, including other labouring species. I conclude by situating this framework within the broader animal rights discourse and examining how it is located within the welfare-based and rights-based approaches to the legal treatment of animals in the meat industry.

Labour Entitlements

The language of labour-protective legislation in specific national contexts is that of entitlements. For instance, the British National Minimum Wage Act begins by articulating the “entitlement” to a minimum wage. A similar formulation appears in the German Act Regulating a General Minimum Wage, where Article 1 states: “Each worker is entitled to payment by their employer of remuneration of no less than the amount of the minimum wage.” This terminology appears in other national laws as well, including legislation regulating working hours, holidays, sick leave, pensions, and anti-discrimination protections. It is also found in laws that extend labour entitlements to individuals not legally classified as “employees”, including those situated under alternative worker categories. One example is Israel’s Rights of Persons with Disabilities Working Under Rehabilitation Act 2007, which explicitly states that individuals working in rehabilitation do not hold employment contracts, yet are still entitled to labour protections.

The use of entitlement language does not preclude recognition that one party has a duty to provide that entitlement (like pay the minimum wage), nor that a corresponding group of labourers has a parallel right to receive it. Rather, the entitlement framing reflects a more nuanced legal and institutional logic. First, in both sociology and legal theory, entitlements can denote recognised claims that are embedded in social roles. This is reflected in T.H. Marshall’s theory of citizenship, which distinguishes between rights as part of the legal-political framework of citizenship and entitlements as institutional claims derived from one’s status. These statuses may include being a citizen, a worker, or a parent. In the context of labour law, it is the status of being a labourer that is decisive; in nearly all legal systems, all labourers – regardless of citizenship – are entitled to labour protections.

Second, entitlements often come with institutional mechanisms for delivery and enforcement, and they are typically embedded in broader employment or social protection regimes. Esping-Andersen’s typology of welfare regimes illustrates that entitlements depend on institutional design rather than simply on legal formalism. Feminist legal theory similarly observes that although rights may be universal in theory, not everyone is entitled to them in practice due to institutional and structural patterns of distribution.

Finally, unlike rights, an entitlement may be passive or conditional on institutional arrangements. For instance, a person may be entitled to a statutory payment without holding a fundamental right to it. The concept of entitlement is a shared foundation of labour law and welfare regimes, and can be extended to any group that the law recognises as having a shared status.

Understanding rights set in labour-protective legislation as entitlements aligns with the purposive approach to labour law, which advocates interpreting labour legislation in light of its underlying objectives. Courts applying this approach have extended protections to groups contractually or formally excluded from labour laws – such as trafficked workers, persons with disabilities working in rehabilitation, and prison labourers – on the grounds that they are part of the broader labouring class under capitalism, thus deserving such protection. Platform workers, who are frequently categorised as self-employed and thus excluded from protection, have also been brought within the scope of labour entitlements in some legal systems. Courts have justified such extensions by reference to the imbalance of power between capital and labour, as well as the labourers’ subordination and economic dependency – arguments that are often reinforced by principles of human rights, distributive justice, and socio-economic sustainability.

Setting Labour Entitlements for Labouring Animals

Extending labour entitlements to labouring farm animals, who arguably comprise the largest group of enslaved labourers in the modern world, may initially appear to be a radical departure from the legal developments just described. The fact that animals are not human beings, lack legal personhood, and are not holders of universal human rights is a significant obstacle. Moreover, the reality that many animals labour toward their own slaughter raises serious emotional and ethical resistance to viewing them as members, or some form, of the labouring class. Their classification as farmers’ property and commodities further complicates any move to extend legal entitlements.

Nonetheless, meaningful parallels exist. A growing body of scholars in the field of animal rights has begun to pave the way for this extension. Blattner, Coulter, and Kymlicka, for instance, have argued that conceptualising animals as labourers opens up a new frontier for interspecies justice. Kymlicka has further proposed that animals should hold membership rights as workers, with their entitlements deriving from their social role in accordance with Marshall’s theory of status-based claims.

From a labour law perspective, there are several justifications for blurring the boundaries between human labourers and other labouring species. First, both groups are subordinated to capital and to industrial structures, although the subordination of animals is far more extreme. The meat industry is arguably one of the most exploitative expressions of capitalism for any labouring species. Second, a labour perspective enables to point out the labour of farm animals and their contribution to human life and the economy, deeming its recognition. These animals work for human subsistence and well-being.

Third, the protections provided by labour entitlements are equally relevant to both groups. Standards relating to health and safety, rest periods, maternity rights, retirement benefits, and pensions (where applicable), as well as enforcement mechanisms to ensure compliance, can and should apply to labouring animals. Reports of dangerous working conditions, emotional distress from separation from offspring, and systemic harm underscore the need for such protections. Fourth, labour entitlements are designed to rebalance the economic relationship between those who extract capital and those who produce it. By imposing costs on employers, these entitlements incentivise better planning around workforce size and working conditions. In the meat industry, this could prompt a fundamental reassessment of its scale and operations.

Fifth, recognising animals as part of the labouring community may also foster cross-species solidarities, as seen in the emergence of animal union movements. Finally, at the core of the entitlement-based view of labour rights is the recognition of asymmetrical power relations between capital and labour. These relations are at their most extreme in the case of animal labour. Animals in this context are subordinated not only to human will but – more significantly – to the logic of capital accumulation. In situations where animals are subordinated to humans outside capitalist structures (such as domesticated animals in private homes), there is generally far less suffering and often more acts of love and care (even if, as Kymlicka reminds us, these relationships remain framed by human utility). In the latter case, animals are treated as living beings deserving of care. In capitalist meat production, however, they are treated as pure commodities. This distinction is ethically indefensible.

Taken together, these considerations – along with principles of interspecies justice, distributive justice, and the universal right of all sentient beings to avoid suffering and maintain their health – support the case for extending labour entitlements to labouring farm animals. This does not require classifying them as “employees” or placing them within existing human worker categories. Rather, labour entitlements can be enacted through specific legislation tailored to the working conditions of farmed animals.

Labour Entitlements: Between the Welfare and Fundamental Rights Paradigms

Animal rights discourse involves a persistent tension between the welfare paradigm and the fundamental rights approach. The welfare paradigm seeks to ensure that breeding, raising, and slaughter are carried out with minimal suffering. It views animals primarily through the lens of human use and utility. This remains the dominant approach in law today, as reflected in EU regulations and national legislation across member states. Legal scholars opposing this paradigm have called for the extension of fundamental rights to animals and for granting them legal personhood. While theoretically coherent, this approach remains practically inapplicable, especially for farmed animals.

As an alternative to both, I argue that labour entitlements offer a more promising and pragmatic path forward. This framework places animals’ legal treatment within a structure that recognises both their economic contribution and their subordination to capital. It seeks not to eliminate this subordination altogether, but to mitigate its harmful effects, particularly where it takes the form of systemic slavery and exploitation.

Crucially, the entitlement-based approach offers broader and more actionable protections than those provided under welfare regimes. It does not rely on granting animals personhood, as its foundation lies not in metaphysical notions of rights-bearing subjects but in animals’ labour within capitalist production. It grounds protection in lived roles rather than contested ontological status.

Of course, even if adopted, labour entitlements would not dismantle what Kymlicka calls “animal use laws”, under which animals’ protections persist only so long as they align with their designated function for humans. These entitlements would not liberate animals from capitalist structures. But this is not unique to animals. Human labourers, too, are subject to capitalism and to the structural constraints of their sectors and employers. Most human labourers are placed in such a position, which therefore grants them with labour entitlements. Similar entitlements can and should be imagined for labouring animals.

Given these advantages, and even though the labour entitlements framework may fall short of the ideal for many, I believe it represents a meaningful step forward – one that is crucial to consider in light of our current capitalist system and the devastating harms wrought by the meat industry.¹⁾