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"Freedom is a right of rational individuals; animals aren't subjects of liberal rights."
Protect individuals against harm caused by others and ensure each can live their own life. For Mill, the only legitimate reason to limit someone's freedom is to prevent harm to others.
Why excluding animals contradicts the principle
- Liberalism already protects individuals who are not autonomous, such as babies and people with profound cognitive disabilities. Rationality is not, in practice, the condition for protection.
- The harm principle works against the exclusion: if animals can be harmed, and the evidence says they can (A5), using and killing them is exactly the kind of action that affects others.
- Treating someone who feels as property is what liberalism rejected among humans. Owning a sentient being is not a neutral starting point (A17).
The strongest counter-reply
The most serious version, defended by Cochrane himself, grants that many animals may not have an intrinsic interest in liberty, in the sense of choosing their own life the way an adult human does.
The answer
Even granting this, Cochrane concludes that they have strong interests in not suffering and in staying alive, and that a consistent liberalism must protect them. The debate about liberty changes the kind of right, not the fact that there are rights. And intensive farming violates even the most basic freedom of movement.