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animal rights:
https://researchguides.oakton.edu/c.php?g=152367&p=1001174

https://www.aspca.org/

https://www.peta.org/

animal welfare:
https://awionline.org/

https://theanimalrescuesite.greatergood.com/clicktogive/ars/home

https://www.aphis.usda.gov/aphis/ourfocus/animalwelfare

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LibGuides: Animal Rights and Welfare: Recommended Websites

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Animal rights movement opposes any use of animals that causes suffering or death. Animal welfare movement tends to accept the need to raise animals for food and to use them in some research as long as they receive proper care and do not suffer.

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There is more to treating animals in an appropriate way than keeping them healthy. Are we right to use animals as objects of entertainment?

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http://www.naiaonline.org/articles/article/what-is-animal-welfare-and-why-is-it-important#sthash.cVShOSPw.dpbs

https://theconversation.com/the-meat-paradox-how-your-brain-wrestles-with-the-ethics-of-eating-animals-175683

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Animal welfare means how an animal is coping with the conditions in which it lives. An animal is in a good state of welfare if (as indicated by scientific evidence) it is healthy, comfortable, well-nourished, safe, able to express innate behavior, and if it is not suffering from unpleasant states such as pain, fear, and distress. Good animal welfare requires disease prevention and veterinary treatment, appropriate shelter, management, nutrition, humane handling, and humane slaughter. Animal welfare refers to the state of the animal; the treatment that an animal receives is covered by other terms such as animal care, animal husbandry, and humane treatment. Protecting an animal's welfare means providing for its physical and mental needs.

Ensuring animal welfare is a human responsibility that includes consideration for all aspects of animal well-being, including proper housing, management, nutrition, disease prevention and treatment, responsible care, humane handling, and, when necessary, humane euthanasia.

There are numerous perspectives on animal welfare that are influenced by a person's values and experiences. There are also various means of measuring animal welfare, including (but not limited to) health, productivity, behavior, and physiological responses.

The American Veterinary Medical Association has defined its commitment to animal welfare through the adoption of animal welfare principles that serve as guidance when the Association develops policies and takes action to ensure the welfare of animals:

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Animal welfare means how an animal is coping with the conditions in which it lives. An animal is in a good state of welfare if (as indicated by scientific evidence) it is healthy, comfortable, well-nourished, safe, able to express innate behavior, and if it is not suffering from unpleasant states such as pain, fear, and distress.

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https://theconversation.com/cow-documentary-shows-the-need-for-fundamental-legal-rights-for-animals-175576

https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/animal-welfare-records-return-to-usda-website-67139

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The animal rights movement strives to make the public aware of the fact that animals are sensitive, emotional, and intelligent beings who deserve dignity and respect. But first, it's important to understand what the term "animal rights" really means.

What are animal rights?

Animal rights are moral principles grounded in the belief that non-human animals deserve the ability to live as they wish, without being subjected to the desires of human beings. At the core of animal rights is autonomy, which is another way of saying choice. In many countries, human rights are enshrined to protect certain freedoms, such as the right to expression, freedom from torture, and access to democracy. Of course, these choices are constrained depending on social locations like race, class, and gender, but generally speaking, human rights safeguard the basic tenets of what makes human lives worth living. Animal rights aim to do something similar, only for non-human animals.

Animal rights come into direct opposition with animal exploitation, which includes animals used by humans for a variety of reasons, be it for food, as experimental objects, or even pets. Animal rights can also be violated when it comes to human destruction of animal habitats. This negatively impacts the ability of animals to lead full lives of their choosing.

Do animals have rights?

Very few countries have enshrined animal rights into law. However, the US and the UK do have some basic protections and guidelines for how animals can be treated.

The UK Sentience Bill

In 2021, the United Kingdom's House of Commons introduced the Animal Sentience Bill. If passed, this bill would enshrine into law that animals are, in fact, sentient beings, and they deserve humane treatment at the hands of humans. While this law would not afford animals full autonomy, it would be a watershed in the movement to protect animals-officially recognizing their capacity to feel and to suffer, and distinguishing them from inanimate objects.

The US Animal Welfare Act

In 1966, the United States passed the Animal Welfare Act. While it is the biggest federal legislation addressing the treatment of animals to date, its scope is fairly narrow-the law excludes many species, including farmed animals, from its protections. The law does establish some basic guidelines for the sale, transport, and handling of dogs, cats, rabbits, nonhuman primates, guinea pigs, and hamsters. It also protects the psychological welfare of animals who are used in lab experiments, and prohibits the violent practices of dogfighting and cockfighting. Again, this law does not recognize the rights and autonomy of animals-or even their ability to feel pain and suffer-but it does afford non-human animals some basic welfare protections.

What are some examples of animal rights?

While few laws currently exist in the UK or US that recognize or protect animals' rights to enjoy lives free from human interference, the following is a list of examples of animal rights that could one day be enacted:

Animals may not be used for food.

Animals may not be hunted.

The habitats of animals must be protected to allow them to live according to their choosing.

Animals may not be bred.

What's the difference between animal welfare and animal rights?

Animal rights philosophy is based on the idea that animals should not be used by people for any reason, and that animal rights should protect their interests the way human rights protect people. Animal welfare, on the other hand, is a set of practices designed to govern the treatment of animals who are being dominated by humans, whether for food, research, or entertainment.

Do animals need rights? Pros and cons

The idea of giving animals rights tends to be contentious, given how embedded animal products are within societies such as the United States. Some people, including animal activists, believe in an all-or-nothing approach, where animal rights must be legally enshrined and animals totally liberated from all exploitation. On the other end of the spectrum are people whose livelihoods depend upon animal-based industries. Below are some arguments both in favor of and opposing animal rights.

Arguments in favor of animal rights

Should the rights of animals be recognized, animal exploitative industries would disappear, as would the host of environmental problems they cause, including water pollution, air pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, and deforestation.

Halting the widespread use of animals would also eliminate the systematic cruelty and denial of choice that animal industries perpetuate. The physical and psychological pain endured by animals in places like factory farms has reached a point many consider to be unacceptable, to say the least. Animals are mutilated by humans in several different ways, including castrations, dehorning, and cutting off various body parts, usually without the use of anesthetic.

Many species never see the outdoors except on their way to the slaughterhouse.

As their name suggests, concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) pack vast numbers of animals in cramped conditions, often forcing animals to perpetually stand in their own waste. Many species-including chickens, cows, and pigs-never see the outdoors except on their way to the slaughterhouse. Recognizing animal rights would necessitate stopping this mistreatment for good.

Arguments against animal rights

Most arguments against animal rights can be traced back to money, because animal exploitation is big business. Factory farming for animal products is a multi-billion-dollar industry. JBS, the world's largest meatpacker, posted $9 billion in revenue for the third quarter of 2020 alone.

A lesser-known, yet also massive, industry is that which supplies animals for laboratories. The US market for lab rats (who are far less popular than mice for experiments) was valued at over $412 million in 2016. Big industrial producers of animals and animal products have enough political clout to influence legislation-including passing laws making it illegal to document farm conditions-and to benefit from government subsidies.

Many people depend upon animal exploitation for work. On factory farms, relatively small numbers of people can manage vast herds or flocks of animals, thanks to mechanization and other industrial farming techniques. Unfortunately, jobs in industrial meatpacking facilities are also known to be some of the most dangerous in the US. Smaller farmers coming from multi-generational farming families more directly depend upon using animals to make a living and tend to follow welfare standards more judiciously. However, smaller farms have been decreasing in number, due to the proliferation of factory farms against which they often cannot compete.

Although people may lose money or jobs in the transition to animal alternatives, new jobs can be created in the alternative protein sector and other plant-based industries.

When did the animal rights movement begin in the US?

The modern day animal rights movement in the United States includes thousands of individuals and a multitude of groups who advocate for animals in a variety of ways-from lobbying legislators to support animal rights laws, to rescuing animals from situations of abuse and neglect. While individuals throughout history have believed in and fought for animal rights, we can trace back the modern, US-based animal rights movement to the founding of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) in 1866. The group's founder, Henry Burgh, believed that animals are "entitled to kind and respectful treatment at the hands of humans and must be protected under the law." The organization worked with the New York City government to pass and enforce anti-cruelty laws that prevented the abuse of carthorses and provided care for injured horses. Since then, the ASPCA has expanded its advocacy across different non-human animal species-including farmed animals-and many more animal protection groups have sprung up, both locally and nationwide. Currently, there are over 40,000 non-profit organizations identified as animal groups in the US.

Why are animal rights important?

Animal rights are important because they represent a set of beliefs that counteract inaccurate yet long-held assumptions that animals are nothing more than mindless machines-beliefs popularized by western philosopher Rene Descartes in the 17th century. The perception of animals as being unthinking, unfeeling beings justified using them for human desires, resulting in today's world where farmed mammals outnumber those in the wild, and the majority of these farmed animals are forced to endure harsh conditions on factory farms.

Farmed mammals outnumber those in the wild.

But the science is increasingly clear: The animals we eat ( pigs, chickens, cows), the animals we use in laboratories ( mice and rats), the animals who provide us with clothing, and those whose backs we ride upon have all been found to possess more cognitive complexity, emotions, and overall sophistication than has long been believed. This sophistication renders animals more susceptible not only to physical pain but also to the psychological impacts caused by the habitual denial of choice. Awareness of their own subjugation forms sufficient reasoning to rethink the ways animals are treated in western societies.

The consequences of animal rights

Currently, laws in the US and UK are geared toward shielding animals from cruelty, not giving them the same freedom of choice that humans have. (Even these laws are sorely lacking, as they fail to protect livestock and laboratory animals.) However, the animal rights movement can still have real-world consequences. Calls for animal liberation from places like factory farms can raise public awareness of the poor living conditions and welfare violations these facilities perpetuate, sometimes resulting in stronger protections, higher welfare standards, and decreasing consumer demand. Each of these outcomes carries economic consequences for producers, as typically it is more expensive for factory farms to provide better living conditions such as more space, or using fewer growth hormones which can result in lower production yields.

Of course, should the animal rights movement achieve its goals, society would look much different than it does today. If people consume more alternative sources of protein, such as plant-based or lab-grown meat, the global environment would be far less impacted. Clothing would be made without leather or other animal products; alternative sources, such as pineapple leather created from waste products from the pineapple industry, could replace toxic tanneries. The fur industry is being increasingly shunned, with fashion labels rejecting fur in favor of faux materials. Ocean ecosystems would be able to recover, replenishing fish populations and seafloor habitats. Today these are razed by bottom trawling fishing, resulting in the clear-cutting of corals that can be thousands of years old.

How you can advocate for animals

A world in which animals are free from human exploitation still seems far off, but we can make choices that create a kinder world for animals, every day. We can start by leaving animals off our plate in favor of plant-based alternatives-a choice that recognizes animals as the sentient beings that they are, and not products for consumption.

When we come together, we can also fight for better protections for animals in the US and around the world. There's a robust movement to hold corporations accountability and end the cruelty of factory farming-an industry which causes immense amount of suffering for billions of animals. If you want to help end this suffering and spread compassion for animals, join our community of online animal activists and take action.

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Animal Rights: Definition, Issues, and Examples

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Animal rights advocates believe that non-human animals should be free to live as they wish, without being used, exploited, or otherwise interfered with by humans.

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Animal welfare is a concept which is embedded in the idea that humans can, and should, use animals. Though at times helpful in protecting animals from intentional cruelty at the hands of abusers, animal welfare gives license to exploiters to use animals for the benefit of people, be it on farms, in zoos and aquariums, or laboratories. This article will explore what animal welfare is, how it is enforced, and outline some animal welfare issues animals regularly face.

What is animal welfare?

Although the intention may be good, the sad reality is that animal welfare and animal abuse are intimately linked -and grow even more closely bonded as the years go on, particularly with the proliferation of industrial animal agriculture.

Animal welfare issues

Animal welfare issues tend to be common in the United States and across the world. Below are some of the most frequent issues arising across a range of industries and practices.

Farm animals

This is because, particularly within industrial agriculture, neoliberal ideals of profits above all else have spawned the rise of Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs), also known as factory farms. These places violate animal welfare by design. Breeding pigs are locked into cages no bigger than their own bodies for much of their lives, preventing them from even turning around. Egg-laying hens in battery cages have an area roughly the size of a sheet of paper in which to spend their lives. At feedlots, cattle are crammed tightly into pens and stand in their own excrement. Mother cows can cry in agony as their infants are taken from them within minutes of being born, year after year.

Although farmed animals in CAFOs remain alive and grow at rapid rates, this is thanks in large part to the heavy use of antibiotics and growth hormones. This can give the illusion that factory-farmed animals are healthy, and that their welfare is being accommodated for. Yet CAFOs often fail to meet many of the standards of welfare set out by the AVMA.

Animal testing

Animals who live and die in are deemed to experience "necessary" and "justifiable" suffering, which exempts people from ensuring many aspects of their welfare. This is also the case with laboratories farmed animals.

No amount of welfare will prevent an animal from experiencing fear while being vivisected (dissected while still alive), or having products dropped into their eyes until they blister. Yet in the name of profit and science, these activities are considered necessary cruelties.

Abandoned pets

Behavioral enrichment

Behavioral enrichment attempts to alleviate boredom and stimulate mental activity in captive animals. Common environments that require enrichment are public display facilities such as zoos and aquariums. One example of enrichment is a puzzle feeder, where food of some kind is placed inside a container that an animal has to spend time figuring out how to open.

However, these enrichments can fall far short of providing the type of stimulation an animal would experience in the wild. Dolphins, who in the wild can travel for hundreds of miles each day, are given objects such as hula hoops in their tanks. For animals whose brains are larger and more complex than human beings, these enrichments are likely woefully inadequate. Even with behavioral enrichments, dolphins and other animals can begin to exhibit stereotypic behaviors, such as endlessly chewing bars or grates of the enclosure. Stereotypic behaviors are associated with boredom and chronic stress.

Bloodsport

Bloodsports are forms of entertainment that involve the bloodletting of animals in some form. Bloodsports include bullfighting, where people plunge knives and harpoon-like weapons into the back and necks of bulls or cows; dogfighting, where dogs are pit against one another, and cockfighting, involving roosters who are compelled to fight often to the death. In all blood sports, generally, animals can be raised in questionable conditions and exposed to violent, painful deaths at the hands of people or other animals.

Cruelty to animals

Intentionally causing unnecessary harm to animals is considered animal cruelty. Whether killing for entertainment, as in the blood sports mentioned above or hitting or kicking animals on farms, these acts of violence are deemed to cause "unnecessary" or "unjustifiable" suffering. Since these types of violence clearly violate welfare standards, they are considered cruelty.

Hunting wild animals, whether with dogs, bow and arrows, or shotguns, is rife with welfare issues. It is rare that animals are killed outright at the first gun or arrow shot; many can run away, grievously injured, only to die alone and after a prolonged agonizing injury. Hunting with dogs prolongs a terrifying chase for animals such as foxes, deer, and birds. Sport hunting is unnecessary since there are billions of farmed animals killed each year for food and clothing - meaning there are more than enough animal products available for most anyone living within reasonable distance to a supermarket.

Overpopulation in companion animals

Overview of discretionary invasive procedures on animals

Discretionary invasive procedures on animals are operations that humans decide to perform on animals for a variety of reasons, but generally which primarily benefit human beings. Castrations of farmed animals and dogs are common procedures. Cat de-clawing, ear-tagging of livestock, and cutting tails off of animals like pigs, sheep and dogs are routine, performed on millions of animals in the U.S. annually each year, and much of the time without any anesthesia.

Poaching is a form of hunting where an animal is taken illegally from the wild. The animal themselves may belong to a protected, or endangered, species, or the habitat the animal resides in can be protected. Either way, poaching greatly impacts the welfare of targeted animals since it removes them from their natural habitat, or outright takes their lives. Pangolins are among the most-trafficked animals in the world. Elephants and rhinoceros are frequently poached for their ivory. In these cases, concern for the animals' welfare is generally entirely ignored.

Puppy mills

What many people don't realize about those adorable pet-store puppies is that they often begin their lives in heartbreaking conditions. In puppy mills, breeder dogs are kept in small cages for the duration of their lives, forced to produce generation after generation of puppies who are taken from them abruptly. Dogs in these cages do not get to run outside, enjoy the companionship of other dogs or humans, and sometimes live on wire-bottom cages for much of their lives. The welfare violations on puppy mills are usually quite flagrant.

Whaling is a highly contentious issue for several reasons, among these being the long periods of time it takes for a whale to die. Modern-day whaling technology can include a harpoon tipped with what is essentially a grenade filled with shrapnel that is shot through a whales' body upon impact. Still, at times it can take many minutes, and even many hours, for a whale to die. Humane slaughter methods are endorsed in many countries around the world, yet because of the logistical challenges of working at sea, coupled with the vast size of these animals, humane slaughters cannot always be guaranteed.

What are the 5 animal welfare needs?

While different people, companies, and organizations can have differing definitions of what the 5 animal welfare needs are, below is a generally-accepted list:

1. Sufficient living environment

2. Sufficient food and water

3. Meeting the social needs of animals (housed with, or apart, from others)

4. Protection from disease, injury or chronic pain

5. Ability to engage in natural behaviors

What is the difference between animal rights and animal welfare?

Because animal welfare is the measurement of how an animal is faring under human control, it inherently reinforces the notion that animals belong under human control. Animal rights, on the other hand, recognizes the inherent rights that animals possess to govern their own lives, fully exercise their own autonomy, and be free of bodily and psychological interference by human beings. Within animal rights is the abolitionist movement, which advocates for a permanent end to the use of animals by humans - essentially putting animals "beyond use" of human beings.

Why is animal welfare important?

Those who exploit animals, such as executives at multinational animal agriculture companies, often say that animal welfare is important because poor welfare results in decreased production. Animals who can't gain weight will bring in less money at slaughterhouses; hens who are ill will produce fewer eggs. However, these concerns do not align with the interests of the animals themselves, who would likely rather live a life outside of a cage, choosing how to spend their time.

Despite this, welfare does play an important role in animal protection. Without the bare minimum welfare standards that exist today, more abuse would likely take place. For example, it was welfare concerns that spurred California to pass Proposition 12, otherwise known as the Cage-Free Egg Act which banned battery cages throughout the state. Without this act, millions of more hens would be forced to endure the cruelty of battery cages. Welfare concerns can help raise the profile of animal suffering and inform important actions and legislation to reduce animal suffering.

What are the three sectors of animal welfare?

1. The physical state (all biological functions working normally, which involves appropriate feeding and disease or illness prevention).

2. The emotional state (absence of chronic pain or fear).

3. Ability to express natural behaviors.

Who started animal welfare?

People have cared about the fair treatment of animals for thousands of years, so it cannot be said that any one individual started the movement. However, there were some important figures along the way in Western culture's history.

The first animal welfare organization to come into existence, now known as the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, was founded in 1824. Among the founding members was Richard Martin, also known as "humanity dick", who passed a law to prevent cruelty towards cattle. Martin is noted for his significant contributions to the modern-day animal welfare movement.

Is the Animal Welfare Act effective?

Why are animal lives important?

Animal lives matter because their lives matter to them. No animal wants to die or become injured. Contrary to what people in Western culture have long been conditioned to believe, animals possess sufficient intelligence and emotional capacities that enable them to reflect upon their own lives. This means that, most likely, animals know they don't want to die.

They are aware of the painful conditions that arise when their welfare is abused and when they are cruelly dominated by people. Love, grief, despair, joy - animals experience these things in much the same ways as people do. Even those species who frequently fall below the radar of human compassion, such as fish, are proven as having emotional states. Crayfish can experience . In mammals, including , , and , it is increasingly difficult to deny the fact that animals are sentient beings. Even chickens have been as possessing cognitive complexity, emotional sophistication, and unique, varied personalities.

Animal Welfare Legislation in the United States

State legislation has been growing over the years. One example of progressive legislation came in 2016 with the passing of the California Orca Protection Act that bans the keeping of orcas captive, in recognition that captivity irrevocably harms their welfare.

Animal welfare organizations

There are hundreds of animal welfare organizations around the world. Below is a short list of some of the bigger players.

Animal Welfare Institute

Compassion in World Farming

National Institute of Animal Welfare

Pakistan Animal Welfare Society

Sarawak Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals

Wildlife Friends Foundation Thailand (WFFT)

Wildlife Institute of India

World Animal Protection

Ziwa Rhino Sanctuary

How can I help animal welfare?

Other ways to become involved in the animal welfare movement include watching out for local legislation you can support or volunteering with one of the many animal welfare organizations.

Conclusion

Animal welfare can at times be synonymous with animal exploitation. However, welfare concerns, enforcement, and legislation do make a difference in some animals' lives. While there is still a far way to go before animals are not abused in CAFOs, laboratories, or other places, awareness appears to be growing about the plight some animals face. Animal welfare can help lead the way towards a more peaceful and fair world for animals under human care.

Sentient Media

Sentient Media editorial team.

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Animal Welfare: Why Incremental Improvements for Animals Are Necessary

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Animal welfare is a concept which is embedded in the idea that humans can, and should, use animals. Though at times helpful in protecting animals from intentional cruelty at the hands of abusers, animal welfare gives license to exploiters to use animals for the benefit of people, be it on farms, in zoos and aquariums, or laboratories.

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https://awionline.org/

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The Animal Welfare Institute (AWI) has sought to reduce the human-inflicted suffering of all animals since its founding in 1951.

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https://www.worldanimalprotection.org.nz/news/animal-welfare-and-why-important

https://www.avma.org/resources/animal-health-welfare/animal-welfare-what-it#:~:text=Animal%20welfare%20refers%20to%20the,its%20physical%20and%20mental%20needs.

http://www.naiaonline.org/articles/article/what-is-animal-welfare-and-why-is-it-important

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What is animal welfare and why is it important?

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World Animal Protection is an animal welfare organisation. Let's break down what that means.

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Animal welfare News, Research and Analysis - The Conversation

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Browse Animal welfare news, research and analysis from The Conversation

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=538mfkxcvq0

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Why is Animal Welfare Certification Important?

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With more than two million members and supporters, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is the world's largest animal-rights organization, and its founder and president, Ingrid Newkirk, is one of the most well-known and most effective activists in America. She has spearheaded worldwide efforts to improve the treatment of animals in manufacturing, entertainment, and elsewhere.

Every day, in laboratories, food factories, and other industries, animals by the millions are subjected to inhumane cruelty. In this accessible guide, Newkirk teaches readers hundreds of simple ways to stop thoughtless animal cruelty and make positive choices.

For each topic, Newkirk provides hard facts, personal insight, inspiration, ideas, and resources, including:

* How to eat healthfully and compassionately

* How to adopt animals rather than support puppy mills

* How to make their vote count and change public opinion

* How to switch to cruelty-free cosmetics and clothing

* How to choose amusements that protect rather than exploit animals.

With public concern for the well-being of animals greater than ever-particularly among young people-this timely, practical book offers exciting and easy ways to make a difference.

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The PETA Practical Guide to Animal Rights

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With more than two million members and supporters, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) is the world's largest animal-rights organization, and its founder and president, Ingrid Newkirk, is one of the most well-known and most effective activists in America. She has spearheaded worldwide efforts to improve the treatment of animals in manufacturing, entertainment, and elsewhere.

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From the first hominids who hunted woolly mammoths to today's factory farms and bio-engineering labs, The Longest Struggle: Animal Advocacy from Pythagoras to PETA tells the story of animal exploitation and the battle for animal justice. After describing the roots of animal rights in the ancient world, author Norm Phelps follows the development of animal protection through the Enlightenment, the anti-vivisection battles of the Victorian Era, and the birth of the modern animal rights movement with the publication of Peter Singer's Animal Liberation. In a brisk, readable narrative, The Longest Struggle traces the campaigns of animal rights pioneers like Henry Spira, Alex Hershaft, and Ingrid Newkirk, as well as leaders who have come more recently on the scene like Heidi Prescott, Karen Davis, and Bruce Friedrich. Always grounding his story in its historical setting, Phelps describes the counterattack that the animal abuse industries launched in the 1990s and analyzes the controversies that have roiled the movement almost from the beginning, including national groups vs. grass roots, abolitionists vs. new welfarists, and activists who favor arson and intimidation vs. those who support only peaceful, legal forms of protest. The Longest Struggle concludes with an overview of current campaigns and tactics, and an assessment of the state of the movement as we enter a new century, including the threat represented by an overzealous war on terror. Thoroughly researched and annotated, The Longest Struggle reflects its author's two decades as an animal rights activist and his access to movement leaders who have shared with him their personal stories of campaigns that made animal rights history. At once an accessible history of animal protection thought and a revealing narrative of campaigns for animal rights, The Longest Struggle is must read material for everyone who wants to understand the most radical social justice movement of our time.

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From the first hominids who hunted woolly mammoths to today's factory farms and bio-engineering labs, The Longest Struggle: Animal Advocacy from Pythagoras to PETA tells the story of animal exploitation and the battle for animal justice.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_TG7YPW_gM

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https://www.aphis.usda.gov/aphis/ourfocus/animalwelfare

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The .gov means it's official.
Federal government websites always use a .gov or .mil domain. Before sharing sensitive information online, make sure you're on a .gov or .mil site by inspecting your browser's address (or "location") bar.

This site is also protected by an SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificate that's been signed by the U.S. government. The https:// means all transmitted data is encrypted - in other words, any information or browsing history that you provide is transmitted securely.

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The .gov means it's official. Federal government websites always use a .gov or .mil domain. Before sharing sensitive information online, make sure you're on a .gov or .mil site by inspecting your browser's address (or "location") bar. This site is also protected by an SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificate that's been signed by the U.S.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5W3JAID52g

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https://www.peta.org/about-peta/faq/what-do-you-mean-by-animal-rights/
https://thehumaneleague.org/article/animal-rights
https://thehumaneleague.org/article/animal-rights

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Animal rights means that animals deserve certain kinds of consideration-consideration of what is in their best interests, regardless of whether they are "cute," useful to humans, or an endangered species and regardless of whether any human cares about them at all. It means recognizing that animals are not ours to use-for food, clothing, entertainment, or experimentation.

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What do you mean by "animal rights"? | PETA

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Animal rights means that animals deserve certain kinds of consideration-consideration of what is in their best interests, regardless of whether they are "cute," useful to humans, or an endangered species and regardless of whether any human cares about them at all. It means recognizing that animals are not ours to use-for food, clothing, entertainment, or experimentation.

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https://www.avma.org/resources/animal-health-welfare/animal-welfare-what-it

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Animal welfare means how an animal is coping with the conditions in which it lives. An animal is in a good state of welfare if (as indicated by scientific evidence) it is healthy, comfortable, well-nourished, safe, able to express innate behavior, and if it is not suffering from unpleasant states such as pain, fear, and distress. Good animal welfare requires disease prevention and veterinary treatment, appropriate shelter, management, nutrition, humane handling, and humane slaughter. Animal welfare refers to the state of the animal; the treatment that an animal receives is covered by other terms such as animal care, animal husbandry, and humane treatment. Protecting an animal's welfare means providing for its physical and mental needs.

Ensuring animal welfare is a human responsibility that includes consideration for all aspects of animal well-being, including proper housing, management, nutrition, disease prevention and treatment, responsible care, humane handling, and, when necessary, humane euthanasia.

There are numerous perspectives on animal welfare that are influenced by a person's values and experiences. There are also various means of measuring animal welfare, including (but not limited to) health, productivity, behavior, and physiological responses.

The American Veterinary Medical Association has defined its commitment to animal welfare through the adoption of animal welfare principles that serve as guidance when the Association develops policies and takes action to ensure the welfare of animals:

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Animal welfare means how an animal is coping with the conditions in which it lives. An animal is in a good state of welfare if (as indicated by scientific evidence) it is healthy, comfortable, well-nourished, safe, able to express innate behavior, and if it is not suffering from unpleasant states such as pain, fear, and distress.

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Animal rights:
-https://www.peta.org/about-peta/why-peta/why-animal-rights/
- https://animaljusticeproject.com/
- https://aavs.org/
Welfare:
-https://www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/animals/using/pets.shtml
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https://www.google.com/search?q=why+should+people+have+pets&rlz=1CAEZTK_enUS953&ei=vuEwYoONMcq5tQbs47XIBA&oq=why+should+people+have+&gs_lcp=Cgdnd3Mtd2l6EAMYADIFCAAQgAQyBQgAEIYDMgUIABCGAzIFCAAQhgMyBQgAEIYDOgcIABBHELADOgUIABCRAjoLCAAQgAQQsQMQgwE6DgguEIAEELEDEMcBEKMCOgsILhCABBCxAxCDAToICC4QsQMQgwE6CwguEIAEEMcBEKMCOgQIABBDOhEILhCABBCxAxDHARDRAxDUAjoICAAQgAQQsQM6CAguEIAEELEDOggIABCxAxCDAToICAAQyQMQkQJKBAhBGABKBAhGGABQgwhY4Chg01JoBHABeAGAAcoCiAGdEpIBCDE3LjUuMC4xmAEAoAEBsAEAyAEIwAEB&sclient=gws-wiz&safe=active&ssui=on#kpvalbx=_EeMwYrfgN-6optQPmfucmAo3
https://shibashake.com/dog/dogs-in-the-wild/

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https://thehumaneleague.org/article/animal-rights

https://faunalytics.org/the-animal-rights-movement-history-and-facts-about-animal-rights/

https://www.britannica.com/topic/animal-rights

https://www.avma.org/resources/animal-health-welfare/animal-welfare-what-it

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC340178/

https://www.oie.int/en/what-we-do/animal-health-and-welfare/animal-welfare/

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dkQ0QiEsS80

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https://faunalytics.org/the-animal-rights-movement-history-and-facts-about-animal-rights/

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Most people would agree that a dog has more sentience than a kitchen table. However, under the eyes of most contemporary legal systems, the two are essentially indistinguishable. While the words "animal rights" can be polarizing, at its core the movement is about gaining legal and public respect for the other species we share this planet with.

Not to be confused with welfare, which entrenches the concept that animals ought to be used for human purposes, the issue at the core of animal rights boils down to the difference between being a who and a what; a someone and a something. Are animals resources for human benefit? Or are they sensitive beings who have emotions and preferences and awareness of themselves? The animal rights movement strives to create a more equitable world in which animals are treated with more kindness, understanding and respect.

Do Animals Have Rights?

The question of whether animals have rights is complex. On the one hand, in most countries around the world, there are no laws protecting the rights of animals, or laws that acknowledge the existence of these rights. Therefore it cannot be said that animals have legally recognized or protected rights.

However another way of looking at the existence of animal rights is to suggest that animals have inherent value, which is independent of their value to humans.

In today's world, there is widespread agreement that human beings possess inherent value, even though this value may not always be applied equally, which is the result of racism, patriarchy, and other forms of oppression. Generally speaking, however, inherent value is what renders a being worthy of moral consideration. The inherent value of human beings is calculated according to cognitive and emotional qualities such as our possession of self-awareness, the ability to make conscious decisions and act upon personal preferences, and the fact that we are actively invested in the quality of our own lives. Together, these qualities render us as "subjects of a life" - meaning we possess an active inner world along with an awareness of the external. This awareness renders us particularly vulnerable to harm; since it matters to us when we are harmed. Thanks to the qualities of our consciousness, human beings possess naturally-occurring rights that are legally enshrined in many countries, with the underlying understanding that it is wrong to harm someone who is aware and therefore suffers because of the harm caused.

In Western thought, it was long believed that animals weren't sufficiently aware to notice if they were harmed, that harm simply wouldn't matter to them. Understandings have changed in recent decades. A wealth of established scientific discoveries and anecdotal evidence indicating that certain species are also subjects of a life - meaning they possess the qualities of consciousness human rights protect - show that other species have inherent value and therefore also possess naturally-occurring rights. In this factoring, it is not up to humans to bestow rights onto animals, but simply to recognize and respect these existing rights, through moral and legal frameworks.

When legal animal rights are discussed, it is not suggested that any other-than-human animal be given all the same rights as human beings, such as the right to an education or to vote in elections. Instead, the rights referred to tend to be the basic rights of freedom from confinement, freedom from bodily injury, and freedom to pursue their lives as they wish.

Why are Animal Rights Important?

Animals are increasingly understood as suffering from psychological, emotional, and physical pain. For example, orcas can suffer from depression and boredom in aquariums, leading to the use of antidepressant drugs. Animals in zoos frequently display stereotypic behaviors, which signify underlying psychological distress and are unseen in wild populations. The more that is learned about the myriad ways our behavior, lifestyles and attitudes negatively impact animals, the greater our moral obligation towards them becomes.

Besides the fact that animals can suffer, the sheer scale of animal exploitation is another reason animal rights are urgently needed. It is estimated that roughly 200 million animals are killed for human consumptionevery day, with wealthy nations such as Australia, the United States and Europe leading the way with the highest consumption of meat per capita. The U.S. is also responsible for the rise of industrial animal agriculture, in which animals are forced to endure lifetimes of heartbreaking abuse.

What are the Goals of the Animal Rights Movement?

The ultimate goal of the animal rights movement is to place animals "beyond use" of human beings, putting an end to exploitative industries and practices including laboratory testing, whaling, and puppy mills.

There are many approaches to achieving these goals. Grassroots advocacy, involving public demonstrations, as well as documentaries and other educational tools have long been deployed as methods of raising public awareness of the suffering endured by animals at human hands, as well as familiarizing the public with the concept of animal rights.

Innovative legal approaches have been explored as well. The Nonhuman Rights Project advocates for nonhuman personhood, which is a way to circumvent the legal definition of animals as being property, which denies them legal standing. A nonhuman person, however, may be represented in court via a guardian ad litem in order to fight for justice on their behalf.

Another tactic for achieving the goals of the animal rights movement is to advocate for veganism, which is a lifestyle that eliminates consumption of any product derived from animals - including milk, eggs, and insect-derived products like honey. Vegans also avoid clothing derived from animals such as leather, fur and silk. Through widespread adoption of vegan values, the demand for animal products can be reduced, enabling a clearer path to acceptance of animal rights both in popular opinion as well as the reduction in financial incentives to exploit animals.

When Did the Animal Rights Movement Begin?

In some form or another, the concept of animal rights has been around for thousands of years. In Eastern religions such as Buddhism, Hinduism, and Jainism, the concept of ahiṃsā, meaning non-violence, is a central principle. Jainism stresses non-cruelty towards animals, prohibiting adherents from working at a zoo, cutting trees, or using any fabrics, including silk, which are produced through harming other living beings.

Within Europe and North America, there were many precursors of the modern-day animal rights movement. The first animal cruelty legislation was passed in 1635, which prohibited tearing wool off of living sheep. In 1822, Richard Martin, known as "Humanity Dick", passed Martin's Act aimed at preventing cruelty towards cattle. Martin went on to be one of the founding members of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, the world's first animal welfare charity, in 1824.

The first explicit reference to the concept of animal rights came from Henry Stephens Salt, who's book Animals' Rights: Considered in Relation to Social Progress rallied against the idea of prejudice against animals. Salt's urging of a recognition for "the common bond of humanity that unites all living beings into one universal brotherhood" echoed ancient religious traditions such as Jainism.

Who Started the Animal Rights Movement?

The animal rights movement was not begun by any one person, though there were certain seminal figures. Although women comprise the majority of animal rights activists and are less likely to support animal exploitation than men, the majority of the credit for starting the animal rights movement is, unfortunately, given to white men. Richard Ryder is among the well-known figures in modern times, having coined the term speciesism in 1970 to describe human chauvinism towards other species. In 1975, Peter Singer's Animal Liberation was highly influential and lauded, yet he credited some of his views to the comparatively little-known author Ruth Harrison, whose 1964 book Animal Machines documented conditions on factory farms.

What Laws Protect Animal Rights?

Because the legal rights of animals are generally not recognized, federal and state laws in the United States pertain to welfare instead of rights. These laws regard animals as property and deal with "unnecessary" harm to animals, thereby allowing for a great deal of suffering which is deemed "necessary" or justifiable.

Existing laws routinely fail to provide animals with adequate protection. In many cases, the underlying motivation for animal cruelty legislation is exclusively human interest. U.S. federal laws regarding animal protection include the Animal Welfare Act (AWA), enacted in 1966 out of concern for cats and dogs used in laboratory research, though its contemporary mandate includes a wider realm of animal exploitation issues including animals in entertainment and captive breeding. However the AWA excludes hunting, fishing and trapping, slaughter of animals, retail pet stores, and others from its jurisdiction. The AWA is far from being an anti-cruelty law; for example, it regulates - meaning, does not render illegal - the practise of vivisection, which is surgery conducted on a living animal during research. In laboratories, the AWA does not protect animals from harm during the course of research, nor does it prohibit their use. Incredibly, the definition of "animals" in the AWA excludes mice, birds, rats and agricultural animals - who are the most heavily exploited animals across the country, within laboratories and industrial agriculture operations.

Other federal laws pertaining to animals include the Endangered Species Act, which maintains a list of species around the world who are threatened or endangered and outlines procedures as well as penalties for their inappropriate use. The Preventing Animal Cruelty and Torture Act bans intentional cruelty onto animals, though it excludes animals in agriculture including slaughter, as well as hunting, fishing, trapping, medical research, pest control and other abuses.

Facts About Animal Rights

1. In the U.S., every circus that uses animals has been cited by the Animal Welfare Act for violations.

2. The California Orca Protection Act prohibits keeping orcas captive throughout the state. In Canada, a nationwide ban on cetacean captivity was also passed.

3. Joaquin Phoenix used his speech at the Oscars to talk about animal rights.

Animal Rights Barriers to Success

Financial incentives form a significant barrier to animal rights, since it is through their consideration as property that animals' exploitation is enabled. Animal business is big business. In the United States alone, the pet industry topped $221.1 billion in 2015; the live animal trade accounted for $3.5 billion in 2016; in 2020, animal agriculture is forecasted to bring in $185.8 billion in cash receipts. Companies may go to great lengths to protect profits, and have lobbied successfully for legislation such as ag-gag laws which conceal the unsavory conditions within their facilities in order to continue operating unencumbered by negative public perception or stricter anti-cruelty regulation.

Dependence on animal products is another barrier to the success of the movement. Animal products can be found throughout modern Western societies and in places people may least expect. For example, parts of pigs are found in everyday objects such as concrete, paint, soap, collagen injections, and even bullets.

Cultural beliefs about animals form yet another barrier to the success of the movement. For example, patriarchal conceptions of manhood assert that in order to be a strong, virile man, one must eat large quantities of meat, especially red meat such as steak. Sport hunting and fishing, and other similar "conquest"-type activities, lie at the heart of hegemonic manhood identities that are at odds with animal rights.

Threats

Globalization Affecting the Movement

Within neoliberal capitalism, animals are considered commodities. So-called advancements in technology, such as CAFOs, along with increased connectivity and market reach perpetuated by globalization can be linked with drastically increased numbers of animals exploited, coupled with tumbling standards of welfare. Government officials in the UK have openly expressed resistance to " US-style farming", which would see an influx of CAFO operations in the country. CAFOs have already spread to many other countries, such as India, China and Japan. Ultimately, globalization tends to entrench the use of animals, leaving little to no room for discourse regarding rights or even increased welfare protections.

While globalization brings increased connection between individuals and organizations within the animal rights movement itself, there are some concerns related to how these networks are fostered. Organizations based in North America and Europe that conduct international outreach efforts and resource deployment can, at times, engage in behavioral patterns that entrench ongong legacies of colonialism. Ways beyond these problems include hiring locally, placing people of color in leadership roles and taking the local context into account within campaigning strategies.

Science

Scientific approaches can reflect the logic and biases of human exceptionalism within the selection of questions to be investigated, experimental design and interpretations of findings.

One example of such a bias is that it is impossible to know with absolute certainty what an other-than-human animal is thinking or feeling, and that they therefore cannot be proven as thinking or feeling at all. This assumption is frequently used to justify the ongoing exploitation of animals. The burden of proof is foisted onto those humans who oppose this assumption and onto the animals themselves, requiring that they communicate, unequivocally and in human language, that they are in fact subjects of a life - that is, that they experience emotions, possess desires, and so on. However, some argue that the burden of proof should rest upon those skeptical of animals being subjects of a life. And in light of the abundant concrete and anecdotal evidence of animals' inner lives, proving otherwise would actually be impossible.

Co-option

Animal exploitation industries have largely co-opted the concepts ofanimal welfare and humane treatment, in order to continue exploiting animals. While these ideals may have originally been intended to protect animals from harm, industries have successfully managed to apply these words to product labels and processes in order to assuage consumers while hiding the underbelly of industrial agriculture. Now, wherever these words are present, they more indicate animal abuse than anything else.

What is Needed for the Success of Animal Rights?

For animal rights to become legally recognized in Western culture, there needs to be a broad cultural shift across many sectors. People will need to understand and accept that animals are thinking, feeling beings who are not put on this earth for humanity's use. Speciesism must fade away, along with outdated scientific and philosophical ideas that animals are nothing more than mindless automatons. Patriarchal conceptions of manhood must be dismantled. Forward-thinking legislators must set precedents that pave the way for legal rights.

Fortunately, there is movement towards a more equitable world for animals; for example, plant-based diets are becoming increasingly popular; bans on fur are being enacted; and laboratories are turning towards alternatives to animals.

Conclusion

There is still a long road ahead before the animal rights movement achieves the ultimate goal of legally enshrining rights for other-than-human animals. Fortunately, progress is being made in Western countries and around the world, though it may be incremental. As people come to understand more about animals and the suffering they endure at human hands, hopefully the change will only accelerate.

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The Animal Rights Movement: History And Facts About Animal Rights - Faunalytics

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This blog explores the history of the animal rights movement, and looks at why animal rights are an important aspect of social justice.

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The Animal Welfare Institute (AWI) has sought to reduce the human-inflicted suffering of all animals since its founding in 1951.

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Animal rights    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erg8sDIYjmw

Animal rights
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dkQ0QiEsS80

Animal rights
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgubFcmvgDE

Animal welfare
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQDxasFKQCA

Animal welfare
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cT7yCRpOQJk

Animal welfare
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBsOiwbMuxI

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https://awionline.org/

https://www.aphis.usda.gov/aphis/ourfocus/animalwelfare

http://www.naiaonline.org/articles/article/what-is-animal-welfare-and-why-is-it-important#sthash.ZquraGrd.dpbs

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The Animal Welfare Institute (AWI) has sought to reduce the human-inflicted suffering of all animals since its founding in 1951.

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According to the eleventh edition of Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (2003), a right is a "power or privilege to which one is justly entitled." In The Animal Rights Crusade: The Growth of a Moral Protest (1992), the sociologists James M. Jasper and Dorothy Nelkin define a right as "a moral trump card that cannot be disputed." The phrase " human rights" came into usage during the late 1700s to refer to generally recognized privileges (or freedoms) that every person should enjoy.

RIGHTS AND SOCIETY

The United Nations has the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1998, http://www.un.org/rights/50/decla.htm), which states, "Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person." The declaration specifies dozens of particular human rights, including the right to be free from slavery, torture, and cruel or degrading treatment. Other rights involve equal protection under the law, fair and public trials, freedom of movement, marriage and raising families, ownership of property, worship and religion, peaceful assembly, expression of opinions, access to public services, social security, working conditions, rest and leisure, education, culture, and standard of living.

The U.S. Declaration of Independence, written in 1776, states, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." Although the United States' founding fathers considered these rights to be inherent, they did note that people form governments to "secure these rights." Thus, while rights have a moral basis, they are upheld through the law.

Since the 1970s a debate has arisen about whether animals have moral rights that should be recognized and protected by human society. This is largely a philosophical question, but the answer has many practical consequences. For example, if animals have a right to life, then it is wrong to kill them. If animals have a right to liberty, then it is wrong to hold them in captivity. If animals have a right to pursue happiness and enjoy security, then it is wrong to interfere in their natural lives.

Societies and governments make decisions about who should be granted rights and how those rights should be secured. In general, an individual's legal right to life and liberty ends if that person infringes on someone else's right to life and liberty. In some states a person who kills another person can be executed by the government. At the very least, the government can restrict the killer's liberty. People debate the moral issues involved in such affairs, but the legal issues are generally spelled out clearly in U.S. law.

Sometimes it is not considered morally or legally wrong for one person to kill anotherfor example, in the case of self-defense or in defense of others. The same holds true for a person killing an animal. There is general moral and legal agreement that killing an attacking tiger or rabid dog is reasonable and right behavior. In human society the moral and legal arguments that protect a person acting in self-defense begin to melt away as the threat level descends. Killing an unarmed burglar or trespasser may or may not be perceived as justified under the law. Killing a loud, annoying neighbor crosses over the line.

This line is set much lower when it comes to killing animals. People can sometimes kill animals that burgle or trespass, make too much noise, or become a nuisance, without moral or legal condemnation. The same holds true for animals that taste good, have attractive skin or pelts, or are useful laboratory subjects. Why is it acceptable to kill an animal for these reasons, but not a human?

People answer this question in different ways depending on their belief systems and moral and social influences, including religion, philosophy, and education. The following are some of the most common reasons people give for denying animals rights:

Animals do not have souls.

God gave humans dominion over the animals.

Humans are intellectually superior to animals.

Animals do not reason, think, or feel pain like humans do.

Animals are a natural resource to be used as humans see fit.

Animals kill each other.

Animal Rights Activists and Welfarists

Some people believe it is not acceptable to use animals for any human purpose at all. They believe that animals have moral rights to life, liberty, and other privileges that should be upheld by society and the rule of law. These are hardcore believers in animal rights, the fundamentalists of the animal rights movement. When they speak out, write, march, or otherwise publicize their beliefs, they are called animal rights activists. An activist is someone who takes direct and vigorous action to further a cause (especially a controversial cause).

Other people believe that some animals have (or should have) some moral and/or legal rights under certain circumstances. They may rescue abandoned pets, lobby for legislation against animal abuse, feed pigeons in the park, or do any number of other things on behalf of animals. These people are broadly categorized as animal welfarists. Their adherence to the idea of animal rights generally depends on the circumstances. For example, a welfarist might defend the rights of pet dogs and cats but eat chicken for dinner.

This is unacceptable to animal rights fundamentalists. They argue that all animals (not just the lovable or attractive ones) have rights that apply all the time (not just when it is convenient). Such fundamentalists face opposition from a variety of sources. Some of this opposition is driven by moral and philosophical differences of opinion. Some is also driven by economics.

Many animals (alive or dead) have financial value to humans. Livestock farmers, ranchers, pharmaceutical companies, zookeepers, circus trainers, jockeys, and breeders are among the many people who have a financial interest in the animal trade. If humans were to stop using animals, these people would be out of work. Many others would be deprived of their favorite sport and leisure activities. Given such economic arguments and the moral and philosophical arguments noted previously, those opposed to the idea of animal rights feel as strongly about the topic as those who support it.

HISTORY OF THE ANIMAL RIGHTS DEBATE

Early Arguments for Animal Rights

Most historians note that the modern animal rights movement began during the 1970s. However, the roots of the movement date back much further, to a handful of philosophers and thinkers. Celsus was a second-century Greek writer who argued against the Jewish/Christian belief that humans are morally superior to animals. Celsus points out that animals might actually be more favored by God because they do not have to sow seeds or plow fields to live, whereas people do. He does not believe that humans must be superior to animals because they are able to capture and eat animals. He notes that humans have to use weapons, traps, and hunting dogs to capture animals, whereas animals are naturally equipped with the tools they need to capture humans.

Over time, other writers and thinkers questioned society's attitudes toward animals. Their arguments were usually based on philosophical or ethical ideals. The Italian artist Leonardo da Vinci refused to eat meat. At one point, he wrote in his notebook, "The time will come when men such as I will look upon the murder of animals as they now look upon the murder of men."

Legal protection was extended to some animals during the 1800s in the form of antiabuse laws. These laws were often passed based on the theory that animal abuse was bad for society in generalthey did not protect animals for the animals' sake but for humanity's sake. In 1894 the humanitarian Henry S. Salt wrote Animals' Rights, Considered in Relation to Social Progress, in which he asks, "Why should the law refuse its protection to any sensitive being? The time will come when humanity will extend its mantle over everything which breathes."

Modern Animal Rights Movement

Despite periodic calls throughout history for greater sensitivity toward animals, it was not until the 1970s that the question of their rights became a major social issue. In 1970 the British psychologist Richard Ryder coined the word "speciesism" to describe prejudice and discrimination practiced by humans against animals. Ryder's ideas received little publicity, but they were embraced by the Australian philosopher Peter Singer. In 1975 Singer published the influential book Animal Liberation: A New Ethics for Our Treatment of Animals, which describes in vivid detail the ways in which animals are subjected to pain and suffering on farms, in slaughterhouses, and in laboratory experiments. Singer publicizes the notion of speciesism and calls for an end to it. He argues that speciesism is similar to racism and sexism, in that they all deny moral and legal rights to one group in favor of another.

Henry Spira formed Animal Rights International after attending one of Singer's lectures. Spira was a social reformer who had worked in the civil rights and women's liberation movements. Barnaby J. Feder notes in Spira's obituary (New York Times, September 15, 1998) that Spira turned his attention to the animal rights movement after he "began to wonder why we cuddle some animals and put a fork in others." Spira was instrumental in bringing various animal groups together to work for common causes. Many people credit him with pressuring cosmetics companies to seek alternatives to animal testing for their products during the late 1980s.

By 1980 the animal rights movement had become prominent enough to attract the attention of critics. In Interests and Rights: The Case against Animals (1980), the philosopher Raymond G. Frey of Bowling Green State University argues that animals do not have moral rights. He insists that animal lives do not have the same moral value as human lives because animals cannot and do not undergo the same emotional and intellectual experiences as humans.

In 1979 the organization Attorneys for Animal Rights was founded by the lawyer Joyce Tischler. The group held the first national conference on animal rights law in 1980. The next year it successfully sued the U.S. Navy and prevented the killing of five thousand burros at a weapons-testing center in California. In 1984 the group adopted a new name: the Animal Legal Defense Fund (ALDF). One of ALDF's goals is to end the belief that animals are merely property. The group's anticruelty division also works with state prosecutors and law enforcement agencies to draft felony anticruelty laws and stiffen penalties for violations. The American Prosecutors Research Institute indicates in Animal Cruelty Prosecution: Opportunities for Early Response to Crime and Interpersonal Violence (July 2006, http://www.ndaa.org/pdf/animal_cruelty_06.pdf) that in 2006 forty-one states, the District of Columbia, and the Virgin Islands had felony animal abuse provisions.

The British philosopher Mary Midgley joined the debate when she published Beast and Man: The Roots of Human Nature (1978) and Animals and Why They Matter (1983). Midgley argues that Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (1859) was the catalyst for ending the moral separation that humans felt toward animals because it proved that humans were in fact animals. Midgley compares speciesism to other social problems, such as racism, sexism, and age discrimination.

It was during the 1970s and 1980s that some animal rights advocates began using high-profile tactics, such as sit-ins at buildings and protest marches on the streets, to attract public attention to their cause. These are examples of civil disobedience (refusing in a nonviolent way to obey government regulations or social standards). A radical element of the movement went even further by breaking into laboratories and fur farms to release animals and damaging buildings and equipment. Some people who used these methods referred to themselves as part of the Animal Liberation Front (ALF). ALF followers became known as the "domestic terrorists" of the animal movement.

Many in the scientific community were disturbed by this new wave of moral and social opposition to the use of animals in research. In 1981 the Foundation for Biomedical Research was founded to defend such usage and promote greater understanding of its medical and scientific benefits among the general public. The foundation began tracking and reporting on the activities of criminal animal activists who broke into laboratories to release animals and/or destroy property.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) was founded in 1980 and quickly came to prominence. One of the group's cofounders infiltrated a research laboratory and obtained photographs of the primates being held there. The incident attracted national media attention and greatly helped Spira's efforts to reduce animal use in cosmetic testing. Animal issues also became important to a larger number of Americans in the 1980s.

In 1981 the Association of Veterinarians for Animal Rights (2007, http://www.avar.org/about.asp) was founded by two veterinarians who were concerned that animals "were routinely being used and abused by society, sometimes for the most trivial of reasons." The association's goal is to educate the public and people within the veterinary profession about these practices and to change social policy toward animals. Furthermore, its philosophy echoes that of many other animal rights groups in that it believes "all nonhuman animals have value and interests independent of the values and interests of other animals, including human beings."

In 1983 Tom Regan, a professor of philosophy at North Carolina State University, published The Case for Animal Rights. Regan argues that animal pain and suffering are consequences of a bigger problem: the idea that animals are a resource for people. Regan presents detailed philosophical arguments outlining why he believes animals have moral rights as "subjects-of-a-life." Regan states that acknowledging the rights of animals requires people to cease using them for any purpose, not just those associated with pain and suffering.

Frey responded to the growing pro-vegetarian movement in 1983 with his book Rights, Killing, and Suffering: Moral Vegetarianism and Applied Ethics. The idea of moral vegetarianism (adhering to a vegetarian diet for moral reasons, rather than for physical reasons) dates back centuries. It was advocated by the Indian leader Mahatma Gandhi in the early 1930s as a moral duty of humans toward animals and gained new life during the animal movement of the 1970s. Frey, however, argues that a widespread adherence to a vegetarian lifestyle would result in the collapse of animal agriculture and other animal-based industries and massive social disruption.

In 1984 the philosopher Ernest Partridge attacked Singer's speciesism philosophy and Regan's animal rights view in the article "Three Wrong Leads in a Search for an Environmental Ethic: Tom Regan on Animal Rights, Inherent Values, and Deep Ecology" ( Ethics and Animals ). Partridge maintains that both Singer and Regan miss a crucial point about the nature of rights: that rights have no biological basis, only a moral basis. In other words, it does not matter how humans and animals are alike or dissimilar in biology. What really matters is that no animals exhibit the capacities of "personhood," such as rationality and self-consciousness. Partridge contends that lack of personhood effectively disqualifies animals from being rights holders.

Carl Cohen, a professor of philosophy at the University of Michigan, also attacked Singer's and Regan's views in his article "The Case for the Use of Animals in Biomedical Research" (New England Journal of Medicine, October 2, 1986). Cohen acknowledges that speciesism exists, but denies that it is similar to racism or sexism. He argues that racism and sexism are unacceptable because there is no moral difference between races or between sexes. However, he writes that there is a moral difference between humans and animals that denies rights to animals and allows animals to be used by humans.

Animals as Property

In 1988 researchers at Harvard University obtained a patent for the OncoMousea mouse that had been genetically engineered to be susceptible to cancer. This was the first patent ever issued for an animal. Animal rights groups, led by the ALDF, challenged the issuance of the patent in court, but the case was dismissed because the court found that the ALDF had no legal standing in the matter. Since that time, several other animals have been patented, including pigs, sheep, goats, and cattle. Regan states in the Case for Animal Rights that patents can be issued for "nonnaturally occurring nonhuman multicellular living organisms, including animals" as long as they are given "a new form, quality, properties or combination not present in the original article existing in nature."

In 1995 Gary L. Francione published Animals, Property, and the Law, in which he argues that there is an enormous contradiction between public sentiment and legal treatment when it comes to animals. Francione notes that most of the public agrees that animals should be treated humanely and not subjected to unnecessary suffering, but he claims that the legal system does not uphold these moral principles because it regards animals as property.

Francione compares the situation to that which existed in slave states before the Civil War (186165). Although there were laws that supposedly protected slaves from the abuse of slave owners, they were seldom enforced. Slaves, like animals, were considered property, and the law protects the right of people to own and use property as they see fit. Property rights date back to English common law. According to Francione, the law has always relied on the assumption that property owners will treat their property appropriately to protect its economic value. Under this reasoning, the courts of the nineteenth century refused to recognize that a badly beaten slave was "abused," as defined by the law.

Francione believes that this same logic gives legal support to common practices in which animals are mistreatedfor example, in the farming industry or in laboratory testing. He explains that humans are granted "respect-based" rights by the law and that animals are only considered in terms of their utility and economic value. Francione points out that animals are treated by the legal system as "means to ends and never as ends in themselves." In other words, existing animal laws protect animals because animals have value to people, not because animals have inherent value as living beings.

PHILOSOPHICAL ARGUMENTS

At the base of the animal rights debate is philosophy. Philosophical discussions involve abstract ideas and theories about questions of ethics and morality. These can be difficult subjects to comprehend and apply to real-life situations, but philosophy is important because it explains people's motivations and why people feel the way they do about a particular issue. Philosophical arguments are commonly used to either justify or condemn certain actions toward animals.

Not all people involved in the "animal movement" believe in animal rights. Many are motivated to work for animal causes for other reasons. Historically, the most common motivator has been concern for animal welfare, or welfarism.

Welfarism

Welfarism is defined as the beliefs associated with the social system known as the welfare state. The term welfare state was first used during the 1940s to refer to a society in which the government has the primary responsibility for the individual and social welfare of its citizens. When applied to animals, welfarism assumes that humans have the primary responsibility for the welfare of animals. Welfarists acknowledge that society uses animals for various purposes. Their goal is to reduce the amount of pain and suffering that animals endure. Welfarism centers on compassionate and humane care and treatment.

The best-known welfarist organization in the United States is the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA), which was founded in 1866. Its mission is "to provide effective means for the prevention of cruelty to animals throughout the United States" (2007, http://www.aspca.org/site/PageServer?pagename=pp_pc_mission). The ASPCA defines itself not as an animal rights organization but as an animal welfare or animal protection organization. Its main programs include sheltering and providing medical and behavioral care to stray animals; placing stray and unwanted animals in adoptive homes; raising funds to care for animals affected by natural and human disasters, such as the flooding that followed Hurricane Katrina in 2005; tracking and investigating cruelty cases through its Humane Law Enforcement Division, which works in conjunction with the New York Police Department; and offering affordable spay/neuter and vaccination services to low-income pet owners, as well as public services such as education on humane issues. Even though the ASPCA does advocate for stronger anticruelty laws, it does not actively promote issues such as vegetarianism or banning the use of animals in medical research.

The Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) was founded in 1954. It is an animal organization that fits into the welfarist category, but its agenda is more sweeping than that of the ASPCA, encompassing protection of wild and marine animals as well as companion animals. Although it defines itself as an animal protection organization, critics charge that the HSUS quietly supports an animal rights agenda because it is openly against the use of animals in research, inhumane farming practices, and the fur industry.

Animal welfarists believe that humans have a responsibility to ensure the well-being of animals and reduce their suffering. This responsibility is upheld by society in the form of anticruelty laws. However, these laws do not prevent farm animals from being slaughtered for food or laboratory animals from being experimented on, usually without anesthetic to numb their pain. In these situations, welfarists work for humane slaughtering methods and prevention of "unnecessary" or excessive suffering during experimentation.

Utilitarianism

Utilitarianism is a philosophy popularized by English social reformer Jeremy Bentham in his book Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1789). The basic premise of utilitarianism is that right actions are those that maximize utility. Bentham defines utility as either the presence of positive consequences"benefit, advantage, pleasure, good, or happiness"or the absence of negative consequences"mischief, pain, evil, or unhappiness." In other words, right actions are those that maximize the best consequences or minimize the worst consequences. An important aspect of utilitarianism is that the interests of all parties involved in a particular situation must be considered. Likewise, the consequences to all parties involved must be taken into account. This is a difficult enough task when only humans are involved; it becomes much more complicated when animals are taken into consideration.

Singer uses a form of utilitarian logic in Animal Liberation. He argues that the suffering endured by animals on farms and during slaughtering far outweighs the pleasure and nutrition that the meat gives to humans. Likewise, he contends that laboratory animals suffer so much that this outweighs their usefulness to humans as test subjects. Singer concludes that the moral consequences of these practices (and other practices in which animals suffer) are so severe that they must be abolished. As a result, advocates of Singer's theory are often called liberationists or abolitionists. Even though his book is frequently called the bible of the animal rights movement, Singer does not specifically call for animal rights in the book. He has stated, however, that he believes that the term is politically useful for drawing attention to animal suffering.

Many philosophers reject the notion that utilitarianism can be applied to human-animal situations because, historically, animals have not been considered to have interests at all, or their interests have not been considered equal to human interests. In 1992 the philosopher Peter Carruthers wrote The Animals Issue: Moral Theory in Practice, in which he argues that utilitarianism is not an acceptable moral theory for examining animal issues because it equates animal lives and suffering with human lives and suffering, an idea Carruthers calls "intuitively abhorrent" and a violation of "common-sense beliefs." In Interests and Rights, Frey also discounts the utilitarian theory as a model of morality for dealing with animals, saying that animals do not have interests because they do not experience wants, desires, expectations, or remembrances.

Contractarianism

Contractarianism is another philosophy that is used to examine morality. According to this theory, society establishes right actions (or moral norms) through an arrangement in which individuals (called agents) voluntarily agree to abide by certain rules of morality. Following these rules is beneficial to both individuals and society in general. Although there are many different models of contractarianism, the most common are based on the writings of Immanuel Kant and the contemporary philosopher John Rawls. Kant believes that the moral code arising out of contractarianism reflects what rational agents would choose under ideal circumstances. Rawls expands this view by saying that the right actions are those that rational agents would choose if they were unaware of their own personal ambitions or prejudices.

When contractarianism is used to discuss human society, the rational agents are assumed to have direct duties. In other words, the rational agents know they are bound by a moral contract and are responsible for acting accordingly. The rational agents also have direct rights under the contract and have duties to those that lack the rationality to enter into the contract, such as babies, small children, and the mentally challenged.

Some philosophers use the contractarian model to explain the moral relationship between humans and animals. In Animals Issue, Carruthers argues that contractarianism is the best moral model for describing the human-animal relationship, but he concludes that animals do not have moral standing under the contract because they do not qualify as rational agents. He notes that humans have only indirect duties toward animals, one of which is to treat them humanely out of respect for the feelings of the rational agents (other humans) that care about them. Carruthers does, however, extend direct rights to human beings who are not rational agents (such as babies), noting that this is necessary to maintain social stability.

In the contractarian model, humans are moral agents, meaning that they make decisions and take actions based on morality. Many philosophers believe that animals are amoralneither moral nor immoral. For example, a lion that kills a baby zebra to feed her cubs is acting out of instinct. The action is neither morally good nor morally bad. Some opponents of animal rights argue that because animals do not make decisions based on morality, they are not part of the moral contract and do not have moral rights. The philosopher Tibor R. Machan is an outspoken critic of the notion of animal rights. In Putting Humans First: Why We Are Nature's Favorite (2004), he argues that animals cannot have rights because they are not capable of making moral decisions.

In practice, the moral code of contractarianism seems to provide some protections for selected species of animals. For example, in American society there is widespread moral repugnance to the idea of eating dogs and cats or killing animals with sentimental or patriotic significance (such as bald eagles). These views might be argued to be rooted in their moral and philosophical impact on humans and could therefore be extensions of the contractarian model.

Rights View

The rights view is defined and defended by Regan in the Case for Animal Rights and in many subsequent books. He maintains that all beings who are "subjects-of-a-life with an experiential welfare" have inherent value that qualifies them to be treated with respect and gives them a right to that treatment. In other words, living beings with conscious awareness and self-identity deserve moral rights. Regan does not define exactly which animals fall into this category, but higher species, such as vertebrates (animals with a spinal cord), fit his criteria.

This philosophy is fundamentally different from welfarism and utilitarianism. The rights view holds that animals have moral rights to certain privileges and freedoms, just as humans do. It does not mean that animals have exactly the same rights as humans. Most animal rights advocates believe that animals at least have the right to life and the right to freedom from bodily interference.

The philosopher best known for criticizing the animal rights view is Carl Cohen. In 2001 Cohen and Regan coauthored The Animal Rights Debate, which presents a point-counterpoint examination of the issue. Cohen sums up his argument against animal rights: "Animals cannot be the bearers of rights, because the concept of rights is essentially human ; it is rooted in the human moral world and has force and applicability only within that world." He admits that animals are sentient (conscious of sensory impressions), feel pain, and can experience suffering, but insists that sharing these traits with humans does not make animals morally equal to humans.

Cohen writes that some people confuse rights with obligations and assume that because humans have obligations to animals, it means that animals have rights. This assumption is called symmetrical reciprocity, and he believes it is based on false logic. The difference, Cohen explains, is that an obligation is what "we ought to do," whereas a right is "what others can justly demand that we do."

Cohen states that humans are moral agents who are restrained by moral principles from treating animals inhumanely. This means that humans should not inflict "gratuitous" pain and suffering on animals. However, it does not mean that humans must stop every activity that could or does harm animals in some way. Medical research on animals is an example. He believes that scientists have moral obligations to humanity to use animals in their experiments if that is the best way for them to achieve their goals. According to Cohen, "our duties to human subjects are of a different moral order from our duties to the rodents we use."

Cohen's overall conclusionthat rights do not apply to animals because rights are essentially humanis a point commonly made by those who oppose the animal rights movement. Many of them find it ludicrous to even debate the issue. Adrian R. Morrison is a scientist engaged in animal research and a vocal critic of the animal rights movement. In "Understanding the Effect of Animal-Rights Activism on Biomedical Research" (January 27, 2002, http://www.rau.edu.uy/universidad/medicina/actas8/morrison.pdf), he notes that few philosophers besides Cohen and almost no scientists bother to dispute in detail the philosophy behind the animal rights view. Morrison suggests that most scientists and philosophers "think the subject to be too far from reality to be worth the trouble."

PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS

Assuming that animals have rights would have massive consequences to society. If animals have moral rights to life and freedom from bodily interference, then they cannot be purposely killed, harmed, or kept in captivity by humans. Billions of domesticated animals would be spared from slaughter and would have to be released from cages and pens.

PETA (2007, http://www.peta.org/) states that it "believes that animals have rights and deserve to have their best interests taken into consideration, regardless of whether they are useful to humans. Like you, they are capable of suffering and have an interest in leading their own lives; therefore, they are not ours to usefor food, clothing, entertainment, experimentation, or any other reason." Implementation of this belief would mean the elimination of all commercial animal operationslivestock and fur farms, animal research facilities, circuses, zoos, animal parks and aquariums, game ranches, hunting lodges, animal breeding facilities, pet stores, dog and horse racetracks, and so on. All the people working in these businesses would be put out of work. The economic consequences would be enormous. Animal rights advocates point out that dismantling the slave trade after the Civil War was costly as well, but it was done anyway because it was the right thing to do.

Besides an economic cost, there would be a scientific cost. Medical and scientific research has relied on animal test subjects for centuries. Some research and development would have to stop until alternatives could be found. Students in schools and universities would have to learn anatomy and biology without dissecting animals. Doctors, surgeons, and veterinarians in training would have to practice on something besides animals. Cloning, twinning, and other genetic manipulation of animals would have to stop. Eliminating the use of animals would disrupt the entire scientific community. Animal rights activists believe the move is overdue because it would force scientists to think about their research in new ways. Many school districts have already implemented alternatives to animal dissection, including computer models that accurately mimic animal bodies.

There are also implications to private individuals in terms of dining, fashion, sport, recreation, and leisure. None of these activities could include personal use of animals. Hunting, fishing, eating meat, wearing leather, and keeping pets would come to a stop. The activity that would affect the most Americans would be the elimination of meat and animal products (milk, eggs, cheese, and so on) from their diet. According to a Time /CNN poll (July 15, 2002, http://www.time.com/time/covers/1101020715/poll/), 4% of the respondents consider themselves vegetarians. Of those, 5% were vegans (people who eat no animal products). In other words, less than 1% of those surveyed avoided all animal products in their diet. Most animal rights advocates and liberationists are vegetarians or vegans. They believe that a vegetarian diet would not only help animals but also would be healthier for humans and better for the environment.

Opponents of animal rights are always eager to point out that keeping pets would be forbidden if animals had rights. Ingrid Newkirk, a PETA cofounder, has been quoted as saying that pets are a symbol of the human manipulation of animals, and the notion of pets should be phased out. This idea is controversial even within the animal rights community because it is so radical. Many people involved in both the animal rights and animal welfare movements refer to pets as "companion animals" and to owners as "animal guardians" or "animal caretakers." These terms are intended to downplay the ownership element between humans and animals.

Legally, most animals are considered property. In fact, the word cattle was derived from a Latin word meaning "property." This raises difficulties for pet owners who wish to ensure that their pets will be properly cared for in the event the owners die or become incapacitated. In "What Is a Pet Trust" (October 2006, http://www.pet-trust.net/what-is-a-pet-trust.html), the attorney Rachel Hirschfeld notes that pets cannot inherit money through wills, because pets are legally considered to be property. Pet owners can designate a caretaker in their wills and leave money to that person intended for pet care, but the arrangement is not legally enforceable by the courts. Hirschfeld recommends another option, called a trust, to pet owners. A trust is a legally enforceable arrangement that allows a person to leave money to another person (called a trustee) for management of certain assets, such as property. Pet trusts have become extremely popular as a means for pet owners to ensure that their pets will be cared for after the owners' death. According to the ASPCA, thirty states and the District of Columbia had laws in place specifically allowing for pet trusts as of 2006. (See Table 2.1.)

Cynthia Hubert, in "What If Your Pet Outlives You? A New Endeavor at the UC Davis Veterinary School Ensures That It Will Be Loved for a Lifetime" ( Sacramento Bee, November 18, 2006), reports that between 12% and 27% of American pet owners have made provisions for their pets in their estate planning.

In 2000 Tennessee became the first state in the country to allow owners to sue for loss of love and affection if a pet is wrongfully killed. The ALDF helped the legislature draft the bill that was passed. It allows damages of up to $4,000 for the death of a pet, assuming certain conditions are metfor example, if the person causing the death was negligent. Although many lawsuits are filed around the country seeking recovery of emotional distress damages for loss or injury of a companion animal, most are thrown out because of the legal precedent that animals are property.

Source: Adapted from "Pet Trusts: State Laws," in Planned Giving, American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, 2006, http://www.aspca.org/site/PageServer?pagename=donate_planned_pettrustslaws (accessed December 29,2006). Copyright 2007 The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA). Reprinted with permission of the ASPCA. All rights reserved.

Still, lawyers report many more cases involving animal law today than in the past. Some state bar associations have formed animal law sections to deal with the increase. Carolyn B. Matlack, in "Sentient Property: Unleashing Legal Respect for Our Companion Animals" ( Animal Law Section, Summer 2003), describes the spectrum of animal law cases the Washington State Bar Association's animal law section handles: "Legal disputes over pets arise in actions involving dissolution of property or custody agreements, nuisance actions, assistance animal privileges, cruelty allegations, landlord-tenant contracts, police or dog warden brutality, airline negligence, veterinary malpractice and in the area of wills, trusts and estates."

Matlack suggests that companion animals receive a new property classification under the law: sentient property (feeling property). She argues that courts could determine the best interests of sentient property based on the testimony of experts, as is done for young children and the mentally disabled.

Even wild animals are categorized by ownership. Private landowners assume power of ownership over wild animals on their land. As long as the animals are not protected by specific legislation, property owners may kill them as they please. Wild animals inhabiting government lands are considered public property and are treated as such. The mission of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (December 29, 2006, http://www.fws.gov/help/mission.cfm) is "to conserve, protect and enhance fish, wildlife, and plants and their habitats for the continuing benefit of the American people."

Public and private landowners exhibit implied animal ownership when they grant hunters permission to hunt on lands under their control. If these animals are assumed to have moral rights, then they can no longer be considered property.

Many animal welfarists are uneasy with the animal rights movement. They worry that it draws attention away from goals that are more easily obtainable for animals in the near future. They also worry that the radical statements and actions of some animal rights activists will turn the public against the entire animal movement. Radical animal rights activists have been known to demonstrate in the nude, splash paint on people wearing fur coats, and destroy and vandalize property. Many have spent time in prison for their actions.

Although welfarists and liberationists/abolitionists sometimes work together to achieve change, there is a philosophical gulf between them. This was made clear by the animal rights advocate Joan Dunayer in Speciesism (2004). Dunayer supports the idea that humans and animals should have "absolute moral equality." She accuses animal rights groups of compromising their beliefs by campaigning for welfarist reforms in animal treatment, rather than complete liberation. Dunayer compares the plight of animals to that of prisoners in Nazi concentration camps during World War II, arguing that the prisoners would have begged their supporters on the outside to work for liberation rather than more humane living conditions or kinder slaughtering techniques.

Abolitionists ask welfarists to give up meat and leather; close down all circuses, zoos, animal parks, aquariums, and racetracks; and stop laboratories from using animals. Most welfarists are not willing to go so far, preferring to focus on finding practical solutions to problems such as pet overpopulation and cruelty to domestic animals.

At the other end of the spectrum is the radical element of the animal movement. This element does not debate philosophy but takes direct action sometimes illegallyto free animals from farms and laboratories. The ALF is not really a group, as it has no leadership structure, but is instead a set of guidelines. The ALF (January 2007, http://www.animalliberationfront.com/ALFront/alf_credo.htm) states that "the short-term aim is to save as many animals as possible and directly disrupt the practice of animal abuse. [The] long term aim is to end all animal suffering by forcing animal abuse companies out of business." The ALF also states that any vegans or vegetarians who carry out actions according to ALF guidelines can regard themselves as part of the ALF. These actions include liberating animals from "places of abuse" and inflicting "economic damage" on the people involved. ALF followers are urged to take precautions to prevent harming humans and animals. The ALF receives funding from the ALF Supporters Group, which is made up of people who believe in the ALF guidelines but do not want to be involved in criminal activities.

PUBLIC OPINION

In May 2003 the Gallup Organization conducted a poll to determine Americans' opinions regarding animal rights issues. The results are based on telephone interviews with 1,005 adults aged eighteen and up.

As shown in Figure 2.1, 25% of those asked believed that animals deserve the same rights as people. A large majority (72%) said that animals deserve some protection but can still be used to benefit people. Only a tiny percentage (3%) felt that animals do not need much protection from harm and exploitation. The Gallup reporter David W. Moore notes that support for animal rights was much higher among women (33%) than among men (17%).

The respondents were also asked whether they supported or opposed four specific proposals concerning the treatment of animals. (See Figure 2.2.) More than 60% favored passing strict laws regarding the treatment of farm animals. Nearly 40% favored a ban on all product testing performed on laboratory animals. Around one-third favored a similar ban on medical research testing. Support was far lower (22%) for a total ban on hunting.

Moore notes that examination of these results by gender, age, and political affiliation reveals far more support for these proposals among women than among men. Support was also significantly higher from Democrats and Independents than from Republicans. No significant differences were found between age groups.

Degrees of adherence to the animal rights philosophy varied. Some of the people who said they supported animal rights did not want to eliminate all the practices in which animals are killed or harmed. (See Figure 2.3.) More than half of those who supported animal rights were opposed to banning hunting. About 43% of them did not want to ban medical research on laboratory animals. Roughly 39% did not want to ban product testing on animals, and more than 20% of them opposed passing strict laws concerning the treatment of farm animals.

These answers are somewhat puzzling. Moore suggests that the people indicating support for animal rights had pets in mind when they answered that question. Later, when asked about the specific proposals (hunting, research, product testing, and farm animals), these same people may have envisioned different animals. It is also possible that people do not have a clear idea of the concept of animal rights or what the philosophy means in practice.

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chapter 2the animal rights debate
according to the eleventh edition of merriam-webster's collegiate dictionary (2003)

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a right is a "power or privilege to which one is justly entitled." in the animal rights crusade: the growth of a moral protest (1992)

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Chapter 2The Animal Rights Debate According to the eleventh edition of Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (2003), a right is a "power or privilege to which one is justly entitled." In The Animal Rights Crusade: The Growth of a Moral Protest (1992), the sociologists James M. Source for information on The Animal Rights Debate: Animal Rights dictionary.

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Most people eat meat and dairy with little thought of the consequences. Yet those consequences are planetary in scale. Raising livestock for meat, eggs and milk accounts for roughly 14% of all man-made greenhouse gas emissions. Beef production is the biggest driver of forest loss within agriculture. The meat industry has been linked to a host of other environmental harms, including water pollution.

Eating too much meat can be bad for your health too, particularly red and processed meat which is thought to increase your risk of developing colorectal cancer. Feeding the world's appetite for meat costs the lives of billions of animals a year, and animal welfare is a concern on farms worldwide, with pigs, cows and chickens often subject to overcrowding, open wounds and disease.

Animal welfare laws in the UK compare poorly with standards set by organisations like the RSPCA. Chickens are forced to grow much faster than they naturally would and become ill as a result, while narrow crates and tying posts restrict the movements of pigs and cows. In extreme cases, captive pigs have been found engaging in cannibalism.

In what is no doubt a response to these concerns, veganism is on the rise. In the UK, the number of people eating a plant-based diet increased fourfold between 2014 and 2019. However, vegans still only make up about 1% of the UK population and vegetarians just 2%. On a global scale, meat consumption is actually increasing. So why do people keep eating meat, despite widespread awareness of the downsides?

Psychologists have some answers.

The meat paradox

Our recent paper reviewed 73 articles on a phenomenon called the meat paradox - the mental contradiction that helps devoted animal lovers continue eating animals.

This moral dilemma can cause people psychological discomfort, and our review revealed several triggers. For instance, you may relate to the jarring experience of realising for the first time that the meat on your plate came from an animal.

Meat-eating has consequences for how we interact with and perceive animals in later life, too. While eating beef in a 2010 study, participants were less likely to view animals as worthy of moral concern. And the more committed someone is to eating meat, the more likely they are to avoid information about the positive qualities of animals raised for food.

The discomfort people feel about eating meat presents them with a stark choice. Either remove the moral dilemma by giving up meat, or continue eating meat and morally disengage. Moral disengagement is when we choose not to act on our moral values. Our review highlighted several strategies that people use to maintain this moral disengagement.

After being reminded that the meat on your plate comes from an animal, you may try to forget its animal origins. People are more willing to eat meat when its animal origins are obscured, such as by calling meat beef instead of cow. Telling yourself that meat is necessary for health, socially normal, natural or too nice to give up can reduce the guilt people feel when eating meat. Giving up meat can seem difficult and so people often turn to these strategies to reconcile conflicting feelings.

Overcoming moral disengagement

If you would like to reduce your own meat consumption, psychological research has a few recommendations.

* Recognise and remember how reducing your meat consumption aligns with your values.

* Always keep animals in mind. Allow yourself to humanise them by considering their capacity for emotion, for example.

* Accept that changing your diet may be a gradual process.

If you want to encourage others to cut down on meat-eating, you can:

* Avoid blaming them for their meat consumption. This only makes people more resistant to vegetarianism and veganism. Instead, approach these tricky interactions with compassion.

* Avoid telling other people what to do. Let them make up their own minds.

* Humanise animals by encouraging people to view them instead as friends and not food.

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The meat paradox: how your brain wrestles with the ethics of eating animals

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Most people eat meat and dairy with little thought of the consequences. Yet those consequences are planetary in scale. Raising livestock for meat, eggs and milk accounts for roughly 14% of all man-made greenhouse gas emissions. Beef production is the biggest driver of forest loss within agriculture.

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History of Animal Rights | Moby's Veganniversary

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https://www.canr.msu.edu/resources/animal-welfare-rights

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Curriculum Resources for Michigan Agriculture Teachers

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Animal Welfare vs. Rights

Segment: 4. Domestic Animal Reproduction, Standard: Describe trends in the animal systems industry. (Pathway I.A.3)

Description

Differentiate between animal welfare versus animal rights.

Resources

Teaching Methods

Brainstorming, Lecture Discussion, Paired or Small Group Discussion, Role Play, Demonstration, Case Study, Field Trip, Resource People, Experiment, Debate

Tags: agriculture food and natural resources education, curriculum

Accessibility Questions:

For questions about accessibility and/or if you need additional accommodations for a specific document, please send an email to ANR Communications & Marketing at anrcommunications@anr.msu.edu.

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agriculture food and natural resources education

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Segment: 4. Domestic Animal Reproduction, Standard: Describe trends in the animal systems industry. (Pathway I.A.3) Differentiate between animal welfare versus animal rights. Brainstorming, Lecture Discussion, Paired or Small Group Discussion, Role Play, Demonstration, Case Study, Field Trip, Resource People, Experiment, Debate Tags: agriculture food and natural resources education, curriculum For questions about accessibility and/or if you need additional accommodations for a specific document, please send an email to ANR Communications & Marketing at anrcommunications@anr.msu.edu.

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The case against animal rights

A number of arguments are put forward against the idea that animals have rights.

Animals don't think

Animals are not really conscious

Animals were put on earth to serve human beings

Animals don't have souls

Animals don't behave morally

Animals are not members of the 'moral community'

Animals lack the capacity for free moral judgment

Animals don't think

St Thomas Aquinas taught that animals acted purely on instinct while human beings engaged in rational thought.

This distinction provided the frontier between human beings and animals, and was regarded as a suitable criterion for assessing a being's moral status.

Animals are not really conscious

The French philosopher Rene Descartes, and many others, taught that animals were no more than complicated biological robots.

This meant that animals were not the sort of thing that was entitled to have any rights - or indeed any moral consideration at all.

Animals were put on earth to serve human beings

This view comes originally from the Bible, but probably reflects a basic human attitude towards other species.

Christian theologians developed this idea - St Augustine taught that "by a most just ordinance of the Creator, both their [animals'] life and their death are subject to our use."

St Thomas Aquinas taught that the universe was constructed as a hierarchy in which beings at a lower level were there to serve those above them.

As human beings were above animals in this hierarchy they were entitled to use animals in any way they wanted.

However, as C.S. Lewis pointed out:

Animals don't have souls

Christian theologians used to teach that only beings with souls deserved ethical consideration.

Animals did not have souls and therefore did not have any moral rights.

This argument is no longer regarded as useful, because the idea of the soul is very controversial and unclear, even among religious people. Furthermore it is not possible to establish the existence of the soul (human or animal) in a valid experimental way.

This also makes it difficult to argue, as some theologians have done, that animals should have rights because they do have souls.

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This article discusses whether non-human animals have rights, and what is meant by animal rights.

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History of Animal Rights | Moby's Veganniversary

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https://www.worldanimalprotection.us/blogs/whats-difference-between-animal-rights-and-animal-welfare (both Animal Rights & Animal Welfare).

https://aldf.org/article/laws-that-protect-animals/ (Animal Welfare)

https://faunalytics.org/the-animal-rights-movement-history-and-facts-about-animal-rights/ (Animal Rights)

https://www.britannica.com/topic/animal-rights (Animal Rights)

https://www.aphis.usda.gov/aphis/ourfocus/animalwelfare (Animal Welfare)

-JM

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What’s the Difference Between Animal Rights and Animal Welfare?

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As an animal welfare organization, we break down what that means and why we choose animal welfare over animal rights.

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Animal Welfare vs. Rights

www.canr.msu.edu › resources › animal-welfare-rights

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erg8sDIYjmw

Animal Issues | PETA

www.peta.org › issues

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Animal rights -- birth of an activist | Simone Reyes | TEDxOrangeCoast

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Most people would agree that a dog has more sentience than a kitchen table. However, under the eyes of most contemporary legal systems, the two are essentially indistinguishable. While the words "animal rights" can be polarizing, at its core the movement is about gaining legal and public respect for the other species we share this planet with.

Not to be confused with welfare, which entrenches the concept that animals ought to be used for human purposes, the issue at the core of animal rights boils down to the difference between being a who and a what; a someone and a something. Are animals resources for human benefit? Or are they sensitive beings who have emotions and preferences and awareness of themselves? The animal rights movement strives to create a more equitable world in which animals are treated with more kindness, understanding and respect.

Do Animals Have Rights?

The question of whether animals have rights is complex. On the one hand, in most countries around the world, there are no laws protecting the rights of animals, or laws that acknowledge the existence of these rights. Therefore it cannot be said that animals have legally recognized or protected rights.

However another way of looking at the existence of animal rights is to suggest that animals have inherent value, which is independent of their value to humans.

In today's world, there is widespread agreement that human beings possess inherent value, even though this value may not always be applied equally, which is the result of racism, patriarchy, and other forms of oppression. Generally speaking, however, inherent value is what renders a being worthy of moral consideration. The inherent value of human beings is calculated according to cognitive and emotional qualities such as our possession of self-awareness, the ability to make conscious decisions and act upon personal preferences, and the fact that we are actively invested in the quality of our own lives. Together, these qualities render us as "subjects of a life" - meaning we possess an active inner world along with an awareness of the external. This awareness renders us particularly vulnerable to harm; since it matters to us when we are harmed. Thanks to the qualities of our consciousness, human beings possess naturally-occurring rights that are legally enshrined in many countries, with the underlying understanding that it is wrong to harm someone who is aware and therefore suffers because of the harm caused.

In Western thought, it was long believed that animals weren't sufficiently aware to notice if they were harmed, that harm simply wouldn't matter to them. Understandings have changed in recent decades. A wealth of established scientific discoveries and anecdotal evidence indicating that certain species are also subjects of a life - meaning they possess the qualities of consciousness human rights protect - show that other species have inherent value and therefore also possess naturally-occurring rights. In this factoring, it is not up to humans to bestow rights onto animals, but simply to recognize and respect these existing rights, through moral and legal frameworks.

When legal animal rights are discussed, it is not suggested that any other-than-human animal be given all the same rights as human beings, such as the right to an education or to vote in elections. Instead, the rights referred to tend to be the basic rights of freedom from confinement, freedom from bodily injury, and freedom to pursue their lives as they wish.

Why are Animal Rights Important?

Animals are increasingly understood as suffering from psychological, emotional, and physical pain. For example, orcas can suffer from depression and boredom in aquariums, leading to the use of antidepressant drugs. Animals in zoos frequently display stereotypic behaviors, which signify underlying psychological distress and are unseen in wild populations. The more that is learned about the myriad ways our behavior, lifestyles and attitudes negatively impact animals, the greater our moral obligation towards them becomes.

Besides the fact that animals can suffer, the sheer scale of animal exploitation is another reason animal rights are urgently needed. It is estimated that roughly 200 million animals are killed for human consumptionevery day, with wealthy nations such as Australia, the United States and Europe leading the way with the highest consumption of meat per capita. The U.S. is also responsible for the rise of industrial animal agriculture, in which animals are forced to endure lifetimes of heartbreaking abuse.

What are the Goals of the Animal Rights Movement?

The ultimate goal of the animal rights movement is to place animals "beyond use" of human beings, putting an end to exploitative industries and practices including laboratory testing, whaling, and puppy mills.

There are many approaches to achieving these goals. Grassroots advocacy, involving public demonstrations, as well as documentaries and other educational tools have long been deployed as methods of raising public awareness of the suffering endured by animals at human hands, as well as familiarizing the public with the concept of animal rights.

Innovative legal approaches have been explored as well. The Nonhuman Rights Project advocates for nonhuman personhood, which is a way to circumvent the legal definition of animals as being property, which denies them legal standing. A nonhuman person, however, may be represented in court via a guardian ad litem in order to fight for justice on their behalf.

Another tactic for achieving the goals of the animal rights movement is to advocate for veganism, which is a lifestyle that eliminates consumption of any product derived from animals - including milk, eggs, and insect-derived products like honey. Vegans also avoid clothing derived from animals such as leather, fur and silk. Through widespread adoption of vegan values, the demand for animal products can be reduced, enabling a clearer path to acceptance of animal rights both in popular opinion as well as the reduction in financial incentives to exploit animals.

When Did the Animal Rights Movement Begin?

In some form or another, the concept of animal rights has been around for thousands of years. In Eastern religions such as Buddhism, Hinduism, and Jainism, the concept of ahiṃsā, meaning non-violence, is a central principle. Jainism stresses non-cruelty towards animals, prohibiting adherents from working at a zoo, cutting trees, or using any fabrics, including silk, which are produced through harming other living beings.

Within Europe and North America, there were many precursors of the modern-day animal rights movement. The first animal cruelty legislation was passed in 1635, which prohibited tearing wool off of living sheep. In 1822, Richard Martin, known as "Humanity Dick", passed Martin's Act aimed at preventing cruelty towards cattle. Martin went on to be one of the founding members of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, the world's first animal welfare charity, in 1824.

The first explicit reference to the concept of animal rights came from Henry Stephens Salt, who's book Animals' Rights: Considered in Relation to Social Progress rallied against the idea of prejudice against animals. Salt's urging of a recognition for "the common bond of humanity that unites all living beings into one universal brotherhood" echoed ancient religious traditions such as Jainism.

Who Started the Animal Rights Movement?

The animal rights movement was not begun by any one person, though there were certain seminal figures. Although women comprise the majority of animal rights activists and are less likely to support animal exploitation than men, the majority of the credit for starting the animal rights movement is, unfortunately, given to white men. Richard Ryder is among the well-known figures in modern times, having coined the term speciesism in 1970 to describe human chauvinism towards other species. In 1975, Peter Singer's Animal Liberation was highly influential and lauded, yet he credited some of his views to the comparatively little-known author Ruth Harrison, whose 1964 book Animal Machines documented conditions on factory farms.

What Laws Protect Animal Rights?

Because the legal rights of animals are generally not recognized, federal and state laws in the United States pertain to welfare instead of rights. These laws regard animals as property and deal with "unnecessary" harm to animals, thereby allowing for a great deal of suffering which is deemed "necessary" or justifiable.

Existing laws routinely fail to provide animals with adequate protection. In many cases, the underlying motivation for animal cruelty legislation is exclusively human interest. U.S. federal laws regarding animal protection include the Animal Welfare Act (AWA), enacted in 1966 out of concern for cats and dogs used in laboratory research, though its contemporary mandate includes a wider realm of animal exploitation issues including animals in entertainment and captive breeding. However the AWA excludes hunting, fishing and trapping, slaughter of animals, retail pet stores, and others from its jurisdiction. The AWA is far from being an anti-cruelty law; for example, it regulates - meaning, does not render illegal - the practise of vivisection, which is surgery conducted on a living animal during research. In laboratories, the AWA does not protect animals from harm during the course of research, nor does it prohibit their use. Incredibly, the definition of "animals" in the AWA excludes mice, birds, rats and agricultural animals - who are the most heavily exploited animals across the country, within laboratories and industrial agriculture operations.

Other federal laws pertaining to animals include the Endangered Species Act, which maintains a list of species around the world who are threatened or endangered and outlines procedures as well as penalties for their inappropriate use. The Preventing Animal Cruelty and Torture Act bans intentional cruelty onto animals, though it excludes animals in agriculture including slaughter, as well as hunting, fishing, trapping, medical research, pest control and other abuses.

Facts About Animal Rights

1. In the U.S., every circus that uses animals has been cited by the Animal Welfare Act for violations.

2. The California Orca Protection Act prohibits keeping orcas captive throughout the state. In Canada, a nationwide ban on cetacean captivity was also passed.

3. Joaquin Phoenix used his speech at the Oscars to talk about animal rights.

Animal Rights Barriers to Success

Financial incentives form a significant barrier to animal rights, since it is through their consideration as property that animals' exploitation is enabled. Animal business is big business. In the United States alone, the pet industry topped $221.1 billion in 2015; the live animal trade accounted for $3.5 billion in 2016; in 2020, animal agriculture is forecasted to bring in $185.8 billion in cash receipts. Companies may go to great lengths to protect profits, and have lobbied successfully for legislation such as ag-gag laws which conceal the unsavory conditions within their facilities in order to continue operating unencumbered by negative public perception or stricter anti-cruelty regulation.

Dependence on animal products is another barrier to the success of the movement. Animal products can be found throughout modern Western societies and in places people may least expect. For example, parts of pigs are found in everyday objects such as concrete, paint, soap, collagen injections, and even bullets.

Cultural beliefs about animals form yet another barrier to the success of the movement. For example, patriarchal conceptions of manhood assert that in order to be a strong, virile man, one must eat large quantities of meat, especially red meat such as steak. Sport hunting and fishing, and other similar "conquest"-type activities, lie at the heart of hegemonic manhood identities that are at odds with animal rights.

Threats

Globalization Affecting the Movement

Within neoliberal capitalism, animals are considered commodities. So-called advancements in technology, such as CAFOs, along with increased connectivity and market reach perpetuated by globalization can be linked with drastically increased numbers of animals exploited, coupled with tumbling standards of welfare. Government officials in the UK have openly expressed resistance to " US-style farming", which would see an influx of CAFO operations in the country. CAFOs have already spread to many other countries, such as India, China and Japan. Ultimately, globalization tends to entrench the use of animals, leaving little to no room for discourse regarding rights or even increased welfare protections.

While globalization brings increased connection between individuals and organizations within the animal rights movement itself, there are some concerns related to how these networks are fostered. Organizations based in North America and Europe that conduct international outreach efforts and resource deployment can, at times, engage in behavioral patterns that entrench ongong legacies of colonialism. Ways beyond these problems include hiring locally, placing people of color in leadership roles and taking the local context into account within campaigning strategies.

Science

Scientific approaches can reflect the logic and biases of human exceptionalism within the selection of questions to be investigated, experimental design and interpretations of findings.

One example of such a bias is that it is impossible to know with absolute certainty what an other-than-human animal is thinking or feeling, and that they therefore cannot be proven as thinking or feeling at all. This assumption is frequently used to justify the ongoing exploitation of animals. The burden of proof is foisted onto those humans who oppose this assumption and onto the animals themselves, requiring that they communicate, unequivocally and in human language, that they are in fact subjects of a life - that is, that they experience emotions, possess desires, and so on. However, some argue that the burden of proof should rest upon those skeptical of animals being subjects of a life. And in light of the abundant concrete and anecdotal evidence of animals' inner lives, proving otherwise would actually be impossible.

Co-option

Animal exploitation industries have largely co-opted the concepts ofanimal welfare and humane treatment, in order to continue exploiting animals. While these ideals may have originally been intended to protect animals from harm, industries have successfully managed to apply these words to product labels and processes in order to assuage consumers while hiding the underbelly of industrial agriculture. Now, wherever these words are present, they more indicate animal abuse than anything else.

What is Needed for the Success of Animal Rights?

For animal rights to become legally recognized in Western culture, there needs to be a broad cultural shift across many sectors. People will need to understand and accept that animals are thinking, feeling beings who are not put on this earth for humanity's use. Speciesism must fade away, along with outdated scientific and philosophical ideas that animals are nothing more than mindless automatons. Patriarchal conceptions of manhood must be dismantled. Forward-thinking legislators must set precedents that pave the way for legal rights.

Fortunately, there is movement towards a more equitable world for animals; for example, plant-based diets are becoming increasingly popular; bans on fur are being enacted; and laboratories are turning towards alternatives to animals.

Conclusion

There is still a long road ahead before the animal rights movement achieves the ultimate goal of legally enshrining rights for other-than-human animals. Fortunately, progress is being made in Western countries and around the world, though it may be incremental. As people come to understand more about animals and the suffering they endure at human hands, hopefully the change will only accelerate.

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The Animal Rights Movement: History And Facts About Animal Rights - Faunalytics

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This blog explores the history of the animal rights movement, and looks at why animal rights are an important aspect of social justice.

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https://www.britannica.com/topic/animal-rights

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animal rights, moral or legal entitlements attributed to nonhuman animals, usually because of the complexity of their cognitive, emotional, and social lives or their capacity to experience physical or emotional pain or pleasure. Historically, different views of the scope of animal rights have reflected philosophical and legal developments, scientific conceptions of animal and human nature, and religious and ethical conceptions of the proper relationship between animals and human beings. Since the beginning of the modern animal rights movement, which was initiated by philosophers in the 1970s, animal rights has been a popular topic of discussion within the academic study of applied ethics, or the application of normative ethical theories to practical problems.

Philosophical background

The proper treatment of animals is a very old question in the West. Ancient Greek and Roman philosophers debated the place of animals in human morality. The Pythagoreans (6th-4th century bce) and the Neoplatonists (3rd-6th century ce) urged respect for animals' interests, primarily because they believed in the transmigration of souls between human and animal bodies. In his biological writings, Aristotle (384-322 bce) repeatedly suggested that animals lived for their own sake, but his claim in the Politics that nature made all animals for the sake of humans was unfortunately destined to become his most influential statement on the subject.

Aristotle, and later the Stoics, believed the world was populated by an infinity of beings arranged hierarchically according to their complexity and perfection, from the barely living to the merely sentient, the rational, and the wholly spiritual. In this Great Chain of Being, as it came to be known, all forms of life were represented as existing for the sake of those forms higher in the chain. Among corporeal beings, humans, by dint of their rationality, occupied the highest position. The Great Chain of Being became one of the most persistent and powerful, if utterly erroneous, ways of conceiving the universe, dominating scientific, philosophical, and religious thinking until the middle of the 19th century.

The Stoics, insisting on the irrationality of all nonhuman animals, regarded them as slaves and accordingly treated them as contemptible and beneath notice. Aggressively advocated by St. Augustine (354-430), these Stoic ideas became embedded in Christian theology. They were absorbed wholesale into Roman law-as reflected in the treatises and codifications of Gaius (fl. 130-180) and Justinian (483-565)-taken up by the legal glossators of Europe in the 11th century, and eventually pressed into English (and, much later, American) common law. Meanwhile, arguments that urged respect for the interests of animals nearly disappeared, and animal welfare remained a relative backwater of philosophical inquiry and legal regulation until the final decades of the 20th century.

Animals and the law

In the 3rd or 4th century ce, the Roman jurist Hermogenianus wrote, "Hominum causa omne jus constitum" ("All law was established for men's sake"). Repeating the phrase, P.A. Fitzgerald's 1966 treatise Salmond on Jurisprudence declared, "The law is made for men and allows no fellowship or bonds of obligation between them and the lower animals." The most important consequence of this view is that animals have long been categorized as "legal things," not as "legal persons." Whereas legal persons have rights of their own, legal things do not. They exist in the law solely as the objects of the rights of legal persons-e.g., as things over which legal persons may exercise property rights. This status, however, often affords animals the indirect protection of laws intended to preserve social morality or the rights of animal owners, such as criminal anticruelty statutes or civil statutes that permit owners to obtain compensation for damages inflicted on their animals. Indeed, this sort of law presently defines the field of "animal law," which is much broader than animal rights because it encompasses all law that addresses the interests of nonhuman animals-or, more commonly, the interests of the people who own them.

A legal thing can become a legal person; this happened whenever human slaves were freed. The former legal thing then possesses his own legal rights and remedies. Parallels have frequently been drawn between the legal status of animals and that of human slaves. "The truly striking fact about slavery," the American historian David Brion Davis has written, is the

antiquity and almost universal acceptance of the concept of the slave as a human being who is legally owned, used, sold, or otherwise disposed of as if he or she were a domestic animal. This parallel persisted in the similarity of naming slaves, branding them, and even pricing them according to their equivalent in cows, camels, pigs, and chickens.

The American jurist Roscoe Pound wrote that in ancient Rome a slave "was a thing, and as such, like animals could be the object of rights of property," and the British historian of Roman law Barry Nicholas has pointed out that in Rome "the slave was a thing...he himself had no rights: he was merely an object of rights, like an animal."

In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, humanitarian reformers in Britain and the United States campaigned on behalf of the weak and defenseless, protesting against child labour, debtor's prisons, abusive punishment in public schools, and, inevitably, the cruel treatment of animals. In 1800 the most renowned abolitionist of the period, William Wilberforce, supported a bill to abolish bull- and bearbaiting, which was defeated in the House of Commons. In 1809 Baron Erskine, former lord chancellor of England, who had long been troubled by cruelty to animals, introduced a bill to prohibit cruelty to all domestic animals. Erskine declared that the bill was intended to "consecrate, perhaps, in all nations, and in all ages, that just and eternal principle which binds the whole living world in one harmonious chain, under the dominion of enlightened man, the lord and governor of all." Although the bill passed the House of Lords, it failed in the House of Commons. Then, in 1821, a bill "to prevent cruel and improper treatment of Cattle" was introduced in the House of Commons, sponsored by Wilberforce and Thomas Fowell Buxton and championed by Irish member of Parliament Richard Martin. The version enacted in 1822, known as Martin's Act, made it a crime to treat a handful of domesticated animals-cattle, oxen, horses, and sheep-cruelly or to inflict unnecessary suffering upon them. However, it did not protect the general welfare of even these animals, much less give them legal rights, and the worst punishment available for any breach was a modest fine. Similar statutes were enacted in all the states of the United States, where there now exists a patchwork of anticruelty and animal-welfare laws. Most states today make at least some abuses of animals a felony. Laws such as the federal Animal Welfare Act (1966), for example, regulate what humans may do to animals in agriculture, biomedical research, entertainment, and other areas. But neither Martin's Act nor many subsequent animal-protection statutes altered the traditional legal status of animals as legal things.

This situation changed in 2008, when the Spanish national parliament adopted resolutions urging the government to grant orangutans, chimpanzees, and gorillas some statutory rights previously afforded only to humans. The resolutions also called for banning the use of apes in performances, harmful research, and trading as well as in other practices that involve profiting from the animals. Although zoos would still be allowed to hold apes, they would be required to provide them with "optimal" living conditions.

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Animal rights | Definition, Issues, & History

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Animal rights, moral or legal entitlements attributed to nonhuman animals, usually because of the complexity of their cognitive, emotional, and social lives or their capacity to experience physical or emotional pain or pleasure. Historically, different views of the scope of animal rights have

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Animal rights -- birth of an activist | Simone Reyes | TEDxOrangeCoast

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ja2wlLkky4E

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Check out all of the easy, everyday choices that kids are making to help save animals! http://bit.ly/1bPHLaO Subscribe to PETA Kids TV: http://bit.ly/1xcEVXh Ask Ringling Bros. to free the eles: http://bit.ly/1Hg6Pl3 Everything you need to know about cows: http://bit.ly/1F0fKV5

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This article will explore what animal welfare means, why it matters, and how welfare standards are too-often violated.

What is animal welfare?

Animal welfare pertains to the living conditions of animals who are kept in captivity or are otherwise under human control. In this way, animal welfare is synonymous with human control of animals.

As a guiding philosophy for legislation and regulations, animal welfare attempts to mitigate the suffering of human-controlled animals and to ensure a minimum standard of living conditions and treatment. Welfare standards can be applied to farms, laboratories, pet stores, horse ranches, and entertainment facilities, although standards differ widely based on the species and how animals are used.

What's the difference between animal rights and animal welfare?

While both animal rights and animal welfare are oriented towards the well-being of individual animals, they differ significantly. Animal rights advocates believe that every animal deserves the right to live a life free from human control. Veganism-refraining from using or consuming animal products-is a lifestyle commonly adopted by proponents of this philosophy.

Conversely, animal welfare implicitly reinforces human use of animals, because welfare is applied to situations where animals are under the control of humans. These include facilities such as farms, where animals are being used (and/or killed) to create products or food for humans.

Notably, some argue that a person can be both an animal rights advocate and an animal welfare advocate. For example, if one's ultimate goal is to achieve animal rights, they may work in the meantime to advance animal welfare.

What is the Animal Welfare Act?

Signed into law by Lyndon B. Johnson in 1966, the Animal Welfare Act (AWA) is federal legislation in the United States designed to prevent animal cruelty and abuse within laboratories, the entertainment industry (e.g., zoos, circuses), and captive breeding. The act provides the legal framework for dealing with unnecessary cruelty and is enforced by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA).

Despite the progressive underpinnings of the AWA, it leaves much to be desired by not protecting many animals who do not fall beneath its purview. For example, rats and mice who are used extensively in laboratories and subjected to extremely painful procedures like vivisection-or the dissection of living animals-are not protected by the act.

Farmed animals of all kinds are also excluded from the AWA, despite the fact that these animals account for the greatest numbers of animals who routinely endure cruelty and abuse on factory farms and in slaughterhouses. Farmed chickens, turkeys, cows, and pigs would arguably benefit the most from the legislation, yet they remain unprotected.

The Five Freedoms of Animal Welfare

The Five Freedoms of Animal Welfare, which were written by Irish medical scientist Francis Brambell in 1965 and codified by the UK's Farm Animal Welfare Council in 1979, represent the bare minimum of living standards that animals in captivity should have:

1. Freedom from thirst and hunger

2. Freedom from discomfort by providing adequate shelter

3. Freedom from disease, pain, or injury

4. Freedom from distress and fear

5. Freedom to engage in natural behaviors

Unfortunately, there is room for interpretation in these guidelines that often disadvantages animals. For example, if animals are allowed to engage in some natural behaviors-such as chickens being allowed to perch and spread their wings, as opposed to being locked in battery cages where they can do neither of these things-this is seen as sufficiently maintaining their welfare. However, perching in a factory farm still means birds are confined to one indoor room for the duration of their drastically shortened lives.

On factory farms, animals are denied most if not all of the natural behaviors they would otherwise engage in. This has serious consequences for their physical and psychological health.

Animal welfare issues

Animal welfare issues can arise in any situation where animals are being used by humans, whether for food, entertainment, or experimentation. Below are a few examples of human activities that often impinge on animal welfare.

Animal testing

The US animal testing industry subjects 25 million animals to cruel tests each year. Rabbits, mice, guinea pigs, and other animals regularly undergo stressful operations and experiments. Some are restrained in devices while substances are dripped into their eyes, while others are force-fed or endure painful operations. Laboratory animals are often kept within stainless steel enclosures for much of their lives.

Lack of behavioral enrichment

Behavioral enrichment refers to the features added to animals' living spaces meant to provide mental stimulation. Boredom is a common cause of mental distress for captive animals. In zoos, items such as tires, barrels stuffed with food, or artificial rocks or trees are meant to simulate wild environments and provide relief from restlessness. However, these additions still do not approximate a natural life, which is defined by choice, exploration, and variety. Zoos and aquariums may not seem as horrific as factory farms, but they remain problematic.

Animals on factory farms often live without any behavioral enrichment whatsoever. This extreme trauma triggers stress-induced behaviors such as chewing on the bars of their cages, attacking other animals, and even cannibalism.

Farmed animals

The most prevalent source of animal welfare violations in the US, based on the sheer number of animals affected, are farmed animals. Life within the industrial agricultural system means undergoing routine mutilations without anesthetics. Cows, pigs, and sheep have their tails removed, and portions of chickens' beaks are often sliced off at a young age. These animals live in dark, crowded, unsanitary enclosures that are largely if not entirely indoors. Generally speaking, factory farms prioritize cost-efficiency and profits over animal welfare.

Blood sport

In blood sports-such as bullfighting or dogfighting-it is often the pain of an animal that provides the attraction for human audiences, leading to many welfare concerns. Dogfighting and cockfighting involve raising animals in tight confines, conducting invasive breeding activities, and forcing two animals to fight until they reach the point of serious injury or death. In bullfighting, bulls are stabbed repeatedly while being goaded around a ring in a stadium filled with cheering people. Blood sports offer the opposite of quick, painless deaths.

Sport hunting

Sport hunting is the killing of animals for fun, rather than food, and is usually carried out without regard for animal welfare. Species such as deer, rabbits, ducks, and bears are common targets of sport hunting in North America, where they're killed with weapons such as guns or crossbows. While hunters often try to kill animals with one shot, the animals are often grievously wounded instead. Many escape their hunter(s) only to die later from their wounds, slowly and painfully.

Poaching

While game hunting usually refers to the legal hunting of animals, poaching usually means hunting outside the law. It's another form of vicious exploitation that's generally conducted without any regard for animal welfare. The lucrative trade in pangolins, for example, sees nearly 3 million of these animals caught from the wild each year and shipped over great distances, sometimes for weeks at a time. (They're then killed for their scales or meat.) Elephants, rhinoceroses, tigers, and gorillas are also heavily poached. Elephants and rhinos often have their tusks and horns cut away from their faces while the animals are still alive.

Whaling

It's difficult to kill a whale quickly, which is among the many reasons why the hunting of whales is rife with welfare issues. Particularly in larger whales, it can take a long time-sometimes minutes, sometimes hours-for a whale to finally succumb to a harpoon. A variety of weapons have been devised over the years to hasten the demise of whales, including explosive harpoons that detonate inside a whale's body. But even these can take up to 25 minutes.

To make matters worse, whales are often in full view of their family members as they die.

Overpopulation in companion animals

When companion animals like dogs and cats aren't spayed or neutered, they can inadvertently contribute to America's overpopulation problem, where there aren't enough people willing to adopt the number of animals available. In these cases, animals are either abandoned to fend for themselves, or dropped at shelters. Life at a shelter can be stressful for animals because they're usually kept in cages where they don't have much room to move around.

While many shelters adopt policies to never kill animals (these are known as no-kill shelters), others euthanize animals who are deemed unadoptable. Euthanization at shelters typically meets the highest welfare standards, but it's still a tragic and avoidable outcome. The ASPCA estimates that 1.5 million dogs and cats are put down at US shelters every year.

Puppy mills

Puppy mills, unlike more legitimate dog breeders, present serious welfare concerns for the many animals in their care. Pregnant dogs in puppy mills can be locked within cages for the duration of their lives, made to churn out puppies until their bodies give out. Their offspring are taken from them soon after birth, only to endure their own traumatic experiences of crowding, malnutrition, and unsanitary conditions before being shipped to pet stores or other sellers and sold to an often unsuspecting public.

Puppies born in puppy mills can also have psychological and physical disorders that make them difficult to cohabitate with, and which sometimes lead to premature death.

Why is animal welfare important?

Though some critics argue that animal welfare only cements animals' exploitation on farms, in laboratories, and in other industrial situations, welfare standards are effective in making the lives of animals more bearable. The Humane League and our supporters have succeeded in convincing some slaughterhouses to stop using killing methods that cause prolonged pain for chickens, and in persuading some factory farms to end extreme confinement of chickens. These are major milestones in the movement to end the abuse of animals raised for food.

While these changes may seem incremental in the face of a powerful industry that largely regards animals as inanimate objects rather than intelligent and sensitive beings, without welfare advocates, these animals' lives would be even more tortured and painful. A chicken who is allowed to grow at a less rapid rate, who is able to stand up without breaking any bones, who has room to spread their wings and move around, and who will be spared the horrors of live-shackle slaughter represents a very real, tangible improvement over the alternative.

Conclusion

It's a tragic reality that the intersection of human and animal lives so often results in pain and suffering for animals. Strengthening welfare standards not only improves the lives of animals; it can also educate the public about the harsh conditions animals face in places like factory farms and laboratories.

The conversation around animal welfare is constantly evolving, and it features many different viewpoints even from advocates with the same ultimate goals. Still, this ongoing dialogue and the actions it inspires continue to pull our society toward better conditions for animals. One day, progress in our movement ideally will result in all animals' liberation from the worst of human treatment.

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What Is Animal Welfare and Why Is It Important?

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This article will explore what animal welfare means, why it matters, and how welfare standards are too-often violated. Animal welfare pertains to the living conditions of animals who are kept in captivity or are otherwise under human control. In this way, animal welfare is synonymous with human control of animals.

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https://www.nrcs.usda.gov/wps/portal/nrcs/main/national/plantsanimals/#:~:text=Animals%20both%20large%20and%20small,activity%20in%20a%20functioning%20ecosystem

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are the fabric which covers the soil. They hold the soil in place to reduce erosion and improve water quality. Plants provide our food, materials for shelter, fuel to warm us and replenish the air we breathe. Plants provide food for animals and habitat for wildlife.

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Animal Welfare:
https://youtu.be/r1-sd9JUoIE
https://youtu.be/UBsOiwbMuxI
https://youtu.be/ip3N0KljEe8

Animal Rights:
https://youtu.be/RgubFcmvgDE
https://youtu.be/erg8sDIYjmw
https://youtu.be/TenzE5x9aho

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Why Are Animal Rights Important? | Moby Answers

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Animal Rights: Definition, Issues, and Examples - The ...

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https://www.peta.org

What's the Difference Between Animal Rights and Animal ...

https://www.worldanimalprotection.us

Animal Welfare Institute
https://awionline.org

Animal Welfare - USDA APHIS

https://www.aphis.usda.gov

What is Animal Welfare and why is it important?

http://www.naiaonline.org

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https://www.britannica.com/topic/animal-rights

https://aldf.org/article/laws-that-protect-animals/

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Almost all of us grew up eating meat, wearing leather, and going to circuses and zoos. Many of us bought our beloved "pets" at pet shops and kept beautiful birds in cages. We wore wool and silk, ate McDonald's burgers, and fished. We never considered the impact of these actions on the animals involved. For whatever reason, you are now asking the question: Why should animals have rights?
In his book Animal Liberation, Peter Singer states that the basic principle of equality does not require equal or identical treatment; it requires equal consideration. This is an important distinction when talking about animal rights. People often ask if animals should have rights, and quite simply, the answer is "Yes!" Animals surely deserve to live their lives free from suffering and exploitation. Jeremy Bentham, the founder of the reforming utilitarian school of moral philosophy, stated that when deciding on a being's rights, "The question is not 'Can they reason?' nor 'Can they talk?' but 'Can they suffer?'" In that passage, Bentham points to the capacity for suffering as the vital characteristic that gives a being the right to equal consideration. The capacity for suffering is not just another characteristic like the capacity for language or higher mathematics. All animals have the ability to suffer in the same way and to the same degree that humans do. They feel pain, pleasure, fear, frustration, loneliness, and motherly love. Whenever we consider doing something that would interfere with their needs, we are morally obligated to take them into account.

Supporters of animal rights believe that animals have an inherent worth-a value completely separate from their usefulness to humans. We believe that every creature with a will to live has a right to live free from pain and suffering. Animal rights is not just a philosophy-it is a social movement that challenges society's traditional view that all nonhuman animals exist solely for human use. As PETA founder Ingrid Newkirk has said, "When it comes to pain, love, joy, loneliness, and fear, a rat is a pig is a dog is a boy. Each one values his or her life and fights the knife." Watch a video with Ingrid Newkirk from the 2015 Animal Rights National Conference here.

Only prejudice allows us to deny others the rights that we expect to have for ourselves. Whether it's based on race, gender, sexual orientation, or species, prejudice is morally unacceptable. If you wouldn't eat a dog, why eat a pig? Dogs and pigs have the same capacity to feel pain, but it is prejudice based on species that allows us to think of one animal as a companion and the other as dinner.

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Almost all of us grew up eating meat, wearing leather, and going to circuses and zoos.

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Animal Welfare - Everyone is Responsible

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTH5F-_C-GI

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Why Are Animal Rights Important? | Moby Answers

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Introduction

In concluding my first article, I proposed that "...whatever we decide (about animal welfare) as a profession or as individuals, we must be knowledgeable" ( 1). In this and succeeding articles, some fundamental points will be covered, starting with what animal welfare is and how definitions affect the way animals are treated.

What is animal welfare?

The term "animal welfare" is being used increasingly by corporations, consumers, veterinarians, politicians, and others. However, the term can mean different things to different people. Understandably, in the past, veterinarians and farmers have seen animal welfare chiefly in terms of the body and the physical environment (shelter, feed, etc.) ( 2): if an animal is healthy and producing well, it is faring well. Research on aspects of animal welfare has also focused on the body, using physiological measures, such as endorphins, plasma cortisol, and heart rate, to examine how the animal is coping with its environment ( 3). However, there are limitations to seeing animal welfare only in terms of the body. One limitation is that genetics and the environment can produce desirable physical outcomes, even though the animal's mental state is compromised. For example, a canine breed champion may have perfect conformation and be in perfect health, but it may be very anxious in its home environment. Another limitation is that some physical parameters (heart rate, plasma cortisol) are difficult to interpret, because they can be increased by both positive and negative experiences, such as the presence of a mate and the presence of a predator.

The above would suggest that animal welfare includes not only the state of the animal's body, but also its feelings. Most would agree that animals have feelings (fear, frustration), and it has been proposed that animal welfare consists entirely in feelings and that these have evolved to protect the animal's primary needs ( 4). Thus, if an animal feels well, it is faring well ( 4, 5). A feelings-based approach to welfare research typically measures behavioral outcomes, such as willingness to "work" (pushing open a weighted door), and behavioral signs of fear or frustration. Such research has led to the conclusion that animals have fundamental behavioral needs that they must be allowed to satisfy for humane reasons ( 6).

A third view of welfare, linked to the feelings-based approach, is that animals fare best if they can live according to their nature ( 7, 8) and perform their full range of behaviors ( 8). In this case, physical suffering, such as feeling cold, and mental suffering, such as the fear induced by being preyed upon, may be acceptable. Sectors of the general public favor the "natural living" approach, however, as with physical and mental aspects of welfare, animal welfare scientists have largely discounted this as the sole basis for ensuring optimal welfare. Instead, they propose that the physical, mental, and "natural-living" aspects of welfare are interrelated and are all of ethical concern ( 9, 10). Thus, the most widely accepted definition of animal welfare is that it comprises the state of the animal's body and mind, and the extent to which its nature (genetic traits manifest in breed and temperament) is satisfied ( 11). However, the 3 aspects of welfare sometimes conflict, and this presents practical and ethical challenges.

From definitions to the real world

The situation of laying hens illustrates how the physical, mental, and natural aspects of welfare can conflict, and the difficulty in agreeing on how best to compromise among them. Disagreement occurs because the form of compromise that is acceptable to different animal-oriented groups depends on their values ( 10, 12) and is complicated by the need to consider legitimate human interests (those of the farmer in earning a living).

In the case of laying hens, noncage systems have been advocated, so that the birds might live more according to their nature and thus avoid the frustration of close confinement in barren cages. However, cannibalism is common in noncage systems, perhaps because hens are not adapted to living in the large groups involved in noncage systems ( 13). These systems can also carry a greater risk of disease and are more labor intensive than are conventional cages. These difficulties can be managed somewhat (cannibalism can be controlled by beak-trimming, which is itself questionable, because it causes neuromas and chronic pain ( 14, 15)), but conventional cages have been considered more desirable in both financial and humane terms. Veterinarians have accepted this compromise, which is consistent with their focus on animals' physical welfare and with their role in helping farmers to provide affordable food. However, conventional cages do not permit hens to express their nature (roost at night, dust-bathe, lay eggs in seclusion). This limitation has contributed to the view that conventional cages are unacceptable and that hens bear too many of the costs of egg production without sufficient benefit. The European Union (EU) has ruled that barren cages be phased out of all member countries by 2012 and that more space be provided for birds in the interim ( 13). This ruling represents a new compromise among the physical, mental, and natural aspects of hen welfare. The ruling also involves human compromise in that the potential increase in the production costs under alternative systems is estimated at 5% to 50%, depending on the system used ( 13), which will increase the cost to consumers. The premise of the ruling is that animal welfare is a public good that society must pay to protect. However, some animal welfare scientists argue that there is insufficient scientific evidence to justify the ruling and that welfare may be worse because of it. Other scientists support the ruling, arguing that it is inadequate husbandry and the current market conditions that can reduce welfare under the housing systems required by the EU ruling. Both sides represent a compromise, the acceptability of which depends not only on scientific evidence, but also on values.

Assessing animal welfare

Turning to North America, the existing compromise between human interests and the 3 aspects of animal welfare is being reconsidered. In the United States, the fast-food restaurant industry now requires higher welfare standards in the farms that supply its eggs, and it assesses compliance with this requirement through third-party welfare audits ( 16). This action is market-driven and therefore not a sufficient framework for national reforms in animal welfare standards. In Canada, the restaurant industry and others are debating the feasibility of welfare auditing for food animals.

Auditing implies that animal welfare can be assessed in a practical way, but, as we have seen, welfare is complex. The assessment of animal welfare will be examined in the next article.

Footnotes

The views in this column do not necessarily represent the opinions of the CVMA.

References

2. Blood DC, Studdert VP. Bailliere's Comprehensive Veterinary Dictionary, London: Bailliere Tindall 1988:51,984.

3. Broom DM. Animal welfare: concepts and measurements. J Anim Sci 1991;69:4167-4175. [ PubMed]

4. Duncan IJH. Poultry welfare: science or subjectivity? Br Poult Sci 2002;43:643-652. [ PubMed]

5. Duncan IJH. Animal welfare defined in terms of feelings. Acta Agric Scand Sect A, Animal Sci Suppl 1996;27: 29-35.

6. Petherick JC, Rushen J. Behavioural restriction. In: Appleby MA, Hughes BO, eds. Animal Welfare. Wallingford, UK: CABI Publ, 1997:89-105.

7. Rollin BE. Animal Rights and Human Morality. Buffalo, New York: Prometheus Books, 1981:38-40,54-57.

8. Kiley-Worthington M. Ecological, ethological and ethically sound environments for animals: towards symbiosis. J Agric Ethics 1989;2:323-247.

9. Appleby M. What Should We Do About Animal Welfare? Oxford: Blackwell Sci, 1999:36-37.

10. Fraser D, Weary DM, Pajor EA, Milligan, BN. A scientific conception of animal welfare that reflects ethical concerns. Anim Welfare 1997;6:187-205.

11. Duncan IJH, Fraser D. Understanding animal welfare. In: Appleby MA, Hughes BO, eds. Animal Welfare. Wallingford, UK: CABI Publ, 1997:19-31.

12. Fraser D. Science, values and animal welfare: exploring the inextricable connection. Anim Welfare 1995;4:103-117.

13. Appleby MC. The European Union ban on conventional cages for laying hens: history and prospects. J Appl Anim Welf Sci 2003. In press. [ PubMed]

14. Breward J, Gentle M. Neuroma formation and abnormal afferent nerve discharges after partial beak amputation (beak trimming) in poultry. Experientia 1985;41:1132-1134. [ PubMed]

15. Duncan IJ, Slee GS, Seawright E, Breward J. Behavioural consequences of partial beak amputation (beak trimming) in poultry. Br Poult Sci 1989;30:479-88. [ PubMed]

16. Anon. Fast food push for animal welfare standards. Farm Anim Welfare News 2002;2:1-2.

Additional reading

Spedding. C. Animal Welfare. London: Earthscan Publ, 2000.

Webster. J. Animal Welfare. A Cool Eye Towards Eden. Oxford: Blackwell Sci, 1995.

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What is animal welfare? Common definitions and their practical consequences

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In concluding my first article, I proposed that "...whatever we decide (about animal welfare) as a profession or as individuals, we must be knowledgeable" ( 1). In this and succeeding articles, some fundamental points will be covered, starting with what animal welfare is and how definitions affect the way animals are treated.

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The following 11 videos helped a lot of animals this year-watch the ones that look interesting, then go and make the world a better place for animals:

11. "Fur Hurts-Art and Activism Collide"

An inspiring video showing how 550,386 stickpins got people to stop wearing fur. Required viewing for anyone interested in effective advocacy.

10. "98% Human"

This groundbreaking (and award-winning) public service announcement (PSA), created in tandem with BBDO and The Mill, is computer-generated proof that animals don't belong in movies.

Watch how this video was made.

9. "James Cromwell Arrested Protesting UW Cat Experiments"

The Emmy-winner took celebrity activism to the next level when he interrupted a University of Wisconsin-Madison regents meeting in behalf of cats abused in cruel brain experiments at the school.

8. "Olivia Munn Exposes Never Before Seen Footage on Chinese Fur Farms"

Olivia Munn narrates this shocking exposé showing the horrors that animals endure on Chinese fur farms (NSFW).

7. "PETA Fandangoing for Animals"

This quirky video pays homage to fleet-footed World Wrestling Entertainment wrestler Fandango.

Trust us, it's a thing.

6. "Joaquin Phoenix Is Drowning"

Joaquin Phoenix lent his considerable acting talents to this PSA, which shows what fish endure when they are pulled from the water.

5. "Runway Reversal"

The video uses cutting-edge animation and a shocking reversal to show that animals are not ours to wear.

4. "Exposé: Live Lobsters, Crabs Torn Apart"

This video revealed to hundreds of thousands of people how millions of lobsters and crabs are dismembered alive each year (NSFW).

3. "Miss USA Winners Bare All and Say NO to Fur"

This video featuring nearly naked beauty queens spread the anti-fur message far and wide (NSFW).

2. "Glass Walls"

If you've ever wondered, "What's wrong with eating animals?" this is the video to watch. One of the most important videos you'll ever see (NSFW).

1. "The Truth Behind Angora Fur"

This beyond-shocking video revealed the horrific truth behind angora fur (NSFW).

Subscribe to PETA's YouTube channel for more groundbreaking videos in 2014.

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The 11 Most Important Animal Rights Videos of 2013 | PETA

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The following 11 videos helped a lot of animals this year-watch the ones that look interesting, then go and make the world a better place for animals: An inspiring video showing how 550,386 stickpins got people to stop wearing fur. Required viewing for anyone interested in effective advocacy.

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Does the life of an animal mean nothing at all?

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Double click anywhere to make your posts and be sure to initial each post <3

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Double click anywhere to make your posts and be sure to initial each post <3

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