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Animal rights, also known as animal liberation, is the idea that some or all non-human animals are entitled to the possession of their own lives, and that their most basic interests—such as an interest in not suffering—should be afforded the same consideration as the similar interests of human beings. Advocates oppose the assignment of moral value and fundamental protections on the basis of species membership alone, an idea known as speciesism, arguing that it is a prejudice as irrational as any other. They agree for the most part that animals should no longer be viewed as property, or used as food, clothing, research subjects, or entertainment.

Advocates approach the issue from a variety of philosophical and political positions. Protectionists seek incremental reform in how animals are treated, with a view to ending animal use entirely, or almost entirely. This view is represented by the philosopher Peter Singer, whose focus as a utilitarian is not on moral rights, but on the argument that animals have interests, particularly an interest in not suffering, and that there is no moral or logical reason not to award those interests equal consideration. The abolitionist position is that animals do have moral rights, which the pursuit of incremental reform fails to respect; protectionism may even worsen the position of animals by encouraging human beings to feel comfortable about using them. This position is represented by the philosopher Tom Regan, who as a deontologist argues that at least some animals are "subjects-of-a-life," with beliefs, desires, memories, and a sense of their own future, who must be treated as ends in themselves, not as a means to an end.

In parallel to the debate about moral rights, animal law is now widely taught in law schools in North America, and several prominent legal scholars support the extension of basic legal rights and personhood to at least some animals. The animals most often considered in arguments for personhood are bonobos and chimpanzees. This is supported by some animal rights academics because it would break through the species barrier, but opposed by others because it predicates moral value on mental complexity, rather than on sentience alone.

Critics of animals rights argue that animals are unable to enter into a social contract, and thus cannot be possessors of rights, a view summed up by the philosopher Roger Scruton, who writes that only humans have duties, and therefore only humans have rights. A parallel argument, known as the animal welfare position, is that animals may be used as resources so long as there is no unnecessary suffering; they may have some moral standing, but they are inferior in status to human beings, and insofar as they have interests, those interests may be overridden, though what counts as necessary suffering or a legitimate sacrifice of interests varies considerably. Certain forms of animal rights activism, in particular the destruction of fur farms and animal laboratories by the Animal Liberation Front, have also attracted criticism, including from within the animal rights movement itself.

Overview
The two main philosophical approaches to animal rights are utilitarian and rights-based. The former is exemplified by Peter Singer, and the latter by Tom Regan and Gary Francione. Their differences reflect a distinction philosophers draw between ethical theories that judge the rightness of an act by its consequences (consequentialism/teleological ethics, or utilitarianism), and those that focus on the principle behind the act, almost regardless of consequences (deontological ethics). Deontologists argue that there are acts we should never perform, even if failing to do so entails a worse outcome.

There are a number of positions that can be defended from a consequentalist or deontologist perspective, including the capabilities approach, represented by Martha Nussbaum, and the egalitarian approach, which has been examined by Ingmar Persson and Peter Vallentyne. The capabilities approach focuses on what individuals require to fulfill their capabilities: Nussbaum (2006) argues that animals need a right to life, some control over their environment, company, play, and physical health. Stephen R. L. Clark, Mary Midgley, and Bernard Rollin also discuss animal rights in terms of animals being permitted to lead a life appropriate for their kind. Egalitarianism favors an equal distribution of happiness among all individuals, which makes the interests of the worse off more important than those of the better off. Another approach, virtue ethics, holds that in considering how to act we should consider the character of the actor, and what kind of moral agents we should be; Rosalind Hursthouse has suggested an approach to animal rights based on virtue ethics. Mark Rowlands (1998), has proposed a contractarian approach.

Peter Singer
Peter Singer, professor of bioethics at Princeton University, does not believe there are such things as natural rights and that animals have them, although he uses the language of rights to discuss how we ought to treat individuals. Singer is a preference utilitarian, meaning that he judges the rightness of an act by the extent to which it satisfies the preferences (interests) of those affected, maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain. His position is that there is no reason not to give equal consideration to the interests of human and non-humans, though his principle of equality does not require identical treatment. A mouse and a man both have an interest in not being kicked, because both would suffer, and there are no moral or logical grounds for failing to accord those interests equal weight. Interests are predicated on the ability to suffer, and nothing more, and once it is established that a being has interests, those interests must be given equal consideration. Singer quotes the English philosopher Henry Sidgwick: "The good of any one individual is of no more importance, from the point of view ... of the Universe, than the good of any other."

Commentators on all sides of the debate now accept that animals suffer and feel pain, although it was not always so. Bernard Rollin, professor of philosophy, animal sciences, and biomedical sciences at Colorado State University, writes that Descartes' influence continued to be felt until the 1980s. Veterinarians trained in the U.S. before 1989 were taught to ignore pain, he writes, and at least one major veterinary hospital in the 1960s did not stock narcotic analgesics for animal pain control. In his interactions with scientists, he was often asked to "prove" that animals are conscious, and to provide "scientifically acceptable" evidence that they could feel pain. Scientific publications have made it clear over the last two decades that the majority of researchers do believe animals suffer and feel pain, though it continues to be argued that their suffering may be reduced by an inability to experience the same dread of anticipation as humans, or to remember the suffering as vividly. The problem of animal suffering, and animal consciousness in general, arose primarily because animals have no language. Singer argues that, if language were needed to communicate pain, it would often be impossible to know when humans are in pain, though we can observe pain behavior and make a calculated guess based on it. He argues that there is no reason to suppose animal pain behavior would have a different meaning.

Singer argues further that equality of consideration is a prescription, not an assertion of fact. If the equality of the sexes were based only on the idea that men and women were equally intelligent, and this were later found to be false, we would have to abandon the practice of equal consideration. He quotes President Thomas Jefferson, the principal author in 1776 of the American Declaration of Independence: "Because Sir Isaac Newton was superior to others in understanding, he was not therefore lord of the property or persons of others."

Tom Regan
Tom Regan, professor emeritus of philosophy at North Carolina State University, argues in The Case for Animal Rights (1983) that non-human animals are what he calls "subjects-of-a-life," and as such are bearers of rights. He writes that, because the moral rights of humans are based on their possession of certain cognitive abilities, and because these abilities are also possessed by at least some non-human animals, such animals must have the same moral rights as humans. Although only humans act as moral agents, both marginal-case humans, such as infants, and at least some non-humans must have the status of "moral patients." Moral patients are unable to formulate moral principles, and as such are unable to do right or wrong, even though what they do may be beneficial or harmful. Only moral agents are able to engage in moral action. Animals for Regan have "intrinsic value" as subjects-of-a-life, and cannot be regarded as a means to an end, a view that places him firmly in the abolitionist camp. His theory does not extend to all animals, but only to those that can be regarded as subjects-of-a-life. He argues that all normal mammals of at least one year of age would qualify:

"...individuals are subjects-of-a-life if they have beliefs and desires; perception, memory, and a sense of the future, including their own future; an emotional life together with feelings of pleasure and pain; preference- and welfare-interests; the ability to initiate action in pursuit of their desires and goals; a psychophysical identity over time; and an individual welfare in the sense that their experiential life fares well or ill for them, logically independently of their utility for others and logically independently of their being the object of anyone else's interests."

Whereas Singer is primarily concerned with improving the treatment of animals and accepts that, in some hypothetical scenarios, individual animals might be used legitimately to further human or non-human ends, Regan believes we ought to treat non-human animals as we would humans. He applies the strict Kantian ideal (which Kant himself applied only to humans) that they ought never to be sacrificed as a means to an end, and must be treated as ends in themselves.

Gary Francione
Gary Francione, professor of law and philosophy at Rutgers School of Law-Newark, is a leading abolitionist writer, arguing that animals need only one right, the right not to be owned. Everything else would follow from that paradigm shift. He writes that, although most people would condemn the mistreatment of animals, and in many countries there are laws that seem to reflect those concerns, "in practice the legal system allows any use of animals, however abhorrent." The law only requires that any suffering not be "unnecessary." In deciding what counts as "unnecessary," an animal's interests are weighed against the interests of human beings, and the latter almost always prevail.

Francione argues further that focusing on animal welfare may worsen the position of animals by entrenching the view of them as property, and making the public feel comfortable about using them. He calls animal rights group who pursue animal welfare issues, such as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, the "new welfarists," arguing that they have more in common with 19th-century animal protectionists than with the animal rights movement; indeed, the terms "animal protection" and "protectionism" are increasingly favored. His position is that there is no animal rights movement in the United States.

Mark Rowlands
Mark Rowlands, professor of philosophy at the University of Florida, has proposed a contractarian approach, based on the original position and the veil of ignorance—a "state of nature" thought experiment that tests intuitions about justice and fairness—in John Rawls's A Theory of Justice (1971). In the original position, individuals choose principles of justice (what kind of society to form, and how primary social goods will be distributed), unaware of their individual characteristics—their race, sex, class, or intelligence, whether they are able-bodied or disabled, rich or poor—and therefore unaware of which role they will assume in the society they are about to form. The idea is that, operating behind the veil of ignorance, they will choose a social contract in which there is basic fairness and justice for them no matter the position they occupy. Rawls did not include species membership as one of the attributes hidden from the decision makers in the original position. Rowlands proposes extending the veil of ignorance to include rationality, which he argues is an undeserved property similar to characteristics such as race, sex and intelligence.

R. G. Frey
R. G. Frey, professor of philosophy at Bowling Green State University, is a preference utilitarian, as is Singer, but reaches a very different conclusion, arguing in Interests and Rights (1980) that animals have no interests for the utilitarian to take into account. Frey argues that interests are dependent on desire, and that no desire can exist without a corresponding belief. Animals have no beliefs, because a belief state requires the ability to hold a second-order belief—a belief about the belief—which he argues requires language: "If someone were to say, e.g. 'The cat believes that the door is locked,' then that person is holding, as I see it, that the cat holds the declarative sentence 'The door is locked' to be true; and I can see no reason whatever for crediting the cat or any other creature which lacks language, including human infants, with entertaining declarative sentences."

Carl Cohen
Carl Cohen, professor of philosophy at the University of Michigan, argues that rights holders must be able to distinguish between their own interests and what is right. "The holders of rights must have the capacity to comprehend rules of duty governing all, including themselves. In applying such rules, [they] ... must recognize possible conflicts between what is in their own interest and what is just. Only in a community of beings capable of self-restricting moral judgments can the concept of a right be correctly invoked." Cohen rejects Singer's argument that, since a brain-damaged human could not make moral judgments, moral judgments cannot be used as the distinguishing characteristic for determining who is awarded rights. Cohen writes that the test for moral judgment "is not a test to be administered to humans one by one," but should be applied to the capacity of members of the species in general.

Richard Posner
Judge Richard Posner of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit debated the issue of animal rights in 2001 with Peter Singer. Posner argues that his moral intuition tells him "that human beings prefer their own. If a dog threatens a human infant, even if it requires causing more pain to the dog to stop it, than the dog would have caused to the infant, then we favour the child. It would be monstrous to spare the dog."

Singer challenges this by arguing that formerly unequal rights for gays, women, and certain races were justified using the same set of intuitions. Posner replies that equality in civil rights did not occur because of ethical arguments, but because facts mounted that there were no morally significant differences between humans based on race, sex, or sexual orientation that would support inequality. If and when similar facts emerge about humans and animals, the differences in rights will erode too. But facts will drive equality, not ethical arguments that run contrary to instinct, he argues. Posner calls his approach "soft utilitarianism," in contrast to Singer's "hard utilitarianism." He argues:

"The 'soft' utilitarian position on animal rights is a moral intuition of many, probably most, Americans. We realize that animals feel pain, and we think that to inflict pain without a reason is bad. Nothing of practical value is added by dressing up this intuition in the language of philosophy; much is lost when the intuition is made a stage in a logical argument. When kindness toward animals is levered into a duty of weighting the pains of animals and of people equally, bizarre vistas of social engineering are opened up."

Roger Scruton
Roger Scruton, the British philosopher, argues that rights imply obligations. Every legal privilege, he writes, imposes a burden on the one who does not possess that privilege: that is, "your right may be my duty." Scruton therefore regards the emergence of the animal rights movement as "the strangest cultural shift within the liberal worldview," because the idea of rights and responsibilities is, he argues, distinctive to the human condition, and it makes no sense to spread them beyond our own species.

He accuses animal rights advocates of "pre-scientific" anthropomorphism, attributing traits to animals that are, he says, Beatrix Potter-like, where "only man is vile." It is within this fiction that the appeal of animal rights lies, he argues. The world of animals is non-judgmental, filled with dogs who return our affection almost no matter what we do to them, and cats who pretend to be affectionate when, in fact, they care only about themselves. It is, he argues, a fantasy, a world of escape.

Moral status of animals in the ancient world
The 21st-century debates about animals can be traced to the ancient world. The idea of a divine hierarchy was based on the concept of "dominion" in the Book of Genesis (5th or 6th century BCE), in which Adam is given "dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth." Dominion need not entail property rights, but it has been interpreted over the centuries to imply ownership. Animal were things to be possessed and used, whereas man was created in the image of God, and was superior to everything else in nature.

The philosopher and mathematician, Pythagoras (c. 580–c. 500 BCE), urged respect for animals, believing that human and non-human souls were reincarnated from human to animal, and vice versa, the so-called transmigration of the soul. Against this, Aristotle (384–322 BCE) argued that non-human animals had no interests of their own, ranking far below humans in the Great Chain of Being. He was the first to create a taxonomy of animals; he perceived some similarities between humans and other species, but argued for the most part that animals lacked reason (logos), thought (dianoia, nous), and belief (doxa). One of Aristotle's pupils, Theophrastus (c. 371 – c. 287 BCE) argued that animals had reason too; he opposed eating meat on the grounds that it robbed them of life and was therefore unjust. Theophrastus did not prevail; Richard Sorabji (1993) writes that current attitudes to animals can be traced to the heirs of the Western Christian tradition selecting the heirarchy that Aristotle sought to preserve.

Both Hindu and Buddhist societies embraced vegetarianism from the 3rd century BCE, in line with ahimsa, the doctrine of non-violence. Tom Beauchamp (2011) writes that the Neoplatonist philosopher, Porphyry (234–c. 305 CE), offered the most extensive account in antiquity of how animals should be treated in his On Abstinence from Animal Food, and On Abstinence from Killing Animals.

Early animal protection laws in the English-speaking world
According to Richard Ryder, the first known animal protection legislation in the English-speaking world was passed in Ireland in 1635. It prohibited pulling wool off sheep, and the attaching of ploughs to horses' tails, referring to "the cruelty used to beasts." In 1641 the first legal code to protect domestic animals in North America was passed by the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The colony's constitution was based on The Body of Liberties by the Reverend Nathaniel Ward (1578–1652), a lawyer, Puritan clergyman, and University of Cambridge graduate, originally from Suffolk, England. Ward listed the "rites" the Colony's general court later endorsed, including rite number 92: "No man shall exercise any Tirrany or Crueltie toward any bruite Creature which are usuallie kept for man's use." Historian Roderick Nash (1989) writes that, at the height of René Descartes' influence in Europe—and his view that animals were simply automata—it is significant that the New Englanders created a law that implied animals were not unfeeling machines.

The Puritans passed animal protection legislation in England too. Kathleen Kete writes that animal welfare laws were passed in 1654 as part of the ordinances of the Protectorate—the government under Oliver Cromwell (1599–1658), which lasted from 1653 to 1659, following the English Civil War. Cromwell disliked blood sports, which included cockfighting, cock throwing, dog fighting, bull baiting and bull running, said to tenderize the meat. These could be seen in villages and fairgrounds, and became associated with idleness, drunkenness, and gambling. Kete writes that the Puritans interpreted the biblical dominion of man over animals to mean responsible stewardship, rather than ownership. The opposition to blood sports became part of what was seen as Puritan interference in people's lives, and the animal protection laws were overturned during the Restoration, when Charles II was returned to the throne in 1660.

René Descartes


The great influence of the 17th century was the French philosopher, René Descartes (1596–1650), whose Meditations (1641) informed attitudes about animals well into the 20th century. Writing during the scientific revolution, Descartes proposed a mechanistic theory of the universe, the aim of which was to show that the world could be mapped out without allusion to subjective experience.

His mechanistic approach was extended to the issue of animal consciousness. Mind, for Descartes, was a thing apart from the physical universe, a separate substance, linking human beings to the mind of God. The non-human, on the other hand, were for Descartes nothing but complex automata, with no souls, minds, or reason. They could see, hear, and touch, but were not conscious or able to suffer. In the Discourse on the Method (1637), Descartes wrote that the ability to reason and use language involved being able to respond in complex ways to "all the contingencies of life," something that animals clearly could not do. He argued from this that any sounds animals made did not constitute language, but were simply automatic responses to external stimuli.

John Locke
Against Descartes, the British philosopher John Locke (1632–1704) argued, in Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693), that animals did have feelings, and that unnecessary cruelty toward them was morally wrong, but—echoing Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274)—the right not to be harmed adhered either to the animal's owner, or to the human being who was being harmed by being cruel. Discussing the importance of preventing children from tormenting animals, he wrote: "For the custom of tormenting and killing of beasts will, by degrees, harden their minds even towards men."

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Immanuel Kant
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) argued in Discourse on Inequality (1754) for the inclusion of animals in natural law on the grounds of sentience: " ... it is clear that, being destitute of intelligence and liberty, [animals] cannot recognize that law; as they partake, however, in some measure of our nature, in consequence of the sensibility wherewith they are endowed, they ought to partake of natural right; so that mankind is subjected to a kind of obligation even toward the brutes." In his treatise on education, Emile, or On Education (1762), he encouraged parents to raise their children on a vegetarian diet.

The German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), following Locke, opposed the idea that humans have duties toward non-humans. For Kant, cruelty to animals was wrong solely on the grounds that it was bad for humankind. He argued in 1785 that "cruelty to animals is contrary to man's duty to himself, because it deadens in him the feeling of sympathy for their sufferings, and thus a natural tendency that is very useful to morality in relation to other human beings is weakened."

Jeremy Bentham
Four years later, one of the founders of modern utilitarianism, the English philosopher Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832), although opposed to the concept of natural rights, argued that it was the ability to suffer that should be the benchmark of how we treat other beings. If rationality were the criterion, he argued, many humans, including infants and the disabled, would also have to be treated as though they were things. He wrote in 1789, just as slaves were being freed by the French, but were still held captive in the British dominions:

"The French have already discovered that the blackness of the skin is no reason a human being should be abandoned without redress to the caprice of a tormentor. It may one day come to be recognized that the number of the legs, the villosity of the skin, or the termination of the os sacrum are reasons equally insufficient for abandoning a sensitive being to the same fate. What else is it that should trace the insuperable line? Is it the faculty of reason or perhaps the faculty of discourse? But a full-grown horse or dog, is beyond comparison a more rational, as well as a more conversable animal, than an infant of a day or a week or even a month, old. But suppose the case were otherwise, what would it avail? the question is not, Can they reason?, nor Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?"

Although arguing that animals' interests should be taken into account, Bentham did not conclude that humans and non-humans had equal moral significance.

Thomas Taylor
When the British feminist, Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797) published A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), Thomas Taylor (1758–1835), a Cambridge philosopher, responded with an anonymous tract, Vindication of the Rights of Brutes, intended as a reductio ad absurdum. Taylor took Wollstonecraft's arguments, and showed that they applied equally to animals, leading to the conclusion that animals have "intrinsic and real dignity and worth," a conclusion absurd enough, in his view, to discredit Wollstonecraft's position entirely.

19th century: Emergence of jus animalium
The 19th century saw an explosion of interest in animal protection, particularly in England. Debbie Legge and Simon Brooman write that the educated classes became concerned about attitudes toward the old, the needy, children, and the insane, and that this concern was extended to non-humans. Before the 19th century, there had been prosecutions for poor treatment of animals, but only because of the damage to the animal as property. In 1793, for example, John Cornish was found not guilty of maiming a horse after pulling its tongue out, the judge ruling that he could be found guilty only if there was evidence of malice toward the owner.

From 1800 onwards, there were several attempts in England to introduce animal protection legislation. The first was a bill against bull baiting, introduced on April 18, 1800, by a Scottish MP, Sir William Pulteney (1729–1805). It was opposed inter alia on the grounds that it was anti-working class, and was defeated by two votes. Another attempt was made in 1802, this time opposed by the Secretary at War, William Windham (1750–1810), who said the Bill was supported by Methodists and Jacobins who wished to "destroy the Old English character, by the abolition of all rural sports." In 1809, Lord Erskine (c. 1746–1828) introduced a bill to protect cattle and horses from malicious wounding, wanton cruelty, and beating. He told the House of Lords that animals had protection only as property: "They have no rights. [It is] that defect in the law which I seek to remedy." The Bill was passed by the House of Lords, but was opposed in the Commons by Windham, who said it would be used against the "lower orders" when the real culprits would be their employers.

Martin's Act
In 1821, the Treatment of Horses bill was introduced by Colonel Richard Martin (1754–1834), MP for Galway in Ireland, but it was lost among laughter in the House of Commons that the next thing would be rights for asses, dogs, and cats. Nicknamed "Humanity Dick" by George IV, Martin finally succeeded in 1822 with his "Ill Treatment of Horses and Cattle Bill," or "Martin's Act", as it became known, the world's first major piece of animal protection legislation. It was given royal assent on June 22 that year as An Act to prevent the cruel and improper Treatment of Cattle, and made it an offence, punishable by fines up to five pounds or two months imprisonment, to "beat, abuse, or ill-treat any horse, mare, gelding, mule, ass, ox, cow, heifer, steer, sheep or other cattle."

Legge and Brooman argue that the success of the Bill lay in the personality of "Humanity Dick," who was able to shrug off the ridicule from the House of Commons, and whose own sense of humour managed to capture its attention. It was Martin himself who brought the first prosecution under the Act, when he had Bill Burns, a costermonger—a street seller of fruit—arrested for beating a donkey, and paraded the animal's injuries before a reportedly astonished court. Burns was fined, becoming the first person in the world known to have been convicted of animal cruelty, while newspapers and music halls were full of jokes about how Martin had relied on the testimony of a donkey. The trial became the subject of a painting (left), which hangs in the headquarters of the RSPCA in London.

Other countries followed suit in passing legislation or making decisions that favoured animals. In 1822, the courts in New York ruled that wanton cruelty to animals was a misdemeanor at common law. In France in 1850, Jacques Philippe Delmas de Grammont succeeded in having the Loi Grammont passed, outlawing cruelty against domestic animals, and leading to years of arguments about whether bulls could be classed as domestic in order to ban bullfighting. The state of Washington followed in 1859, New York in 1866, California in 1868, Florida in 1889. In England, a series of amendments extended the reach of the 1822 Act, which became the Cruelty to Animals Act 1835, outlawing cockfighting, baiting, and dog fighting, followed by another amendment in 1849, and again in 1876.

Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals
Richard Martin soon realized that magistrates did not take the Martin Act seriously, and that it was not being reliably enforced. Several members of parliament decided to form a society to bring prosecutions under the Act. The Reverend Arthur Broome, formerly of Balliol College, Oxford and recently appointed the vicar of Bromley-by-Bow, arranged a meeting in Old Slaughter's Coffee House in St. Martin's Lane, a London café frequented by artists and actors. The group met on June 16, 1824, and included a number of MPs: Richard Martin, Sir James Mackintosh, Sir Thomas Buxton, William Wilberforce, and Sir James Graham, who had been an MP, and who became one again in 1826. They decided to form a "Society instituted for the purpose of preventing cruelty to animals," or the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, as it became known. It determined to send men to inspect slaughterhouses, Smithfield Market, where livestock had been sold since the 10th century, and to look into the treatment of horses by coachmen. The Society became the Royal Society in 1840, when it was granted a royal charter by Queen Victoria, herself strongly opposed to vivisection.

Noel Molland writes that, in 1824, Catherine Smithies, an anti-slavery activist, set up an SPCA youth wing called the Bands of Mercy. It was a children's club modeled on the Temperance Society's Bands of Hope, which were intended to encourage children to campaign against drinking and gambling. The Bands of Mercy were similarly meant to encourage a love of animals. Molland writes that some of its members responded with more enthusiasm than Smithies intended, and became known for engaging in direct action against hunters by sabotaging their rifles, although Kim Stallwood writes that he has never been able to find solid evidence to support this. Whether the story is true or apocryphal, the idea of the youth group was revived by Ronnie Lee in 1972, when he and Cliff Goodman set up the Band of Mercy as a militant, anti-hunting guerrilla group, which slashed hunters' vehicles' tires and smashed their windows. In 1976, some of the same activists, sensing that the Band of Mercy name sounded too accommodating, founded the Animal Liberation Front.

From 1824 onwards, several books were published that approached the issue of animal rights, rather than protection. Lewis Gompertz, one of the men who attended the first meeting of the SPCA, published Moral Inquiries on the Situation of Man and of Brutes (1824), arguing that every living creature, human and non-human, has more right to the use of its own body than anyone else has to use it, and that our duty to promote happiness applies equally to all beings. In 1879, Edward Nicholson argued in Rights of an Animal that animals have the same natural right to life and liberty that human beings do, arguing strongly against Descartes' mechanistic view, or what he called the "Neo-Cartesian snake," that they lack consciousness. Other writers of the time who explored whether animals might have natural (or moral) rights were John Lewis, Edward Evans, and J. Howard Moore.

Arthur Schopenhauer
The development in England of the concept of animal rights was strongly supported by the German philosopher, Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860). He wrote that Europeans were "awakening more and more to a sense that beasts have rights, in proportion as the strange notion is being gradually overcome and outgrown, that the animal kingdom came into existence solely for the benefit and pleasure of man." He stopped short of advocating vegetarianism, arguing that, so long as an animal's death was quick, men would suffer more by not eating meat than animals would suffer by being eaten. Nevertheless, he applauded the animal protection movement in England—"To the honor, then, of the English, be it said that they are the first people who have, in downright earnest, extended the protecting arm of the law to animals." He also argued against the dominant Kantian idea that animal cruelty is wrong only insofar as it brutalizes humans:

"Thus, because Christian morality leaves animals out of account ... they are at once outlawed in philosophical morals; they are mere 'things,' mere means to any ends whatsoever. They can therefore be used for vivisection, hunting, coursing, bullfights, and horse racing, and can be whipped to death as they struggle along with heavy carts of stone. Shame on such a morality that is worthy of pariahs, chandalas, and mlechchhas, and that fails to recognize the eternal essence that exists in every living thing ..."

John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873), the English philosopher, also argued that utilitarianism must take animals into account, writing in 1874: "Nothing is more natural to human beings, nor, up to a certain point in cultivation, more universal, than to estimate the pleasures and pains of others as deserving of regard exactly in proportion to their likeness to ourselves. ... Granted that any practice causes more pain to animals than it gives pleasure to man; is that practice moral or immoral? And if, exactly in proportion as human beings raise their heads out of the slough of selfishness, they do not with one voice answer 'immoral,' let the morality of the principle of utility be for ever condemned."

American SPCA, Frances Power Cobbe, Anna Kingsford
The first animal protection group in the United States, the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA), was founded by Henry Bergh in April 1866. Bergh had been appointed by President Abraham Lincoln to a diplomatic post in Russia, and had been disturbed by the treatment of animals there. He consulted with the president of the RSPCA in London, and returned to the United States to speak out against bullfights, cockfights, and the beating of horses. He created a "Declaration of the Rights of Animals," and in 1866 persuaded the New York state legislature to pass anti-cruelty legislation and to grant the ASPCA the authority to enforce it.

In 1875, the Irish social reformer Frances Power Cobbe (1822–1904) founded the Society for the Protection of Animals Liable to Vivisection, the world's first organization opposed to animal research, which became the National Anti-Vivisection Society. In 1880, the English feminist Anna Kingsford (1846–1888) became one of the first English women to graduate in medicine, after studying for her degree in Paris, and the only student at the time to do so without having experimented on animals. She published The Perfect Way in Diet (1881), advocating vegetarianism, and in the same year founded the Food Reform Society. She was also vocal in her opposition to animal experiments. In 1898, Cobbe set up the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection, with which she campaigned against the use of dogs in research, coming close to success with the 1919 Dogs (Protection) Bill, which almost became law.

Ryder writes that, as the interest in animal protection grew in the late 1890s, attitudes toward animals among scientists began to harden. They embraced the idea that what they saw as anthropomorphism—the attribution of human qualities to non-humans—was unscientific. Animals had to be approached as physiological entities only, as Ivan Pavlov wrote in 1927, "without any need to resort to fantastic speculations as to the existence of any possible subjective states." It was a position that hearkened back to Descartes in the 17th century, that non-humans were purely mechanical, with no rationality and perhaps even no consciousness.

Henry Salt
In 1894, Henry Salt, a former master at Eton, who had set up the Humanitarian League to lobby for a ban on hunting the year before, published Animals' Rights: Considered in Relation to Social Progress. He wrote that the object of the essay was to "set the principle of animals' rights on a consistent and intelligible footing." Concessions to the demands for jus animalium had been made grudgingly to date, he wrote, with an eye on the interests of animals qua property, rather than as rights bearers:

"Even the leading advocates of animal rights seem to have shrunk from basing their claim on the only argument which can ultimately be held to be a really sufficient one—the assertion that animals, as well as men, though, of course, to a far less extent than men, are possessed of a distinctive individuality, and, therefore, are in justice entitled to live their lives with a due measure of that 'restricted freedom' to which Herbert Spencer alludes."

He argued that there was no point in claiming rights for animals if those rights were subordinated to human desire, and took issue with the idea that the life of a human might have more moral worth. "[The] notion of the life of an animal having 'no moral purpose,' belongs to a class of ideas which cannot possibly be accepted by the advanced humanitarian thought of the present day—it is a purely arbitrary assumption, at variance with our best instincts, at variance with our best science, and absolutely fatal (if the subject be clearly thought out) to any full realization of animals' rights. If we are ever going to do justice to the lower races, we must get rid of the antiquated notion of a 'great gulf' fixed between them and mankind, and must recognize the common bond of humanity that unites all living beings in one universal brotherhood."

Brown Dog Affair, Lizzy Lind af Hageby
In 1902, Lizzy Lind af Hageby (1878–1963), a Swedish feminist, and a friend, Lisa Shartau, traveled to England to study medicine at the London School of Medicine for Women, intending to learn enough to become authoritative anti-vivisection campaigners. In the course of their studies, they witnessed several animal experiments, and published the details as The Shambles of Science: Extracts from the Diary of Two Students of Physiology (1903). Their allegations included that they had seen a brown terrier dog dissected while conscious, which prompted angry denials from the researcher, William Bayliss, and his colleagues. After Stephen Coleridge of the National Anti-Vivisection Society accused Bayliss of having violated the Cruelty to Animals Act 1876, Bayliss sued and won, convincing a court that the animal had been anaesthetized as required by the Act.

In response, anti-vivisection campaigners commissioned a statue of the dog to be erected in Battersea Park in 1906, with the plaque: "Men and Women of England, how long shall these Things be?" The statue caused uproar among medical students, leading to frequent vandalism of the statue and the need for a 24-hour police guard. The affair culminated in riots in 1907 when 1,000 medical students clashed with police, suffragettes and trade unionists in Trafalgar Square. Battersea Council removed the statue from the park under cover of darkness two years later. Coral Lansbury (1985) and Hilda Kean (1998) write that the significance of the affair lay in the relationships that formed in support of the "Brown Dog Done to Death," which became a symbol of the oppression the women's suffrage movement felt at the hands of the male political and medical establishment. Kean argues that both sides saw themselves as heirs to the future. The students saw the women and trade unionists as representatives of anti-science sentimentality, while the women saw themselves as progressive, with the students and their teachers belonging to a previous age.

Development of veganism
Members of the English Vegetarian Society who avoided eggs and animal milk in the 19th and early 20th century were known as strict vegetarians. The International Vegetarian Union cites an article about alternatives to shoe leather in the Vegetarian Society's magazine in 1851 as evidence of the existence of a group that sought to avoid animal products entirely. There was increasing unease within the Society from the turn of the century onwards about consuming eggs and milk, and in 1923 its magazine wrote that the "ideal position for vegetarians is abstinence from animal products."

Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) argued in 1931 before a meeting of the Society in London that vegetarianism should be pursued in the interests of animals, and not only as a human health issue. He met both Henry Salt and Anna Kingsford, and read Salt's A Plea for Vegetarianism (1880); Salt wrote in the pamphlet that "a Vegetarian is still regarded, in ordinary society, as little better than a madman." In 1944, several members, led by Donald Watson (1910–2005), decided to break from the Vegetarian Society over the issue of eggs and milk. Watson coined the term "vegan" for those whose diet included no animal products, and they formed the British Vegan Society on November 1 that year.

Tierschutzgesetz
On coming to power in January 1933, the Nazi Party passed the most comprehensive set of animal protection laws in Europe. Kathleen Kete writes that it was the first known attempt by a government to break the species barrier, the traditional binary of humans and animals. Humans as a species lost their sacrosanct status, with Aryans at the top of the hierarchy, followed by wolves, eagles, and pigs, and Jews languishing with rats at the bottom. Kete writes that it was the worst possible answer to the question of what our relationship with other species ought to be.

right|thumb|180px|This cartoon appeared in [[Kladderadatsch, a German satirical magazine, on September 3, 1933, showing lab animals giving the Nazi salute to Hermann Göring, after restrictions on animal testing were announced.]] On November 24, 1933, the Tierschutzgesetz, or animal protection law, was introduced, with Adolf Hitler announcing an end to animal cruelty: "Im neuen Reich darf es keine Tierquälerei mehr geben." ("In the new Reich, no more animal cruelty will be allowed.") It was followed on July 3, 1934 by the Reichsjagdgesetz, prohibiting hunting; on July 1, 1935 by the Naturschutzgesetz, a comprehensive piece of environmental legislation; on November 13, 1937 by a law regulating animal transport by car; and on September 8, 1938 by a similar one dealing with animals on trains. The least painful way to shoe a horse was prescribed, as was the correct way to cook a lobster to prevent them from being boiled alive. Several senior Nazis, including Hitler, Rudolf Hess, Joseph Goebbels, and Heinrich Himmler, adopted some form of vegetarianism, though by most accounts not strictly, with Hitler allowing himself the occasional dish of meat. Himmler also mandated vegetarianism for senior SS officers, although this was due mainly to health concerns rather than for animal welfare.

Shortly before the Tierschutzgesetz was introduced, vivisection was first banned, then restricted. Animal research was viewed as part of "Jewish science," and "internationalist" medicine, indicating a mechanistic mind that saw nature as something to be dominated, rather than respected. Hermann Göring first announced a ban on August 16, 1933, following Hitler's wishes, but Hitler's personal physician, Dr. Morrel, reportedly persuaded him that this was not in the interests of German research, and in particular defence research. The ban was therefore revised three weeks later, on September 5, 1933, when eight conditions were announced under which animal tests could be conducted, with a view to reducing pain and unnecessary experiments. Primates, horses, dogs, and cats were given special protection, and licenses to conduct vivisection were to be given to institutions, not to individuals. The removal of the ban was justified with the announcement: "It is a law of every community that, when necessary, single individuals are sacrificed in the interests of the entire body."

Medical experiments were later conducted on Jews and Romani children in camps, particularly in Auschwitz by Dr. Josef Mengele, and on others regarded as inferior, including prisoners-of-war. Because the human subjects were often in such poor health, researchers feared that the results of the experiments were unreliable, and so human experiments were repeated on animals. Dr Hans Nachtheim, for example, induced epilepsy on human adults and children without their consent by injecting them with cardiazol, then repeated the experiments on rabbits to check the results.

Increase in animal use
Despite the proliferation of animal protection legislation, animals still had no legal rights. Debbie Legge writes that existing legislation was very much tied to the idea of human interests, whether protecting human sensibilities by outlawing cruelty, or protecting property rights by making sure animals were not damaged. The over-exploitation of fishing stocks, for example, is viewed as harming the environment for people; the hunting of animals to extinction means that humans in the future will derive no enjoyment from them; poaching results in financial loss to the owner, and so on. Notwithstanding the interest in animal welfare of the previous century, the situation for animals arguably deteriorated in the 20th century, particularly after the Second World War. This was in part because of the increase in the numbers used in animal research—300 in the UK in 1875, 19,084 in 1903, and 2.8 million in 2005 (50–100 million worldwide), and a modern annual estimated range of 10 million to upwards of 100 million in the U.S. —but mostly because of the industrialization of farming, which saw billions of animals raised and killed for food on a scale not possible before the war.

Formation of the Oxford group
In the late 1960s, a small group of intellectuals centered around the University of Oxford—now known as the Oxford Group—began to view the use of animals as unacceptable exploitation. They were led by Roslind and Stanley Godlovitch, both philosophy post-graduates, who in turn influenced fellow philosophy students John Harris and David Wood. In 1964, Ruth Harrison published Animal Machines, an influential critique of factory farming. Both the Godlovitches and Oxford clinical psychologist Richard D. Ryder were further influenced by an article by the novelist, Brigid Brophy, in The Sunday Times on October 10, 1965. Titled "The Rights of Animals," it was the first time a major newspaper had devoted so much space to the issue. Brophy wrote:

"The relationship of homo sapiens to the other animals is one of unremitting exploitation. We employ their work; we eat and wear them. We exploit them to serve our superstitions: whereas we used to sacrifice them to our gods and tear out their entrails in order to foresee the future, we now sacrifice them to science, and experiment on their entrail in the hope—or on the mere offchance—that we might thereby see a little more clearly into the present ... To us it seems incredible that the Greek philosophers should have scanned so deeply into right and wrong and yet never noticed the immorality of slavery. Perhaps 3000 years from now it will seem equally incredible that we do not notice the immorality of our own oppression of animals."

Robert Garner writes that Harrison's and Brophy's articles led to an explosion of interest in the relationship between humans and non-humans. Ryder had been disturbed by incidents he had seen as a researcher in animal laboratories in the UK and U.S., and after reading the articles wrote several letters to The Daily Telegraph in April and May 1969. Brophy saw the letters and put Ryder in touch with Stanley and Roslind Godlovitch, and John Harris, who were working on a book about animal rights, Animals, Men and Morals: An Inquiry into the Maltreatment of Non-humans (1971). Ryder subsequently became a contributor, as did Harrison and Brophy. It was Ryder who, in a pamphlet in 1970, Ryder coined the term "speciesism" to describe the assignment of value to the interests of beings on the basis of species membership alone.

Publication of Animal Liberation
In 1970, over lunch in Oxford with fellow student Richard Keshen, a vegetarian, Australian philosopher Peter Singer came to believe that, by eating animals, he was engaging in the oppression of other species. Keshen introduced Singer to the Godlovitches, and in 1973 Singer reviewed their book, Animals, Men and Morals (1971) for The New York Review of Books. In the review, he coined the term "animal liberation," writing:

right|140px|thumb|[[Peter Singer's Animal Liberation (1975)]] "We are familiar with Black Liberation, Gay Liberation, and a variety of other movements. With Women’s Liberation some thought we had come to the end of the road. Discrimination on the basis of sex, it has been said, is the last form of discrimination that is universally accepted and practiced without pretense ... But one should always be wary of talking of 'the last remaining form of discrimination.' ... Animals, Men and Morals is a manifesto for an Animal Liberation movement. ... Whether or not these people, as individuals, would all agree that they are launching a liberation movement for animals, the book as a whole amounts to no less. It is a demand for a complete change in our attitudes to nonhumans."

On the strength of his review, The New York Review of Books took the unusual step of commissioning a book from Singer on the subject, published in 1975 as Animal Liberation, now one of the animal rights movement's canonical texts. Singer based his arguments on the principle of utilitarianism, the view, broadly speaking, that an act is right if it leads to the "greatest happiness of the greatest number," a phrase first used in 1776 by Jeremy Bentham. He argued in favor of the equal consideration of interests, the position there are no grounds to suppose that a violation of the basic interests of a human—for example, an interest in not suffering—is different in any morally significant way from a violation of the basic interests of a non-human. Singer used the term "speciesism" in the book, citing Ryder, and it stuck, becoming an entry in the Oxford English Dictionary in 1989.

The book's publication triggered a groundswell of scholarly interest in animal rights. Tom Regan wrote in 2001 that philosophers had written more about animal rights in the previous 20 years than in the 2,000 years before that. Robert Garner writes that Charles Magel's bibliography, Keyguide to Information Sources in Animal Rights (1989), contains 10 pages of philosophical material on animals up to 1970, but 13 pages between 1970 and 1989 alone.

Founding of the Animal Liberation Front
In parallel with the Oxford Group, grassroots activists in England were also developing ideas about animal rights and direct action. A journalist founded the Hunt Saboteurs Association in 1963, and in 1971 a law student, Ronnie Lee, formed a branch of it in Luton, later calling it the Band of Mercy after a 19th-century RSPCA youth group. The Band attacked hunters' vehicles by slashing tires and breaking windows, calling it "active compassion." In November 1973 they engaged in their first act of arson when they set fire to a Hoechst Pharamaceuticals research laboratory near Milton Keynes; the Band claimed responsibility, identifying itself to the press as a "nonviolent guerilla organization dedicated to the liberation of animals from all forms of cruelty and persecution at the hands of mankind."

Lee and another activist were sentenced to three years in prison in 1974, paroled after 12 months. In 1976 Lee brought together the remaining Band of Mercy activists along with some fresh faces, 30 activists in all, to start a new movement. He called it the Animal Liberation Front (ALF), a name he hoped would come to "haunt" those who used animals. The ALF is now active around the world as a leaderless resistance. Activists see themselves as a modern Underground Railroad, passing animals from ALF cells, who have removed them from farms and laboratories, to sympathetic veterinarians to safe houses and finally to sanctuaries. Some activists also engage in threats, intimidation, and arson, acts that have lost the movement sympathy in mainstream public opinion.

The decentralized model of activism is frustrating for law enforcement organizations, who find the networks difficult to infiltrate, because they tend to be organized around friends. In 2005, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security indicated how seriously it takes the ALF when it included them in a list of domestic terrorist threats. The tactics of some of the more determined ALF activists are anathema to many animal rights advocates, such as Singer, who regard the movement as something that should occupy the moral high ground. ALF activists respond to the criticism with the argument that, as Ingrid Newkirk puts it, "Thinkers may prepare revolutions, but bandits must carry them out."

Animal protectionism
Henry Spira, a former seaman and civil rights activist, became the most notable of the new animal advocates in the United States. A proponent of gradual change, he introduced the idea of "reintegrative shaming," whereby a relationship is formed between a group of animal rights advocates and a corporation they see as misusing animals, with a view to obtaining concessions or halting a practice. His first campaign was in opposition to the American Museum of Natural History in 1976, where cats were being experimented on, research that he persuaded them to stop. His most notable achievement was in 1980, when he convinced the cosmetics company Revlon to stop using the Draize test, whereby ingredients are tested on the skin or in the eyes of animals. He famously took out a full-page ad in several newspapers, featuring a rabbit with sticking plaster over the eyes, which asked, "How many rabbits does Revlon blind for beauty's sake?" Revlon stopped using animals for cosmetics testing, donated money to help set up the Center for Alternatives to Animal Testing, and was followed by other leading cosmetics companies.

Spira's protectionist approach was widely adopted by animal rights groups, most notably by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. Its critics on the abolitionist side of the movement, such as Gary Francione, argue that it aligns the movement with 19th-century animal welfare societies, making them "new welfarists," who focus too much on the treatment of animals, rather than working toward the paradigm shift of removing their property status.

21st century: Developments
In January 2008, Austria's Supreme Court ruled that a chimpanzee (called Matthew Hiasl Pan by those advocating for his personhood) was not a person, after the Association Against Animal Factories sought personhood status for him because his custodians went bankrupt. The chimpanzee was captured as a baby in Sierra Leone in 1982, then smuggled to Austria to be used in pharmaceutical experiments, but was discovered by customs officials when he arrived in the country, and was taken to a shelter instead. He was kept there for 25 years, until the group that ran the shelter went bankrupt in 2007. Donors offered to help him, but under Austrian law only a person can receive personal gifts, so any money sent to support him would be lost to the shelter's bankruptcy. The Association appealed the ruling to the European Court of Human Rights. The lawyer proposing the chimpanzee's personhood asked the court to appoint a legal guardian for him and to grant him four rights: the right to life, limited freedom of movement, personal safety, and the right to claim property.

In June 2008, a committee of Spain's national legislature became the first to vote for a resolution to extend limited rights to non-human primates. The parliamentary Environment Committee recommended giving chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, and orangutans the right not to be used in medical experiments or in circuses, and recommended making it illegal to kill apes, except in self-defense, based upon Peter Singer's Great Ape Project (GAP). The committee's proposal has not yet been enacted into law.

In 2010, research led by psychologist Diana Reiss and zoologist Lori Marino was presented to a conference in San Diego, suggesting that dolphins are second in intelligence only to human beings, and should be regarded as non-human persons. Marino used MRI scans to compare the dolphin and primate brain; she said the scans indicated there was "psychological continuity" between dolphins and humans. Reiss's research suggested that dolphins are able to solve complex problems, use tools, and pass the mirror test, using a mirror to inspect parts of their bodies. Also in 2010, the government in Catalonia passed a motion to outlaw bull fighting, the first such ban in Spain. From 2010 onwards, several countries outlawed the use of some or all animals in circuses, starting with Bolivia, and followed by several countries in Europe, Scandinavia and the Middle East, and Singapore. PETA sued SeaWorld in 2011 over the captivity of five orcas in San Diego and Orlando, arguing that the whales were being treated as slaves. It was the first time the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which outlaws slavery and involuntary servitude, was cited in court to protect non-human rights. A federal judge dismissed the case in February 2012.