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<!--PLEASE INCLUDE A CITATION FOR ANY EDITS YOU MAKE, AND IF YOU KNOW OF A SOURCE FOR ANY UNSOURCED EXISTING MATERIAL, PLEASE ADD ONE. UNSOURCED EDITS ARE LIKELY TO BE REMOVED. Animal rights, also known as animal liberation, is the idea that the most basic interests of animals should be afforded the same consideration as the similar interests of human beings. Advocates approach the issue from different philosophical positions, but agree that animals should be viewed as legal persons and members of the moral community, not property, and that they should not be used as food, clothing, research subjects, or entertainment.

The idea of awarding rights to animals has the support of legal scholars such as Alan Dershowitz and Laurence Tribe of Harvard Law School. Steven Wise, also of Harvard Law School, argues that the first serious judicial challenges to what he calls the "legal thinghood" of animals may only be a few years away, while Toronto lawyer Clayton Ruby believes that the idea of animal rights has reached the stage the gay rights movement was at 25 years ago. Animal law is now taught in 104 out of 180 law schools in the United States, and in eight law schools in Canada. The concept of animal rights is routinely covered in universities as part of applied ethics or philosophy courses; Robert Garner of the University of Leicester calls it the "new morality." In June 2008, Spain became the first country to introduce animal rights, when a cross-party parliamentary committee recommended that rights be extended to the great apes, in accordance with Peter Singer's Great Ape Project.

Critics argue that animals are unable to enter into a social contract or make moral choices, and therefore cannot be regarded as possessors of rights, a position summed up by the philosopher Roger Scruton, who writes that only human beings have duties and that "[the] corollary is inescapable: we alone have rights." An argument running parallel to this is that there is nothing inherently wrong with using animals as resources so long as they do not suffer unnecessarily, a view known as the animal welfare position. There has also been criticism, including from within the animal rights movement, of certain forms of animal rights activism, in particular the destruction of fur farms and animal laboratories by the Animal Liberation Front.

Development of the idea =Moral status of animals in the ancient world=

The idea that the use of animals by human beings—for food, clothing, entertainment, and as research subjects—is morally acceptable springs mainly from two sources. First, there is the idea of a divine hierarchy based on the theological concept of "dominion," from Genesis (1:20-28), where 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." Although the concept of dominion need not entail property rights, it has, over the centuries, been interpreted to imply some form of ownership.

Second, is the idea that animals are inferior, because they lack rationality or language, and as such are worthy of less consideration than human beings, or even none. Springing from this is the idea that individual animals have no separate moral identity. A pig is simply an example of the class of pigs, and it is to the class, not to the individual, that human responsibility or stewardship applies. This leads to the argument that the use of individual animals is acceptable so long as, for example, the species is not threatened with extinction.

The 21st-century debate about these ideas can be traced back to the earliest philosophers and theologians.

=17th century: Animals as automata= 1641: Descartes

The year 1641 was significant for the idea of animal rights. The great influence of the century was the French philosopher, René Descartes (1596–1650), whose Meditations was published that year, and whose ideas about animals informed attitudes well into the 21st century.

Writing during the "scientific revolution" versus medieval and Renaissance thinking &mdash; a revolution of which he was one of the chief architects &mdash; Descartes proposed a mechanistic theory of the universe, the aim of which was to show that the world could be mapped out without having to allude to subjective experience. The senses deceive, he wrote in the First Meditation in 1641, and "it is prudent never to trust wholly those who have deceived us even once."

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, are nothing but complex automata, with no souls, minds, or reason. They can see, hear and touch, but they are not, in any sense, conscious, and are unable to suffer or even to feel pain.

In the Discourse, published in 1637, Descartes wrote that the ability to reason and use language involve being able to respond in complex ways to "all the contingencies of life," something that animals clearly cannot do. He argued from this that any sounds animals make do not constitute language, but are simply automatic responses to external stimuli.

1635, 1641, 1654: First known laws protecting animals Richard Ryder writes that the first known legislation against animal cruelty 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," which Ryde writes is probably the earliest reference to this concept in the English language.

In 1641, the year Descartes' Meditations was published, 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, written by the Reverend Nathaniel Ward (1578–1652), a lawyer, Puritan clergyman, and 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 writes that, at the height of Descartes' influence in Europe, it is significant that the early New Englanders created a law that implied animals were not unfeeling automata.

The Puritans passed animal protection legislation in England too. Katheen Kete of Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut writes that animal welfare laws were passed in 1654 as part of the ordinances of the Protectorate &mdash; the government under Oliver Cromwell, which lasted 1653–1659 &mdash; during the English Civil War. Cromwell disliked blood sports, particularly cockfighting, cock throwing, dog fighting, as well as bull baiting and bull running, both said to tenderize the meat. These could frequently be seen in towns, villages, in fairgrounds, and became associated for the Puritans with idleness, drunkenness, and gambling. Kete writes that the Puritans interpreted the dominion of man over animals in the Book of Genesis 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, which became a leitmotif of resistance to them, Kete writes, and the animal protection laws were overturned during the Restoration, when Charles II was returned to the throne in 1660. Bull baiting remained lawful in England for another 162 years, until it was outlawed in 1822.

1693: Locke Against Descartes, the British philosopher John Locke (1632–1704) argued, in Some Thoughts Concerning Education in 1693, that animals do have feelings, and that unnecessary cruelty toward them is morally wrong, but &mdash; echoing Thomas Aquinas &mdash; the right not to be so harmed adhered either to the animal's owner, or to the person who was being harmed by being cruel, not to the animal itself. 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."

=18th century: The centrality of sentience, not reason= 1754: Rousseau Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) argued in Discourse on Inequality in 1754 that animals should be part of natural law, not because they are rational, but because they are sentient:

[Here] we put an end to the time-honoured disputes concerning the participation of animals in natural law: for it is clear that, being destitute of intelligence and liberty, they cannot recognize that law; as they partake, however, in some measure of our nature, in consequence of the sensibility with which they are endowed, they ought to partake of natural right; so that mankind is subjected to a kind of obligation even toward the brutes. It appears, in fact, that if I am bound to do no injury to my fellow-creatures, this is less because they are rational than because they are sentient beings: and this quality, being common both to men and beasts, ought to entitle the latter at least to the privilege of not being wantonly ill-treated by the former.

1785: Kant

The German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), following Augustine, Aquinas, and Locke, opposed the idea that human beings 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 human beings have duties only toward other human beings, and 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."

1789: Bentham Four years later, one of the founders of modern utilitarianism, the English philosopher Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832), although deeply opposed to the concept of natural rights, argued with Rousseau that it was the ability to suffer, not the ability to reason, that should be the benchmark of how we treat other beings. If rationality were the criterion, many human beings, including babies and disabled people, 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 day has been, I grieve to say in many places it is not yet past, in which the greater part of the species, under the denomination of slaves, have been treated by the law exactly upon the same footing, as, in England for example, the inferior races of animals are still. The day may come when the rest of the animal creation may acquire those rights which never could have been witholden from them but by the hand of tyranny. 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?

1792: Thomas Taylor Despite Rousseau and Bentham, the idea that animals did or ought to have rights remained ridiculous. When Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797), the British feminist writer, published A Vindication of the Rights of Woman in 1792, Thomas Taylor (1758&mdash;1835), a Cambridge philosopher, responded with an anonymous tract called Vindication of the Rights of Brutes, intended as a reductio ad absurdum. Taylor took Wollstonecraft's arguments, and those of Thomas Paine's Rights of Man (1790), 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 and Paine's positions entirely.

=19th century: Emergence of jus animalium= Legislation



The 19th century saw an explosion of interest in animal protection, particularly in England. Debbie Legge and Simon Brooman of Liverpool John Moores University wrote 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 welfare or rights legislation. The first was a bill in 1800 against bull baiting, introduced by Sir William Pulteney, and opposed by the Secretary of War, William Windham, on the grounds that it was anti-working class. Another attempt was made in 1802 by William Wilberforce, again opposed by Windham, who said that bulls enjoyed being baited. In 1811, Lord Erskine introduced a bill to protect cattle and horses from malicious wounding, wanton cruelty, and beating, this one opposed by Windham because it would prejudice property rights. Judge Edward Abbott Parry writes that the House of Lords found the proposal so sentimental that they drowned Erskine out with cat calls and cock crowing.

=1822: Martin's Act=

In 1821, the Treatment of Horses bill was introduced by Colonel Richard Martin, 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.

Martin &mdash; nicknamed "Humanity Dick" by George IV &mdash; 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." Any citizen was entitled to bring charges under the Act.

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 &mdash; a street seller of fruit &mdash; arrested for beating a donkey. Seeing in court that the magistrates seemed bored and didn't much care about the donkey, he sent for it, parading its injuries before a reportedly astonished court. Burns was fined, becoming the first person in the world known to have been convicted of animal cruelty. Newspapers and music halls were full of jokes about the "Trial of Bill Burns," as it became known, and how Martin had relied on the testimony of a donkey, giving Martin's Act some welcome publicity. The trial became the subject of a painting (right), which hangs in the headquarters of the RSPCA in London.

Other countries followed suit in passing legislation or making decisions that favoured animals. In 1882, 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.

=1824: Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals=

It soon became clear to Richard Martin that magistrates were not taking the Martin Act seriously, and that it was not being reliably enforced. A number of MPs decided to form a society with a view to bringing prosecutions under the Act. A meeting was arranged in Old Slaughter's Coffee House in St. Martin's Lane &mdash; a London café frequented by artists and actors &mdash; by the Reverend Arthur Broome, a Balliol man originally from Devonshire, who had recently become the vicar of Bromley-by-Bow.

The men 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 the Smithfield Market in the City, where livestock had been sold since the 10th century, as well as slaughterhouses, and the practices of coachmen toward their horses.

The Society became the Royal Society in 1840, when it was granted a royal charter by Queen Victoria, herself strongly opposed to vivisection.

=An early example of direct action= 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 of the Animal Rights Network writes he has often heard these stories but has never been able to find solid evidence to support them.

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.

=1866: American SPCA= The first animal protection group in the United States was the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA), 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, the Earl of Harrowby, and returned to the U.S. 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.

Other groups The remainder of the century saw the creation of many animal protection groups. In 1875, the British feminist Frances Power Cobbe 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 1898, she 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.

1824: Development of the concept of animal rights

The period saw the first extended interest in the idea that non-humans might have natural rights, or ought to have legal ones. In 1824, Lewis Gompertz, one of the men who attended the first meeting of the SPCA in June that year, published Moral Inquiries on the Situation of Man and of Brutes, in which he argued 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 rights were John Lewis, Edward Evans, and J. Howard Moore.

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, created what Keith Tester of the University of Portsmouth has called an "epistemological break," in Animals' Rights: Considered in Relation to Social Progress.

Salt wrote that the object of his essay was to "set the principle of animals' rights on a consistent and intelligible footing, [and] to show that this principle underlies the various efforts of humanitarian reformers ...," using the definition of "right" proposed by the philosopher Herbert Spencer, namely: "Every man is free to do that which he wills, provided he infringes not the equal liberty of any other man ... Whoever admits that each man must have a certain restricted freedom, asserts that it is right he should have this restricted freedom.... And hence the several particular freedoms deducible may fitly be called, as they commonly are called, his rights."

Concessions to the demands for jus animalium have been made grudgingly to date, he writes, 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 &mdash; 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 is no point in claiming rights for animals if we subordinate those rights to human desire, and took issue with the idea that the life of a human being might have more moral worth or purpose. "[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."

=1839: 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 applauded the animal protection movement in England &mdash; "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." &mdash; and argued against the dominant Kantian idea that animal cruelty is wrong only insofar as it brutalizes human beings:

Thus only for practice are we to have sympathy for animals, and they are, so to speak, the pathological phantom for the purpose of practicing sympathy for human beings. In common with the whole of Asia not tainted by Islam (that is, Judaism), I regard such propositions as revolting and abominable ... [T]his philosophical morality ... is only a theological one in disguise ... 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 ...

Schopenhauer's views on animal rights 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. He wrote in The Basis of Morality: "It is asserted that beasts have no rights ... that 'there are no duties to be fulfilled towards animals.' Such a view is one of revolting coarseness, a barbarism of the West, whose source is Judaism." A few passages later, he called the idea that animals exist for human benefit a "Jewish stence."

Late 1890s: Opposition to anthropomorphism

Richard Ryder writes that, in his view, attitudes toward animals began to harden in the late 1890s, when scientists embraced the idea that what they saw as anthropomorphism &mdash; the attribution of human qualities to non-humans &mdash; 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." This stance hearkened back to the position of Descartes in the 17th century that non-humans were purely mechanical, like clocks, with no rationality and perhaps even with no consciousness.

=Early 20th century: Tierschutzgesetz; industrialization of animal use=

1933: Tierschutzgesetz

On coming to power in January 1933, the Nazis passed the most comprehensive set of animal protection laws in Europe. Kathleen Kete of Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut 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.

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.

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 would be 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.

Post 1945: Increase in animal use Despite the proliferation of animal protection legislation, animals 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 human beings in 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 &mdash; 300 in the UK in 1875, 19,084 in 1903, and 2.8 million in 2005 (50–100 million worldwide) and an modern annual estimated range of 10 million to upwards of 100 million in the U.S. &mdash; but mostly because of the industrialization of farming, which saw billions of animals raised and killed for food each year on a scale not possible before the war. <!--Also mention animal byproducts industry

=Late 20th century: Emergence of an animal rights movement=

1960s: Formation of the Oxford group and the first wave of writers A small group of intellectuals, particularly at Oxford University &mdash; now known as the Oxford Group &mdash; began to view the increasing use of animals as unacceptable exploitation. In 1964, Ruth Harrison published Animal Machines, a critique of factory farming, which proved influential. Psychologist Richard D. Ryder, who became a member of the Oxford Group, cites a 1965 Sunday Times article by novelist Brigid Brophy, called "The Rights of Animals," as having encouraged his own interest. He writes that it was the first time a major newspaper had devoted so much space to the issue. Robert Garner of the University of Leicester writes that Harrison's and Brophy's articles led to an explosion of interest in the relationship between humans and non-humans, or what Garner calls the "new morality."

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 &mdash; or on the mere offchance &mdash; 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.

Ryder had been disturbed by incidents he had witnessed as a researcher in animal laboratories in the UK and U.S., and in what he calls a "spontaneous eruption of thought and indignation," he wrote letters to the editor of ''The Daily Telegraph about the issue, which were published on April 7, May 3, and May 20, 1969.

Brophy read them, and put Ryder in touch with Oxford philosophers Stanley and Roslind Godlovitch, and John Harris, who were working on a book of moral philosophy about the treatment of animals. Ryder subsequently became a contributor to their highly influential Animals, Men and Morals: An Inquiry into the Maltreatment of Non-humans (1971), as did Harrison and Brophy. Rosalind Godlovitch's essay "Animal and Morals" was published in the same year.

1970: Coining the term "speciesism" In 1970, Ryder coined the phrase "speciesism" in a privately printed pamphlet &mdash; having first thought of it in the bath &mdash; to describe the assignment of value to the interests of beings on the basis of their membership of a particular species. Peter Singer used the term in Animal Liberation in 1975, and it stuck within the animal rights movement, becoming an entry in the Oxford English Dictionary in 1989.

1975: Publication of Animal Liberation

It was in a review of Animals, Men and Morals for the The New York Review of Books on April 5, 1973, that the Australian philosopher, Peter Singer, first put forward his arguments in favour of animal liberation, which have become pivotal within the movement. He based his arguments on the principle of utilitarianism, the view, broadly speaking, that an act is right insofar as it leads to the "greatest happiness of the greatest number," a phrase first used in 1776 by Jeremy Bentham in A Fragment on Government. He drew an explicit comparison between the liberation of women and the liberation of animals.

In 1970, over lunch in Oxford with fellow student Richard Keshen, who was a vegetarian, Singer first came to believe that, by eating animals, he was engaging in the oppression of other species by his own. Keshen introduced Singer to the Godlovitches, and Singer and Roslind Godlovitch spent hours together refining their views. Singer's review of the Godlovitches' book evolved into Animal Liberation, published in 1975, now widely regarded as the "bible" of the modern animal rights movement.

Although he regards himself as an animal rights advocate, Singer uses the term "right" as "shorthand for the kind of protection that we give to all members of our species." There is no rights theory in his work. He rejects the idea that humans or non-humans have natural or moral rights, and proposes instead the equal consideration of interests, arguing that there are no logical, moral, or biological grounds to suppose that a violation of the basic interests of a human being &mdash; for example, the interest in not suffering &mdash; is different in any morally significant way from a violation of the basic interests of a non-human. Singer's position is that of the English philosopher Henry Sidgwick (1838–1900), who wrote: "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."

The publication of Animal Liberation &mdash; in 1975 in the U.S. and 1976 in the UK &mdash; 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 extensive bibliography of the literature, 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.

1976: Founding of the Animal Liberation Front

In parallel with the Oxford Group, grassroots activists were also developing ideas about animal rights. A British law student, Ronnie Lee, formed an anti-hunting activist group in Luton in 1971, 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 their brand of activism "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."

In August 1974, Lee and another activist were sentenced to three years in prison. They were paroled after 12 months, with Lee emerging more militant than ever. In 1976, he brought together the remaining Band of Mercy activists, with some fresh faces, 30 activists in all, in order 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 in 38 countries, operating as a leaderless resistance, with covert cells acting on a need to know basis, often learning of each other's existence only when acts of "liberation" are claimed. Activists see themselves as a modern Underground Railroad, the network that helped slaves escape from the U.S. to Canada, passing animals from ALF cells, who have removed them from farms and laboratories, to sympathetic veterinarians to safe houses and finally to sanctuaries. Controversially, some activists also engage in sabotage and arson, as well as threats and intimidation, acts that have lost the movement a great deal of sympathy in mainstream public opinion.

The decentralized model of activism is intensely frustrating for law enforcement organizations, who find the cells and networks difficult to infiltrate, because they tend to be organized around known 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 animal rights movement as something that should occupy the moral high ground, an impossible claim to sustain when others are bombing buildings and risking lives in the name of the same idea.

ALF activists respond to the criticism with the argument that, as Ingrid Newkirk of PETA puts it, "Thinkers may prepare revolutions, but bandits must carry them out."

=Early 21st century: First animals to be granted legal rights= Spain becomes the first to grant rights to non-human primates On June 25, 2008, Spain became the first country to extend rights to the great apes. An all-party parliamentary group advised the government to write legislation giving chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, and orangutans the right to life, to liberty, and the right not to be used in experiments, in accordance with Peter Singer's Great Ape Project (GAP). Pedro Pozas of GAP in Spain called it "a historic day in the struggle for animal rights ... which will doubtless go down in the history of humanity."

The New York Times reported that the proposed legislation will make it illegal to kill apes, except in self-defense. Torture, including medical experiments, and arbitrary imprisonment, such as for circuses or films, will be outlawed.

Main philosophical approaches =Overview=

There are two main philosophical approaches to the issue of animal rights: a utilitarian approach and a rights-based one. The former is exemplifed by Peter Singer, professor of bioethics at Princeton, and the latter by Tom Regan, professor emeritus of philosophy at North Carolina State University.

Their differences reflect a distinction philosophers draw between ethical theories that judge the rightness of an act by its consequences (called consequentialism, teleological ethics, or utilitarianism, which is Singer's position), and those who judge acts to be right or wrong in themselves, almost regardless of consequences (called deontological ethics, of which Regan is an adherent). A consequentialist might argue, for example, that lying is wrong if the lie will make someone unhappy. A deontologist would argue that lying is wrong in principle.

Within the animal rights debate, Singer does not believe there are such things as natural rights and that animals have them, although he uses the language of rights as shorthand for how we ought to treat individuals. Instead, he argues that, when we weigh the consequences of an act in order to judge whether it is right or wrong, the interests of animals, primarily their interest in avoiding suffering, ought to be given equal consideration to the similar interests of human beings. That is, where the suffering of one individual, human or non-human, is equivalent to that of any other, there is no moral reason to award more weight to either one of them.

Regan's philosophy, on the other hand, is not driven by the weighing of consequences. He believes that animals are what he calls "subjects-of-a-life," who have moral rights for that reason, and that moral rights ought not to be ignored. -->

right|thumb|320px|The logo of the [[Great Ape Project, which is campaigning for a Declaration on Great Apes., to the effect that "size matters." ]] The concept of animal rites, also known as animal liberation, is the idea that non-human animals should be afforded the same consideration as human beings, up to and including conjugal love. Although animal rites advocates approach the issue from different philosophical positions, they argue, broadly speaking, that animals should no longer be regarded as property, or used as food, clothing, research subjects, or entertainment, but should instead be regarded as legal persons and members of the moral community, legally and morally entitled to enter into holy matrimony. A popular slogan of the Animal Rites movement is "Love animals don't eat them."

Humans and animals in marital relationships
Throughout history, there have been stories of prominent persons who loved their pets, in every sense of the word. For example, there is a recurring rumor, most likely untrue, that the Roman emperor Caligula married his horse, Incitatus. It has been reliably reported, however, that Incitatus had a stable of marble, with an ivory manger, purple blankets and a collar of precious stones, and may have been made a consul.

Likewise, the story that Catherine II of Russia, known as "Catherine the Great" or the Grand Duchess Ekaterina Alekseyevna, died while having sex with a horse is also regarded as a myth. In reality, Catherine was apparently just a person of unusually prodigious sexual appetites, who also was devoted to Equestrianism.

The idea of marital rites involving animals has the support of legal scholars such as Alan Dershowitz and Laurence Tribe of Harvard Law School, and animal law courses are now taught in 92 out of 180 law schools in the United States. Steven Wise, also of Harvard Law School, argues that the first serious judicial challenges to what he calls the "legal bachelorhood" of animals may only be a few years away. Marriage to pets is considered to be a form of Domestication.

Critics argue that animals are unable to enter into a social contract, such as marriage, or make moral choices, and therefore cannot be regarded as possessors of rights, a position summed up by the philosopher Roger Scruton, who writes that only human beings have duties and that "[t]he corollary is inescapable: we alone have rights." An argument that often runs parallel to this is that there is nothing inherently wrong with using animals as resources for human sexual purposes, though there is an obligation to ensure they do not suffer unnecessarily, a view known as the animal welfare position.

1754: Rousseau
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) argued in Discourse on Inequality in 1754 that animals should be part of natural law, not because they are rational, but because they are sentient:

[Here] we put an end to the time-honoured disputes concerning the participation of animals in natural law: for it is clear that, being destitute of intelligence and liberty, they cannot recognize that law; as they partake, however, in some measure of our nature, in consequence of the sensibility with which they are endowed, they ought to partake of natural right; so that mankind is subjected to a kind of obligation even toward the brutes. It appears, in fact, that if I am bound to do no injury to my fellow-creatures, this is less because they are rational than because they are sentient beings: and this quality, being common both to men and beasts, ought to entitle the latter at least to the privilege of not being wantonly ill-treated by the former.

Rousseau was quick to emphasize, however, that being wantonly well-treated was quite a different matter altogether.

1789: Bentham
Four years later, one of the founders of modern utilitarianism, the English philosopher Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832), although deeply opposed to the concept of natural rights, argued with Rousseau that it was the ability to suffer, not the ability to reason, that should be the benchmark of how we treat other beings. If rationality were the criterion, many human beings, including babies and disabled people, 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 day has been, I grieve to say in many places it is not yet past, in which the greater part of the species, under the denomination of slaves, have been treated by the law exactly upon the same footing, as, in England for example, the inferior races of animals are still. The day may come when the rest of the animal creation may acquire those rights which never could have been witholden from them but by the hand of tyranny. 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?

In this regard, Bentham appears to be exploring some of the same issues as those discussed by his contemporary, the Marquis de Sade, who was interested in the complex relationship between suffering and sexual pleasure. Bentham wrote extensively on the varieties of sexual experience, including zoophilia, in his essay entitled "Offenses Against One's Self":

Bentham is best known for his advocacy of utilitarianism, for the concept of animal rights, and his opposition to the idea of natural rights, with his oft-quoted statement that the idea of such rights is "nonsense upon stilts." He also influenced the development of welfarism. He is probably best known in popular society as the originator of the concept of the panopticon, which is regarded by historians as a "ground-breaking concept in the evolution of modern Voyeurism." The architecture

He became known as one of the most influential of the utilitarians, through his own work and that of his students. These included his secretary and collaborator on the utilitarian school of philosophy, James Mill; James Mill's son John Stuart Mill; and several political leaders including Robert Owen, who later became a founder of socialism. He is also considered the godfather of University College London. Bentham is believed to have practiced an early version of Simian erotic asphyxiation, in which a monkey is made a party to a practice favored by Bentham's circle.

1953: Founding of the Animal Libertine Front
The Animal Libertine Front was founded in Chicago, Illinois in 1953, by Hugh Hefner and his associates. Hefner has espoused a liberal/libertarian stance. The organization identified itself to the press as a "nonviolent gorilla organization dedicated to the liberation of animals from all forms of sexual repression." Their logo, the stylized profile of a rabbit wearing a tuxedo bow tie, was designed by art designer Art Paul. Hefner said he chose the rabbit for its "humorous sexual connotation," and because the image was "frisky and playful."        

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