
The animal rights movement, sometimes called the animal liberation, animal personhood, or animal advocacy movement, is a
social movement
A social movement is either a loosely or carefully organized effort by a large group of people to achieve a particular goal, typically a Social issue, social or Political movement, political one. This may be to carry out a social change, or to re ...
that advocates an end to the rigid moral and legal distinction drawn between human and non-human animals, an end to the status of animals as property, and an end to their use in the
research
Research is creative and systematic work undertaken to increase the stock of knowledge. It involves the collection, organization, and analysis of evidence to increase understanding of a topic, characterized by a particular attentiveness to ...
,
food
Food is any substance consumed by an organism for Nutrient, nutritional support. Food is usually of plant, animal, or Fungus, fungal origin and contains essential nutrients such as carbohydrates, fats, protein (nutrient), proteins, vitamins, ...
,
clothing
Clothing (also known as clothes, garments, dress, apparel, or attire) is any item worn on a human human body, body. Typically, clothing is made of fabrics or textiles, but over time it has included garments made from animal skin and other thin s ...
, and
entertainment
Entertainment is a form of activity that holds the attention and Interest (emotion), interest of an audience or gives pleasure and delight. It can be an idea or a task, but it is more likely to be one of the activities or events that have deve ...
industries. The
argument from marginal cases
The argument from marginal cases (also known as the argument from species overlap) is a philosophical argument within animal rights theory regarding the moral status of non-human animals. Its proponents hold that if human infants, senile people, t ...
is often used in animal rights advocacy which asserts that if certain humans with limited cognitive capacities are granted moral consideration, then non-human animals, who may possess different forms of intelligence or sentience, should also be afforded similar
negative rights
Negative and positive rights are rights that oblige either inaction (''negative rights'') or action (''positive rights''). These obligations may be of either a legal or moral character. The notion of positive and negative rights may also be ap ...
and moral consideration.
Terms and factions
All animal liberationists believe that the individual interests of non-human animals deserve recognition and protection, but the movement can be split into two broad camps. Animal rights advocates believe that these basic interests confer moral rights of some kind on the animals, and/or ought to confer legal rights on them;
["Animal rights," ''Encyclopædia Britannica'', 2007.] see, for example, the work of
Tom Regan. Utilitarian liberationists, on the other hand, do not believe that animals possess moral rights, but argue, on utilitarian grounds —
utilitarianism
In ethical philosophy, utilitarianism is a family of normative ethical theories that prescribe actions that maximize happiness and well-being for the affected individuals. In other words, utilitarian ideas encourage actions that lead to the ...
in its simplest form advocating that we base moral decisions on the greatest happiness of the greatest number — that, because animals have the ability to suffer, their suffering must be taken into account in any moral philosophy. To exclude animals from that consideration, they argue, is a form of discrimination that they call
speciesism
Speciesism () is a term used in philosophy regarding the treatment of individuals of different species. The term has several different definitions. Some specifically define speciesism as discrimination or unjustified treatment based on an indivi ...
; see, for example, the work of
Peter Singer
Peter Albert David Singer (born 6 July 1946) is an Australian moral philosopher who is Emeritus Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University. Singer's work specialises in applied ethics, approaching the subject from a secu ...
.
[Taylor, Angus. ''Animals and Ethics''. Broadview Press, 2003, pp. 153 ff.]
Despite these differences, the terms "animal liberation" and "animal rights" are generally used interchangeably. Factional division has also been characterized as that between the reformist or mainstream faction and the radical abolitionist and direct action factions. The mainstream faction is largely professionalized and focuses on soliciting donations and gaining media representation. Actors in the reformist movement believe that humans should stop ''abusing'' animals. They employ activities that include
moral shock {{Short description, Concept in sociology
In sociology, moral shock is a cognitive and emotional process that encourages participation. James M. Jasper, who originally coined the term, used it to help explain why people might join a social movement ...
s. It has been noted that the power of the animal rights movement in the United States is centralized in professionalized nonprofit organizations that aim to improve
animal welfare
Animal welfare is the quality of life and overall well-being of animals. Formal standards of animal welfare vary between contexts, but are debated mostly by animal welfare groups, legislators, and academics. Animal welfare science uses measures ...
.
The abolitionist faction believes that humans should stop ''using'' animals altogether. Gary Francione, a leader in abolitionism, formed his approach in response to the traditional movement's focus on policy reform. Some members of the abolitionist faction view policy reform as counterproductive and rely only on nonviolent education and moral persuasion in their activities. They see the promotion of veganism as a means of creating an antispeciesist culture and abolishing animal agriculture.
Other abolitionists believe that animal advocates shouldn't rely only on the promotion of veganism and should use a social movement strategy focused on expressing political claims, like what do all the NGOs participating in the World Day for the End of Speciesism during which they express the claim that speciesist practices have to be banned . This political strategy based on the sociology of the social construction of problems is defended by the activist Anoushavan Sarukhanyan who wrote several articles on the issue. In addition to this theoretical disagreement regarding the strategy to be used by abolitionists, there is also a disagreement regarding the question of direct action. Some argue that direct action was used by all social movements so the animal rights movement should do the same, while others point out that these actions are perceived as violent by the public (because of the media framing) and therefore citizens feel less emotional connection with animal activists and in consequence less support the cause. The action repertory of the abolitionists who use direct action includes property damage, animal releases, intimidation, and sometimes even direct violence, aiming to change society through force. Despite this, the unorganized group of abolitionists who use direct action the most, the Animal Liberation Front (ALF), insists that all the direct actions they do to save animals shouldn't harm any human or animal. Nevertheless, many animal rights actors reject this faction, pointing to the fact that even if the actions of the ALF weren't violent they are still perceived as violent by the public and therefore represent a counterproductive tactic that invites repression (e.g., the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act) while not necessarily economically or politically challenging the existant systems.
There are also abolitionist groups focused around faith-based animal rights theory whose approach is characterized by more spirituality and the idea that we shouldn't harm other creatures unnecessarily. The animal rights movement includes also
veganarchists, whose approach is characterized by a critique of capitalism on the grounds that it has led to mass nonhuman, human, and environmental exploitation. Such diversity, researchers have pointed out, is common to social movements and plays a role in sustaining their health.
History
The modern animal rights movement traces back to the animal protection movement in Victorian England, which was initiated by crusaders in response to the poor treatment of urban workhorses, the conditions under which they were exported for slaughter and their use, along with stray cats and dogs, for vivisection. Public awareness was raised by, for example,
Anna Sewell's 1877 novel ''
Black Beauty'' and by the pioneer
Ada Cole
Ada Merrett Frances Cole (1 January 1860 – 17 October 1930) was a nurse, animal welfare activist and founder of the International League Against the Export of Horses for Butchery, later renamed the International League for the Protection of Ho ...
who fought for humane conditions for horses destined for slaughter. Other early influences include:
Upton Sinclair
Upton Beall Sinclair Jr. (September 20, 1878 – November 25, 1968) was an American author, muckraker journalist, and political activist, and the 1934 California gubernatorial election, 1934 Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party ...
's 1906 novel ''
The Jungle
''The Jungle'' is a novel by American author and muckraking-journalist Upton Sinclair, known for his efforts to expose corruption in government and business in the early 20th century.
In 1904, Sinclair spent seven weeks gathering information ...
'', which drew attention to slaughterhouse operations;
Henry Stephens Salt
Henry Shakespear Stephens Salt (; 20 September 1851 – 19 April 1939) was a British writer and social reformer. He campaigned for social reform in the fields of prisons, schools, economic institutions, and the treatment of animals. He was a n ...
's treatises on nonhuman animal rights, which drew from human abolitionist arguments for recognizing the personhood of people considered to be property; and the short-lived
Fruitlands agrarian commune, which required its residents to eat a vegan diet.

The contemporary movement is regarded as having been founded in the UK in the early 1970s by a group of Oxford university post-graduate philosophy students, now known as the "
Oxford Group
The Oxford Group was a Christian organization founded by American Lutheran minister Frank Buchman in 1921, originally under the name First Century Christian Fellowship. Buchman believed that fear and selfishness were the root of all problems. ...
".
[Ethics: Animals]
." ''Encyclopædia Britannica Online''. 2007. The group was led by Rosalind and Stanley Godlovitch, graduate students of philosophy who had recently become vegetarians. The Godlovitches met John Harris and David Wood, also philosophy graduates, who were soon persuaded of the arguments in favour of animal rights and themselves became vegetarian. The group began to actively raise the issue with pre-eminent Oxford moral philosophers, including Professor Richard Hare, both personally and in lectures. Their approach was based not on sentimentality ("kindness to dumb animals"), but on the moral rights of animals. They soon developed (and borrowed) a range of powerful arguments in support of their views, so that Oxford clinical psychologist
Richard Ryder, who was shortly to become part of the group, writes that "rarely has a cause been so rationally argued and so intellectually well armed."
[Cox, Simon and Vadon, Richard]
"How animal rights took on the world"
, BBC Radio 4. Retrieved 18 June 2006.
It was a 1965 article by novelist Brigid Brophy
Brigid Antonia Brophy (married name Brigid Levey, later Lady Levey; 12 June 19297 August 1995), was an English author, literary critic and polemicist. She was an influential campaigner who agitated for many types of social reform, including ...
in ''The Sunday Times
''The Sunday Times'' is a British Sunday newspaper whose circulation makes it the largest in Britain's quality press market category. It was founded in 1821 as ''The New Observer''. It is published by Times Newspapers Ltd, a subsidiary of N ...
'' which was pivotal in helping to spark the movement. Brophy wrote:
The philosophers found this article and were inspired by its vigorous unsentimental polemic. At about the same time, Ryder wrote three letters to ''The Daily Telegraph
''The Daily Telegraph'', known online and elsewhere as ''The Telegraph'', is a British daily broadsheet conservative newspaper published in London by Telegraph Media Group and distributed in the United Kingdom and internationally. It was found ...
'' in response to Brophy's arguments. Brophy read Ryder's letters and put him in touch with the Godlovitches and John Harris, who had begun to plan a book about the issue which was also partly inspired by Brophy's polemic. The philosophers had also been to see Brophy about the possibility of a book of essays on the subject.[Ryder, Richard. ''Animal Revolution: Changing Attitudes Towards Speciesism''. Berg, 2000, p. 6.] They initially thought that a book with contributions from Brophy, Ruth Harrison, Maureen Duffy, and other well-known writers might be of interest to publishers, but after an initial proposal was turned down by the first publisher they approached, Giles Gordon of Victor Gollancz suggested that the work would be more viable if it included their own writing. This was the idea that became "Animals, Men, and Morals". In 1970, Ryder coined the phrase "speciesism
Speciesism () is a term used in philosophy regarding the treatment of individuals of different species. The term has several different definitions. Some specifically define speciesism as discrimination or unjustified treatment based on an indivi ...
," first using it in a privately printed pamphlet to describe the assignment of value to the interests of beings on the basis of their membership of a particular species.[Ryder, Richard D]
"All beings that feel pain deserve human rights"
, ''The Guardian'', 6 August 2005.
Ryder subsequently became a contributor to ''Animals, Men and Morals: An Inquiry into the Maltreatment of Non-humans'' (1972), edited by John Harris and the Godlovitches, a work that became highly influential, as did Rosalind Godlovitch's essay "Animal and Morals," published the same year. It was in a review of ''Animals, Men and Morals'' for the ''New York Review of Books
New or NEW may refer to:
Music
* New, singer of K-pop group The Boyz
* ''New'' (album), by Paul McCartney, 2013
** "New" (Paul McCartney song), 2013
* ''New'' (EP), by Regurgitator, 1995
* "New" (Daya song), 2017
* "New" (No Doubt song), 1 ...
'' that Australian philosopher Peter Singer
Peter Albert David Singer (born 6 July 1946) is an Australian moral philosopher who is Emeritus Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University. Singer's work specialises in applied ethics, approaching the subject from a secu ...
first put forward his basic arguments, based on utilitarianism
In ethical philosophy, utilitarianism is a family of normative ethical theories that prescribe actions that maximize happiness and well-being for the affected individuals. In other words, utilitarian ideas encourage actions that lead to the ...
and drawing an explicit comparison between women's liberation
The women's liberation movement (WLM) was a political alignment of women and feminism, feminist intellectualism. It emerged in the late 1960s and continued till the 1980s, primarily in the industrialized nations of the Western world, which resu ...
and animal liberation. Out of the review came Singer's '' Animal Liberation'', published in 1975, now regarded by many as the "bible" of the movement. Other books regarded as important include philosopher Tom Regan's ''The Case for Animal Rights'' (1983); ''Created from Animals: The Moral Implications of Darwinism'' by James Rachels
James Webster Rachels (May 30, 1941 – September 5, 2003) was an American philosopher who specialized in ethics and animal rights.
Biography
Rachels was born in Columbus, Georgia, and graduated from Mercer University in 1962. He received his Ph ...
(1990); ''Animals, Property, and the Law'' (1995) by legal scholar Gary Francione
Gary Lawrence Francione (born May 1954) is an American academic in the fields of law and philosophy. He is Board of Governors Professor of Law and Katzenbach Scholar of Law and Philosophy at Rutgers Law School, Rutgers University in New Jersey ...
, ''Rattling the Cage: Toward Legal Rights for Animals'' by another legal scholar Steven M. Wise (2000); and ''Animal Rights and Moral Philosophy'' by Julian H. Franklin (2005).[Animal Rights: The Modern Animal Rights Movement]
." ''Encyclopædia Britannica''. 2007.
Gender, class, and other factors
Another factor feeding the animal rights movement was revulsion to televised slaughters. In the United States, many public protest slaughters were held in the late 1960s and early 1970s by the National Farmers Organization
The National Farmers Organization (NFO) is a producer movement founded in the United States in 1955, by farmers, especially younger farmers with mortgages, frustrated by too often receiving crop and produce prices that produced a living that paid ...
. Protesting low prices for meat, farmers would kill their own animals in front of media representatives. The carcasses were wasted and not eaten. However, this effort backfired because it angered television audiences to see animals being needlessly and wastefully killed.
The movement predominately comprises upper-class and middle-class white female members, owing this to its associations with the Victorian English animal protection movement and American feminism and environmentalism movements. As such, the movement is widely associated in public spheres with women, femininity, and effeminacy. Public perception of the movement is influenced by gendered evaluations; movement outsiders tend to view activists as irrational by virtue of overly emotional sentiments. Aware of this, activists have strategically incorporated men into positions of leadership and theory production, in order to legitimize the movement and counter popular beliefs about the primacy of emotion in the animal rights movement. This tactic relies on the popular perception of men as rational and not given to emotion, and follows a trend in social movement activism that seeks to counter traditional associations with femininity and private spheres by emphasizing rationality, rights, and justice. In one case study, targets of anti-hunting activism used class and gender markers to evaluate activists' claims. Hunters' associations of irrationality with femininity and of inexperience in hunting and wilderness with white-collar positions constituted the reasons for their dismissal of activists' claims. In contrast, hunters framed hunting in logical, scientific, and altruistic terms, thus legitimating hunting, termed wildlife management, as a protective measure.
It has been noted that the composition of the movement may discourage the mobilization of particular demographics. A content analysis of magazine covers from highly visible animal rights organizations (PeTA and VegNews) revealed that most featured members were white, female, and thin. With this, and with the composition of the movement being mostly white, female, and thin, it has been suggested that animal rights media depict an activist ideal-type with such characteristics, and that this may mobilize thin white females while deterring others. Racialized, sexualized, and size-focused campaign tactics may also serve to deter potential members from joining the movement. Racialized tactics include the appropriation of African slavery and Holocaust language and imagery, and have been deemed insensitive and impugned by nonwhite communities. In addition, the movement has maintained racist stereotypes about nonwhite individuals' predisposition toward animal cruelty; these stereotypes arose in post-slavery U.S. and Britain, where nonwhites were deemed by law and by society to have a tendency toward animal cruelty. Sexualization of "ideal" women is used as a mobilization tactic, but reduces support for ethics-based campaigns and may be counterproductive, alienating women that do not have "ideal" body types. Sizeism is used as a tactic to frame veganism as a healthy and positive lifestyle, aligning with a popular association of fatness with moral failure. These tactics may contribute to gender inequality because unrealistic and sexualized representations of women are linked to their societal devaluation. Its lack of diverse membership may decrease the movement's legitimacy and ability to mobilize, as members of marginalized groups are more likely to mobilize when they are represented in the movement. An inclusive movement with strong group solidarity would decrease opportunity costs associated with participating (e.g., social stigmatization, lack of alternatives, legal persecution) and thus serve to increase and sustain participation in the movement.
Current status of the movement
The movement is no longer viewed as hovering on the fringe.[Jonsson, Patrik]
"Tracing an animal-rights philosophy"
, ''Christian Science Monitor'', 9 October 2001. In the 1980s and 1990s, it was joined by a wide variety of academics and professionals, including lawyers, physicians, psychologists, veterinarians, and former vivisectionists,[
and is now a common subject of study in philosophy departments in Europe and North America.][ Animal law courses are taught in 92 out of 180 law schools in the United States, and the movement has gained the support of senior legal scholars, including ]Alan Dershowitz
Alan Morton Dershowitz ( ; born September 1, 1938) is an American lawyer and law professor known for his work in U.S. constitutional law, U.S. constitutional and American criminal law, criminal law. From 1964 to 2013, he taught at Harvard Law Sc ...
[Dershowitz, Alan. ''Rights from Wrongs: A Secular Theory of the Origins of Rights'', 2004, pp. 198–99, and "Darwin, Meet Dershowitz," ''The Animals' Advocate'', Winter 2002, volume 21.] and Laurence Tribe of Harvard Law School
Harvard Law School (HLS) is the law school of Harvard University, a Private university, private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1817, Harvard Law School is the oldest law school in continuous operation in the United ...
. Chapters of animal rights law have been created in several state bar association
A bar association is a professional association of lawyers as generally organized in countries following the Anglo-American types of jurisprudence. s, and resolutions related to animal rights are regularly proposed within the American Bar Association
The American Bar Association (ABA) is a voluntary association, voluntary bar association of lawyers and law students in the United States; national in scope, it is not specific to any single jurisdiction. Founded in 1878, the ABA's stated acti ...
.["'Personhood' Redefined: Animal Rights Strategy Gets at the Essence of Being Human"]
, Association of American Medical Colleges. Retrieved 12 July 2006.
In the 1980s, the movement became associated with punk
Punk or punks may refer to:
Genres, subculture, and related aspects
* Punk rock, a music genre originating in the 1970s associated with various subgenres
* Punk subculture, a subculture associated with punk rock, or aspects of the subculture s ...
subculture
A subculture is a group of people within a culture, cultural society that differentiates itself from the values of the conservative, standard or dominant culture to which it belongs, often maintaining some of its founding principles. Subcultures ...
and ideologies
An ideology is a set of beliefs or values attributed to a person or group of persons, especially those held for reasons that are not purely about belief in certain knowledge, in which "practical elements are as prominent as theoretical ones". Form ...
, particularly straight edge
Straight edge (sometimes abbreviated as sXe or signified by XXX or simply X) is a subculture of hardcore punk whose adherents refrain from using alcohol, tobacco, and other recreational drugs in reaction to the punk subculture's excesses. Some ...
hardcore punk
Hardcore punk (commonly abbreviated to hardcore or hXc) is a punk rock music genre#subtypes, subgenre and subculture that originated in the late 1970s. It is generally faster, harder, and more aggressive than other forms of punk rock. Its roots ...
in the United States and anarcho-punk
Anarcho-punk (also known as anarchist punk or peace punk) is an ideological subgenre of punk rock that promotes anarchism. Some use the term broadly to refer to any punk music with anarchist lyrical content, which may figure in crust punk, ha ...
in the United Kingdom. This association continues on into the 21st century, as evidenced by the prominence of vegan punk events such as Fluff Fest
Fluff Fest was an independent hardcore punk festival held each July at the Czech town of Rokycany. A significant event for the DIY music scene of Czechia and the punk subculture of Europe, it was associated with movements such as veganism, ana ...
in Europe.
Michael Socarras of Greenberg Traurig
Greenberg Traurig is a multinational law firm, law and lobbying firm founded in Miami in 1967 by Mel Greenberg, Larry J. Hoffman, and Robert H. Traurig.
As of 2025, it is the eighth-largest law firm in the United States. The firm has 49 locati ...
told the Association of American Medical Colleges: "There is a very important shift under way in the manner in which many people in law schools and in the legal profession think about animals. This shift has not yet reached popular opinion. However, in he U.S. social change has and can occur through the courts, which in many instances do not operate as democratic institutions. Therefore, the evolution in elite legal opinion is extremely significant ..."[
]
Philosophical and legal aims
The movement aims to include animals in the moral community
Ethics is the philosophy, philosophical study of Morality, moral phenomena. Also called moral philosophy, it investigates Normativity, normative questions about what people ought to do or which behavior is morally right. Its main branches inclu ...
by putting the basic interests of non-human animals on an equal footing with the basic interests of human beings. A basic interest would be, for example, not being made to suffer pain on behalf of other individual human or non-human animals. The aim is to remove animals from the sphere of property and to award them personhood
Personhood is the status of being a person. Defining personhood is a controversial topic in philosophy and law and is closely tied with legal and political concepts of citizenship, equality, and liberty. According to law, only a legal person (ei ...
; that is, to see them awarded legal rights to protect their basic interests.
Liberationists argue that animals appear to have value in law only in relation to their usefulness or benefit to their owners, and are awarded no intrinsic value whatsoever. In the United States, for example, state and federal laws formulate the rules for the treatment of animals in terms of their status as property. Liberationists point out that Texas
Texas ( , ; or ) is the most populous U.S. state, state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. It borders Louisiana to the east, Arkansas to the northeast, Oklahoma to the north, New Mexico to the we ...
Animal Cruelty Laws apply only to pets living under the custody of human beings and exclude birds, deer, rabbits, squirrels, and other wild animals not owned by humans, ignoring that jurisdiction for such creatures comes under the domain of state wildlife officers. The U.S. Animal Welfare Act excludes "pet stores ... state and country fairs, livestock shows, rodeo
Rodeo () is a competitive equestrian sport that arose out of the working practices of cattle herding in Spain and Mexico, expanding throughout the Americas and to other nations. It was originally based on the skills required of the working vaqu ...
s, purebred dog and cat shows, and any fairs or exhibitions intended to advance agricultural arts and sciences." There is no mention in the law that such activities already fall under the jurisdiction of state agriculture departments. The Department of Agriculture
An agriculture ministry (also called an agriculture department, agriculture board, agriculture council, or agriculture agency, or ministry of rural development) is a ministry charged with agriculture. The ministry is often headed by a minister f ...
interprets the Act as also excluding cold-blooded animals, and warm-blooded animals not "used for research, teaching, testing, experimentation ... exhibition purposes, or as a pet, ndfarm animals used for food, fiber, or production purposes".
The Seattle-based Great Ape Project
The Great Ape Project (GAP), founded in 1993, is an international organization of primatologists, anthropologists, ethicists, and others who advocate a United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Great Apes that would confer basic legal rights ...
(GAP), founded by Peter Singer, is campaigning for the United Nations to adopt its Declaration on Great Apes, which would see chimpanzee
The chimpanzee (; ''Pan troglodytes''), also simply known as the chimp, is a species of Hominidae, great ape native to the forests and savannahs of tropical Africa. It has four confirmed subspecies and a fifth proposed one. When its close rel ...
s, gorilla
Gorillas are primarily herbivorous, terrestrial great apes that inhabit the tropical forests of equatorial Africa. The genus ''Gorilla'' is divided into two species: the eastern gorilla and the western gorilla, and either four or five su ...
s and orangutan
Orangutans are great apes native to the rainforests of Indonesia and Malaysia. They are now found only in parts of Borneo and Sumatra, but during the Pleistocene they ranged throughout Southeast Asia and South China. Classified in the genus ...
s included in a "community of equals" with human beings
Humans (''Homo sapiens'') or modern humans are the most common and widespread species of primate, and the last surviving species of the genus ''Homo''. They are great apes characterized by their hairlessness, bipedalism, and high intellige ...
. The declaration wants to extend to the non-human ape
Apes (collectively Hominoidea ) are a superfamily of Old World simians native to sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia (though they were more widespread in Africa, most of Asia, and Europe in prehistory, and counting humans are found global ...
s the protection of three basic interests: the right to life, the protection of individual liberty, and the prohibition of torture.
Legal changes influenced by the movement
Regarding the campaign to change the status of animals as property, the animal liberation movement has seen success in several countries. In 1992, Switzerland
Switzerland, officially the Swiss Confederation, is a landlocked country located in west-central Europe. It is bordered by Italy to the south, France to the west, Germany to the north, and Austria and Liechtenstein to the east. Switzerland ...
amended its constitution
A constitution is the aggregate of fundamental principles or established precedents that constitute the legal basis of a polity, organization or other type of entity, and commonly determines how that entity is to be governed.
When these pri ...
to recognize animals as ''beings'' and not ''things''. However, in 1999 the Swiss constitution was completely rewritten. A decade later, Germany guaranteed rights to animals in a 2002 amendment to its constitution, becoming the first European Union
The European Union (EU) is a supranational union, supranational political union, political and economic union of Member state of the European Union, member states that are Geography of the European Union, located primarily in Europe. The u ...
member to do so. The German Civil Code
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany, the country of the Germans and German things
**Germania (Roman era)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
** For citizenship in Germany, see also Ge ...
had been amended correspondingly in 1997.
Perhaps the greatest success of the animal liberation movement has been the granting of basic rights to five great ape
The Hominidae (), whose members are known as the great apes or hominids (), are a taxonomic family of primates that includes eight extant species in four genera: '' Pongo'' (the Bornean, Sumatran and Tapanuli orangutan); '' Gorilla'' (the ...
species in New Zealand in 1999. Their use is now forbidden in research, testing or teaching. Other governments had also previously implemented a ban on these experiments, such as the UK government in 1986. Some other countries have also banned or severely restricted the use of non-human great apes in research. Also, on 17 May 2013, India declared that all cetaceans have the status of "nonhuman persons."
In the United States, there is an Animal Welfare Act that was produced in 1966. This law protects animals in acts of research, transportation, and sale. Generally, animals are protected from any torture, neglect, or killing. There have been many amendments made towards this act to keep it updated. While there is only one act covering the entire United States, there are more current laws surrounding animal rights, which vary by state.
Strategy and tactics
Use of new information communication technologies (ICTs)
New media, such as the Internet and email, have been used by Animal Rights Movement actors and countermovement actors in a variety of capacities. Radical factions in the movement rely on websites, blogs, podcasts, videos, and online forums to engage in vegan outreach and other mobilization efforts and build alliances, thus overcoming exclusion by dominant factions. The use of Internet has allowed the animal rights movement to spread transnationally. For example, the Istanbul Animal Rights Movement's theory and activities draw from those of various countries that have spread through the use of Internet. The Internet is also used by activists to build community and avoid stigmatization, and may be a preferred means of activism for marginalized members, such as individuals who are fat.
In 2001, Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC), an animal rights group founded in the UK with the aim of ending vivisection practices by Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS), published the names of targets associated with HLS on its website. SHAC.net listed targets for "naming and shaming", emphasized and sent email action alerts, and facilitated written and digital communication between activists and targets. When the UK government later prevented SHAC from publishing reports from the ALF on its website, an activist created the Bite Back website, which was registered in the US and thus allowed the ALF to publish reports without reprisal. Countermovement actors have also used ICTs; law enforcement officers have tracked SHAC activists and admitted electronic communications as evidence in criminal trials. Dylan Barr, who jammed email inboxes at Washington Mutual Bank with 5,000 emails, caused $5,000 in losses and was convicted for extortion.
ICTs have facilitated undercover surveillance efforts by activists who use video cameras, Internet, and television to collect and disseminate evidence of cruelty to animals, in order to attract publicity to and mobilize support for the movement.
Undercover surveillance
In 1981, animal rights activists exposed supposedly unhealthy and cruel conditions of monkeys in a research laboratory in Silver Spring, Maryland. Police raided the research facility, and because the activists had (illegally) notified media of the raid, it was televised, attracting publicity to the activists' cause. In the UK in 1990, Mike Huskisson and Melody McDonald videotaped Wilhelm Feldberg performing illegal research; the video evidence was made public and Feldberg's lab was summarily closed down. SHAC was founded after Zoe Broughton conducted undercover surveillance of vivisectionists and discovered evidence of nonhuman animal abuse. Footage and images from undercover surveillance activity are often circulated offline and on the Internet and used to deliver a moral shock that will mobilize viewers to participate in the movement. Members in the abolitionist faction, specifically those in Francione's camp, argue that the graphic depictions of suffering discovered in undercover work result in a focus on treatment, as opposed to use, and that this focus, while useful in securing welfare reform, is counterproductive to abolishing animal exploitation.
Boycott
Animal liberationists usually boycott
A boycott is an act of nonviolent resistance, nonviolent, voluntary abstention from a product, person, organisation, or country as an expression of protest. It is usually for Morality, moral, society, social, politics, political, or Environmenta ...
industries that use animals. Foremost among these is factory farming
Intensive animal farming, industrial livestock production, and macro-farms, also known as factory farming, is a type of intensive agriculture, specifically an approach to mass animal husbandry designed to maximize production while minimizing co ...
, which produces the majority of meat, dairy products, and eggs in industrialized nations. The transportation of farm animals for slaughter, which often involves their live export, has in recent years been a major issue for animal rights groups, particularly in the UK and Scandinavia.
The vast majority of animal rights advocates adopt vegetarian or vegan
Veganism is the practice of abstaining from the use of animal products and the consumption of animal source foods, and an associated philosophy that rejects the commodity status of animals. A person who practices veganism is known as a ve ...
diets.[ Singer, Peter. '' Animal Liberation'', second edition, Random House, 1975; this edition 1990, p. 160ff.] They may also avoid clothes made of animal skins, such as leather shoes, and will not use products known to contain animal byproduct
A by-product or byproduct is a secondary product derived from a production process, manufacturing process or chemical reaction; it is not the primary product or service being produced.
A by-product can be useful and marketable or it can be cons ...
s. Goods containing ingredients that have been tested on animals are also avoided where possible. Company-wide boycott
A boycott is an act of nonviolent resistance, nonviolent, voluntary abstention from a product, person, organisation, or country as an expression of protest. It is usually for Morality, moral, society, social, politics, political, or Environmenta ...
s are common. The Procter & Gamble
The Procter & Gamble Company (P&G) is an American multinational consumer goods corporation headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio. It was founded in 1837 by William Procter and James Gamble. It specializes in a wide range of personal health/con ...
corporation, for example, tests many of its products on animals, leading many animal rights advocates to boycott the company's products entirely, whether tested on animals or not.
There is a growing trend in the American movement towards devoting all resources to vegetarian outreach. The 9.8 billion animals killed there for food every year far exceeds the number of animals used in other ways. Groups such as Vegan Outreach and Compassion Over Killing devote their time to exposing factory-farming practices by publishing information for consumers and by organizing undercover investigations.
Moral shocks
Moral shock is a tactic that involves drawing targets' attention to a particular depiction of a situation in order to cause outrage and catalyze targets to support a movement or claim. In the Animal Rights Movement, moral shocks are often used in the form of graphic depictions that detail the brutalization of nonhuman animals. Farm Animal Rights Movement (FARM), a popular animal rights organization, has used moral shocks in its pay-per-view campaign, in which passersby were paid a dollar to watch a graphic video of nonhuman animal suffering. Nonhuman animals depicted in moral shocks often display characteristics similar to those of human infants (e.g., large heads and eyes, crying or whimpering, small, mammalian). There is an ongoing debate within the Movement about the effectiveness of moral shocks. It has been found that many animal rights activists join after being exposed to moral shocks, and that moral shocks given to strangers are more likely to mobilize potential participants than are preexisting social networks; there is research that has found the opposite, however. Conversely, moral shocks that target the public at large (e.g., those used in vegan outreach) are less likely to be effective than those that have targets more distant from and less visible to the public (e.g., vivisectors).
Non-violent action
Non-violent resistance or civil disobedience
Civil disobedience is the active and professed refusal of a citizenship, citizen to obey certain laws, demands, orders, or commands of a government (or any other authority). By some definitions, civil disobedience has to be nonviolent to be cal ...
consists of breaking the law without using violence. This may include the blocking of public roads or entrances, sometimes by chaining or gluing oneself to the ground or to doors. The animal rights movement has espoused these tactics during the 2019 Animal Rebellion protests in London, leading to several dozen arrests.
Direct action
The movement espouses a number of approaches, and is bitterly divided on the issue of direct action and violence, with very few activists or writers publicly advocating the latter tactic as a justified method to use. Most groups reject violence against persons, intimidation, threats, and the destruction of property: for example, the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection
Cruelty Free International is a British animal rights and advocacy group that campaigns for the abolition of all animal testing. It organises certification of cruelty-free products which are marked with the symbol of a leaping bunny.
It was ...
(BUAV) and Animal Aid. These groups concentrate on education and research, including carrying out undercover investigations of animal-testing facilities. There is some evidence of cooperation between the BUAV and the ALF: for example, the BUAV used to donate office space for the use of the ALF in London in the early 1980s.[ Newkirk, Ingrid. ''Free the animals''. Lantern Books, 2000. ]
Other groups concentrate on education, research, media campaigns, and undercover investigations. See, for example, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA; ) is an American animal rights nonprofit organization based in Norfolk, Virginia, and led by Ingrid Newkirk, its international president.
Founded in March 1980 by Newkirk and animal rights ...
(PETA).
A third category of activists operates using the leaderless resistance
Leaderless resistance, or phantom cell structure, is a social resistance strategy in which small, independent groups ( covert cells), or individuals (a solo cell is called a " lone wolf"), challenge an established institution such as a law, econ ...
model, working in covert cell
A clandestine cell system is a method for organizing a group of people, such as resistance fighters, spies, mercenaries, organized crime members, or terrorists, to make it harder for police, military or other hostile groups to catch them. In ...
s consisting of small numbers of trusted friends, or of one individual acting alone. These cells engage in direct action
Direct action is a term for economic and political behavior in which participants use agency—for example economic or physical power—to achieve their goals. The aim of direct action is to either obstruct a certain practice (such as a governm ...
: for example by carrying out raids to release animals from laboratories and farms, using names like the Animal Liberation Front
The Animal Liberation Front (ALF) is a Far-left politics, far-left international, Leaderless resistance, leaderless, decentralized movement that emerged in Britain in the 1970s, evolving from the Bands of Mercy. It operates without a formal lead ...
(ALF); or by boycotting and targeting anyone or any business associated with the controversial animal testing lab, Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS), using a campaign name like Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC). Some arson, property destruction and vandalism
Vandalism is the action involving deliberate destruction of or damage to public or private property.
The term includes property damage, such as graffiti and defacement directed towards any property without permission of the owner. The t ...
has been linked to various animal rights groups
Activists who have carried out or threatened acts of physical violence have operated using the names; Animal Rights Militia (ARM), Justice Department
A justice ministry, ministry of justice, or department of justice, is a ministry or other government agency in charge of the administration of justice. The ministry or department is often headed by a minister of justice (minister for justice in a ...
, Revolutionary Cells—Animal Liberation brigade (RCALB), Hunt Retribution Squad (HRS) and the Militant Forces Against Huntingdon Life Sciences (MFAH).
Some activists have attempted blackmail
Blackmail is a criminal act of coercion using a threat.
As a criminal offense, blackmail is defined in various ways in common law jurisdictions. In the United States, blackmail is generally defined as a crime of information, involving a thr ...
and other illegal activities, such as the intimidation campaign to close Darley Oaks farm, which involved hate mail
Hate mail (as electronic, posted, or otherwise) is a form of harassment, usually consisting of invective and potentially intimidating or threatening comments towards the recipient. Hate mail often contains exceptionally abusive, foul or otherwi ...
, malicious phonecalls, bomb threats, arson attacks and property destruction, climaxing in the theft of the corpse of Gladys Hammond, the owners' mother-in-law, from a Staffordshire
Staffordshire (; postal abbreviation ''Staffs''.) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in the West Midlands (region), West Midlands of England. It borders Cheshire to the north-west, Derbyshire and Leicestershire to the east, ...
grave. Over a thousand ALF attacks in one year in the UK alone caused £2.6M of damage to property, prompting some experts to state that animal rights now tops the list of causes that prompt violence in the UK.
There are also a growing number of "open rescue
In animal rights and animal welfare, welfare, open rescue is a direct action of rescue practiced by animal rights activism, activists. Open rescue involves rescuing animals in pain and suffering, giving the rescued animals veterinary treatment a ...
s," in which liberationists enter businesses to remove animals without trying to hide their identities. Open rescues tend to be carried out by committed individuals willing to go to jail if prosecuted, but so far no farmer has been willing to press charges.
Targeting researchers
Activists have targeted individual researchers and have shown up at homes in the middle of the night, threatening their families and children. Nevertheless, the animal rights movement claims to be overwhelmingly peaceful, and that such instances of violence have been used in efforts to try to tarnish the entire movement.
Criminalization of direct action methods
The U.S. Justice Department
The United States Department of Justice (DOJ), also known as the Justice Department, is a United States federal executive departments, federal executive department of the U.S. government that oversees the domestic enforcement of Law of the Unite ...
labels underground groups the Animal Liberation Front
The Animal Liberation Front (ALF) is a Far-left politics, far-left international, Leaderless resistance, leaderless, decentralized movement that emerged in Britain in the 1970s, evolving from the Bands of Mercy. It operates without a formal lead ...
and the Earth Liberation Front
The Earth Liberation Front (ELF), also known as "Elves" or "The Elves", is the collective name for Wiktionary:autonomy, autonomous individuals or covert cells who, according to the ELF Press Office, use "economic sabotage and guerrilla warfare to ...
as terrorist organizations. A 13 November 2003 edition of CBS News' ''60 Minutes
''60 Minutes'' is an American television news magazine broadcast on the CBS television network. Debuting in 1968, the program was created by Don Hewitt and Bill Leonard, who distinguished it from other news programs by using a unique style o ...
'' charged that " eco-terrorists," a term used by the United States government to refer to the Animal Liberation Front
The Animal Liberation Front (ALF) is a Far-left politics, far-left international, Leaderless resistance, leaderless, decentralized movement that emerged in Britain in the 1970s, evolving from the Bands of Mercy. It operates without a formal lead ...
and Earth Liberation Front
The Earth Liberation Front (ELF), also known as "Elves" or "The Elves", is the collective name for Wiktionary:autonomy, autonomous individuals or covert cells who, according to the ELF Press Office, use "economic sabotage and guerrilla warfare to ...
, are considered by the FBI
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic Intelligence agency, intelligence and Security agency, security service of the United States and Federal law enforcement in the United States, its principal federal law enforcement ag ...
to be "the country's biggest domestic terrorist threat." John Lewis, a Deputy Assistant Director for Counterterrorism
Counterterrorism (alternatively spelled: counter-terrorism), also known as anti-terrorism, relates to the practices, military tactics, techniques, and strategies that governments, law enforcement, businesses, and Intelligence agency, intelligence ...
at the FBI, stated in a 60 Minutes interview that these groups "have caused over $100 million worth of damage nationwide", and that "there are more than 150 investigations of eco-terrorist crimes underway". " Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act", the legislation which allows federal authorities to "help prevent, better investigate, and prosecute individuals who seek to halt biomedical research through acts of intimidation, harassment, and violence" was adopted in the USA in 2006. It has also been described as having 'a chilling effect' on free speech.
Inter-movement activity
Animal rights factions address injustices against a variety of groups, therein emphasizing a connection between discrimination against humans and discrimination against nonhuman animals. An intersectional orientation is seen online, on websites and social media, and also in offline activity. In Turkey, animal rights groups commonly join other social movements by aligning with online and offline campaigns. In Istanbul's 2013 Gezi Park protests, which began as an environmental movement against urban development efforts, various social movement groups participated. Among them were animal rights activists that saw the protests as an opportunity to raise concerns about speciesism. Animal rights activists' involvement in the protests changed the opinions of animal rights movement outsiders who had previously viewed vegan animal rights activists as elitist. This allowed for increased legitimacy and network expansion; the animal rights movement in Istanbul is composed of multi-movement actors from the feminist movement, LGBT+ movement, and antimilitarist movement, and such inter-movement interaction has led to increased coverage of veganism and animal rights by leftist news sites in Turkey.
Countermovement
Opposition to the animal rights movement comes primarily from corporate and state actors. Mass media, agribusiness
Agribusiness is the industry, enterprises, and the field of study of value chains in agriculture and in the bio-economy,
in which case it is also called bio-business or bio-enterprise.
The primary goal of agribusiness is to maximize profit ...
, and biomedicine
Biomedicine (also referred to as Western medicine, mainstream medicine or conventional medicine) industries often portray activists in a negative light, characterizing the movement as misanthropic, sensationalist, and dangerous to scientific endeavors and human well-being because of activists' high levels of expressed empathy for nonhuman animals. Mass media also frequently portray nonhuman animals as objects. Major pharmaceutical companies have taken legal measures to disallow protestors from targeting their companies.
The abolitionist faction of the animal rights movement often faces counterframing by dominant reformist organizations of the movement that frame radical advocacy as idealistic and schismatic. These reform-oriented nonhuman rights organizations direct resources to countering abolitionist claims and blocking abolitionists' access to discursive spheres. Another example of counterframing from opposition movement actors is found in Switzerland's 1998 referendum cycle, in which antivivisectionists' claims that animal research should be abolished were contested with claims that mobilized the public more. Antivivisection claims, which framed animal research as facilitating the genetic engineering of foods in hopes of seizing on public fear of genetic engineering, were countered by scientists and animal researchers, who framed vivisection as medically necessary to ensure human well-being.
See also
* Abolitionism (animal rights)
Abolitionism or abolitionist veganism is the animal rights based opposition to all animal use by humans. Abolitionism intends to eliminate all forms of animal use by maintaining that all sentient beings, humans or nonhumans, share a basic right ...
* Animal–industrial complex
Animal–industrial complex (AIC) is a concept used by activists and scholars to describe what they contend is the systematic and institutionalized exploitation of animals. The term was adapted from the " Military-industrial complex" outlined by ...
* Animal research
Animal testing, also known as animal experimentation, animal research, and ''in vivo'' testing, is the use of animals, as model organisms, in experiments that seek answers to scientific and medical questions. This approach can be contrasted ...
* Animal rights
Animal rights is the philosophy according to which many or all Animal consciousness, sentient animals have Moral patienthood, moral worth independent of their Utilitarianism, utility to humans, and that their most basic interests—such as ...
* Critical animal studies
* Cruelty to animals
Cruelty to animals, also called animal abuse, animal neglect or animal cruelty, is the infliction of suffering or Injury, harm by humans upon animals, either by omission (neglect) or by commission. More narrowly, it can be the causing of harm ...
* International Primate Day
International Primate Day, September 1, is an annual educational observance event organized since 2005 largely by British-based Animal Defenders International (ADI)
and supported annually by various primate-oriented advocacy organizations, speak ...
* List of animal rights advocates
Advocates of animal rights believe that many or all Animal consciousness, sentient animals have moral worth that is independent of their utility for humans, and that their most basic interests—such as in avoiding suffering—should be afforded ...
* Open rescue
In animal rights and animal welfare, welfare, open rescue is a direct action of rescue practiced by animal rights activism, activists. Open rescue involves rescuing animals in pain and suffering, giving the rescued animals veterinary treatment a ...
* Veganism
Veganism is the practice of abstaining from the use of animal products and the consumption of animal source foods, and an associated philosophy that rejects the commodity status of animals. A person who practices veganism is known as a vega ...
Citations
Further reading
; Articles
"A Critique of the Kantian Theory of Indirect Moral Duties to Animals"
by Jeff Sebo, ''AnimalLiberationFront.com'', undated, retrieved 4 September 2005
"Burning Rage"
by Ed Bradley, CBS ''60 Minutes'', 5 November 2005
"FBI, ATF address domestic terrorism"
by Terry Frieden, CNN
Cable News Network (CNN) is a multinational news organization operating, most notably, a website and a TV channel headquartered in Atlanta. Founded in 1980 by American media proprietor Ted Turner and Reese Schonfeld as a 24-hour cable ne ...
, 19 May 2005
* , No Compromise, Issue 15, 1999
Movement Watch
''Friends of Animals'', 2003
Animal Cruelty is the Price We Pay for Cheap Meat
''Rolling Stone
''Rolling Stone'' is an American monthly magazine that focuses on music, politics, and popular culture. It was founded in San Francisco, California, in 1967 by Jann Wenner and the music critic Ralph J. Gleason.
The magazine was first known fo ...
'', 10 December 2013.
* Nicolas Kristof,
Turning the Tide on Animal Suffering
. ''The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...
''. June 10, 2023.
; Books
* Steven Best
Steven Best (born December 1955) is an American philosopher, writer, speaker and activist. His concerns include animal rights, species extinction, human overpopulation, ecological crisis, biotechnology, liberation politics, terrorism, mass media ...
and Anthony J. Nocella, eds., ''Terrorists or Freedom Fighters?: Reflections on the Liberation of Animals'' (Lantern Books, 2004). .
* Lawrence Finsen and Susan Finsen, ''The Animal Rights Movement in America: From Compassion to Respect'' (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1994). .
* Gary L. Francione, ''Rain without Thunder: The Ideology of the Animal Rights Movement'' (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1996). .
* Harold D. Guither, ''Animal Rights: History and Scope of a Radical Social Movement'' (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1998). .
* James M. Jasper and Dorothy Nelkin, ''The Animal Rights Crusade: The Growth of a Moral Protest'' (New York: The Free Press, 1992). .
* Keith Mann,
From Dusk 'Til Dawn: An Insiders View of the Growth of the Animal Liberation Movement
' (Puppy Pincher Press 2007). .
* Ingrid Newkirk, ''Free the Animals: The Story of the Animal Liberation Front'' ( Lantern Books, 2000). .
* Peter Singer
Peter Albert David Singer (born 6 July 1946) is an Australian moral philosopher who is Emeritus Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University. Singer's work specialises in applied ethics, approaching the subject from a secu ...
, ''Ethics into Action: Henry Spira and the Animal Rights Movement'' (Lanham, MD: Bowman & Littlefield, 1998). .
External links
*
{{Discrimination
19th-century social movements
20th-century social movements
21st-century social movements