Portal:Animal rights
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Template:/box-header Animal rights, also known as animal liberation, is the idea that the most basic interests of non-human animals have to be afforded the same moral and legal consideration as the similar interests of human beings, and that to do otherwise is a prejudice known as speciesism.
Most writers trace the beginning of the modern concept of animal rights to 19th-century England, and the 1822 Cruel Treatment of Cattle Act, introduced by Richard Martin MP. Anti-cruelty legislation had been passed before this: for example in 1635 in Ireland, in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1641, and in England during the rule of Oliver Cromwell, though it was overturned when Charles II became king in 1660. But prosecutions in England had been pursued from the perspective of animals qua property, so that damage to a non-human animal constituted damage to the human owner. The 1822 Act changed this. Martin himself brought the first prosecution when he had Bill Burns, a fruit seller, convicted for beating a donkey, and brought the donkey to court to demonstrate the injuries.
From 1824, starting with the English SPCA, animal protection and anti-vivisection groups sprang up across Europe, Scandinavia, Australia and North America, and between then and the end of the century, several treatises were published that explicitly developed the idea of animal rights. In the 1960s, a group of intellectuals centered around the University of Oxford – now known as the Oxford Group – began discussing ideas that became the foundation of the modern movement. In parallel to the academic work, direct action groups began to form, starting with the English Hunt Saboteurs Association, founded by a journalist in 1963. In 1964, Ruth Harrison published Animal Machines, a critique of factory farming. A year later, Brigid Brophy wrote an influential article, "The Rights of Animals," for The Sunday Times, and in 1970, the Oxford clinical psychologist Richard D. Ryder coined the term "speciesism."
In 1971, three Oxford philosophers – Roslind and Stanley Godlovitch, and John Harris – edited a collection of essays, Animals, Men and Morals: An Inquiry into the Maltreatment of Non-humans. This, in turn, inspired the Australian philosopher, Peter Singer, to become involved, and in 1975 he published the now-canonical work, Animal Liberation, drawing an explicit comparison between the liberation of women and animals. In 1983, American philosopher, Tom Regan, who had also come into contact with the Oxford Group, published The Case for Animal Rights, laying the groundwork for a rights-based theory.
Animal rights advocates today approach the issue from different philosophical positions, some abolitionist and some gradualist, but generally share the view that animals should be viewed as non-human persons, and should not be used as food, clothing, research subjects, or entertainment.
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The Brown Dog affair was a political controversy about vivisection that raged in Edwardian England from 1903 until 1910. It was triggered by claims that, in February 1903, physiologist William Bayliss of University College London dissected a brown terrier dog without adequate anaesthesia before an audience of 60 medical students. The procedure was condemned as unlawful by the National Anti-Vivisection Society. Bayliss, arguing that the dog had been anaesthetized and unconscious, sued for libel and won.
Anti-vivisectionists commissioned a statue of the dog as a memorial, but medical students were angered by its provocative plaque – "Men and women of England, how long shall these Things be?" – leading to frequent vandalism of the memorial, the need for a 24-hour police guard, and eventually rioting in central London, when suffragettes, trade unionists and the police clashed with hundreds of medical students. Read more...
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Ingrid Newkirk (born 1949) is president of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). She has worked in animal protection since 1972. Under her leadership in the 1970s as the District of Columbia's first female poundmaster, legislation was passed to create the first spay/neuter clinic in Washington, D.C., as well as an adoption program and the public funding of veterinary services, leading her to be named in 1980 as a Washingtonian of the Year.
She founded PETA in March that year with Alex Pacheco. They came to public attention in 1981, during what became known as the Silver Spring monkeys case, when Pacheco photographed 17 macaque monkeys being experimented on inside the Institute of Behavioral Research in Silver Spring, Maryland. Since then, Newkirk has led campaigns to stop the use of animals in crash tests, has convinced companies to stop testing cosmetics on animals and to press for higher welfare standards from the meat industry, and has organized undercover investigations that have led to government sanctions against companies, universities, and entertainers who use animals. Read more...
- ... that Lizzy Lind af Hageby, a Swedish anti-vivisectionist, broke a record in England in 1913 when she spoke 210,000 words during a libel trial and asked 20,000 questions?
- ... that in January 2010 a team of scientists suggested that dolphins are second in intelligence only to human beings, and should be regarded as non-human persons?
- ... that in 2011 People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (unsuccessfully) sued SeaWorld over its captivity of whales, the first time an attempt was made to use the United States Thirteenth Amendment to protect non-human rights?Template:/box-footer
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