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104-416: Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty ( SHAC ) was an international animal rights campaign to close down Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS), Europe's largest contract animal-testing laboratory. HLS tests medical and non-medical substances on around 75,000 animals every year, from rats to primates. It has been the subject of several major leaks or undercover investigations by activists and reporters since 1989. SHAC

208-562: A social contract , and thus cannot have rights, a view summarised by the philosopher Roger Scruton , who writes that only humans have duties, and therefore only humans have rights. Another argument, associated with the utilitarian tradition, maintains that animals may be used as resources so long as there is no unnecessary suffering; animals may have some moral standing, but any interests they have may be overridden in cases of comparatively greater gains to aggregate welfare made possible by their use, though what counts as "necessary" suffering or

312-533: A 2007 meeting between the defendants had been bugged by police, and revealed that SHAC supported illegal acts that were traced to attacks on people across Great Britain. The prosecution also alleged there was evidence of direct email links between SHAC, the Animal Liberation Front, and Animal Rights Militia. Der Spiegel wrote that as a result of the police operation the number of attacks on HLS and associated businesses declined drastically, although

416-524: A banner from Mount Rushmore , placing President Obama's face next to other historic presidents. The banner read: "History honors leaders. Stop global warming." Human rights activists have used direct action in the campaign to close the School of the Americas (SOA). 245 SOA Watch protestors have collectively spent almost 100 years in prison, and more than 50 people have served probation sentences. In

520-478: A brain-damaged human could not make moral judgments, moral judgments cannot be used as the distinguishing characteristic for determining who is awarded rights. Cohen writes that the test for moral judgment "is not a test to be administered to humans one by one", but should be applied to the capacity of members of the species in general. Judge Richard Posner of the United States Court of Appeals for

624-660: A central role in animal advocacy since the 19th century. The anti-vivisection movement in the 19th and early 20th century in England and the United States was largely run by women, including Frances Power Cobbe , Anna Kingsford , Lizzy Lind af Hageby and Caroline Earle White (1833–1916). Garner writes that 70 per cent of the membership of the Victoria Street Society (one of the anti-vivisection groups founded by Cobbe) were women, as were 70 per cent of

728-502: A fantasy, a world of escape. Scruton singled out Peter Singer , a prominent Australian philosopher and animal-rights activist, for criticism. He wrote that Singer's works, including Animal Liberation , "contain little or no philosophical argument. They derive their radical moral conclusions from a vacuous utilitarianism that counts the pain and pleasure of all living things as equally significant and that ignores just about everything that has been said in our philosophical tradition about

832-623: A federal jury in Trenton, New Jersey , found six members of SHAC guilty of using their website to incite attacks on those who did business with HLS. Originally, seven individuals (the SHAC 7) were charged: Kevin Kjonaas (also known as Kevin Jonas, former president of Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty USA), Lauren Gazzola, Jacob Conroy , Joshua Harper, Andrew Stepanian , Darius Fullmer, and John McGee. McGee

936-470: A form of direct action. Examples of direct action pranks include the use of stink , critter, and paint bombs. Protestors may pie their targets. The Yes Men practice nonviolent direct action through pranks. Some direct action groups form legal teams, addressing interactions with the law enforcement, judges, and courts. Definitions of what constitutes violent or nonviolent direct action vary. Sociologist Dieter Rucht states that determining if an act

1040-406: A gradation or spectrum with other types of sentient rights, including human rights and the rights of conscious artificial intelligences (posthuman rights). According to sociologist David Nibert of Wittenberg University , the struggle for animal liberation must happen in tandem with a more generalized struggle against human oppression and exploitation under global capitalism . He says that under

1144-834: A legitimate sacrifice of interests can vary considerably. Certain forms of animal-rights activism, such as the destruction of fur farms and of animal laboratories by the Animal Liberation Front , have attracted criticism, including from within the animal-rights movement itself, and prompted the U.S. Congress to enact laws, including the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act , allowing the prosecution of this sort of activity as terrorism . The concept of moral rights for animals dates to Ancient India , with roots in early Jain and Hindu history, while Eastern, African, and Indigenous peoples also have rich traditions of animal protection. In

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1248-510: A means to an end, a view that places him firmly in the abolitionist camp. His theory does not extend to all animals, but only to those that can be regarded as subjects-of-a-life. He argues that all normal mammals of at least one year of age would qualify: ... individuals are subjects-of-a-life if they have beliefs and desires; perception, memory, and a sense of the future, including their own future; an emotional life together with feelings of pleasure and pain; preference- and welfare-interests;

1352-643: A militant variant of anarchist ideology, primarily deals with direct action against governments. Insurrectionist anarchists see countries as inherently controlled by the upper classes, and thereby impossible to reform . While the vast majority of anarchists are not militant and do not engage in militant actions, insurrectionists take violent action against the state and other targets. Most insurrectionary anarchists largely reject mass grassroots organizations created by other anarchists, instead calling for coordinated militant action to be taken by decentralized cell networks . Fascism emphasizes direct action, including

1456-492: A mistake to portray animal rights activists as homogeneous." Even though around 90% of US adults regularly consume meat, almost half of them appear to support a ban on slaughterhouses: in Sentience Institute 's 2017 survey of 1,094 U.S. adults' attitudes toward animal farming, 49% "support a ban on factory farming, 47% support a ban on slaughterhouses, and 33% support a ban on animal farming". The 2017 survey

1560-440: A more egalitarian democratic socialist system, one that would "allow a more just and peaceful order to emerge" and be "characterized by economic democracy and a democratically controlled state and mass media", there would be "much greater potential to inform the public about vital global issues—and the potential for "campaigns to improve the lives of other animals" to be "more abolitionist in nature." Philosopher Steven Best of

1664-421: A particular situation". The idea that nonhuman animals are worthy of prima facie rights is to say that, in a sense, animals have rights that can be overridden by many other considerations, especially those conflicting a human's right to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness. Garry supports his view arguing: ... if a nonhuman animal were to kill a human being in the U.S., it would have broken

1768-541: A patriarchal society: both are "the used"; the dominated, submissive " Other ". When the British feminist Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797) published A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), Thomas Taylor (1758–1835), a Cambridge philosopher, responded with an anonymous parody, A Vindication of the Rights of Brutes (1792), saying that Wollstonecraft's arguments for women's rights could be applied equally to animals,

1872-429: A philosophical context, a prima facie (Latin for "on the face of it" or "at first glance") right is one that appears to be applicable at first glance, but upon closer examination may be outweighed by other considerations. In his book Ethics: A Pluralistic Approach to Moral Theory , Lawrence Hinman characterizes such rights as "the right is real but leaves open the question of whether it is applicable and overriding in

1976-479: A position he intended as reductio ad absurdum . In her works The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-Vegetarian Critical Theory (1990) and The Pornography of Meat (2004), Carol J. Adams focuses in particular on what she argues are the links between the oppression of women and that of non-human animals. Some transhumanists argue for animal rights, liberation, and "uplift" of animal consciousness into machines. Transhumanism also understands animal rights on

2080-611: A position inside its primate toxicology unit in Cambridgeshire. According to Mark Matfield of the Research Defence Society , a pro-animal testing lobby group in the UK, HLS lost a great deal of business after these investigations, primarily among the pharmaceutical industry. "There was an ingrained feeling among scientists and business people that this company had transgressed in a very serious way," he said. SHAC

2184-498: A positive view of universal healthcare, favor reducing discrimination against African Americans, the LGBT community and undocumented immigrants, and expanding welfare to aid the poor. Two surveys found that attitudes towards animal rights tactics, such as direct action , are very diverse within the animal rights communities. Near half (50% and 39% in two surveys) of activists do not support direct action. One survey concluded "it would be

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2288-661: A refusal to work within hierarchical bureaucratic institutions . Direct action protestors may perform activities such as: Some protestors dress in black bloc , wearing black clothing and face coverings to obscure their identities. Ende Gelände protestors wear matching white suits. One of Greenpeace's tactics is to install banners in trees or at symbolic places like offices, statues, nuclear power plants. Direct action protestors may also destroy property through actions such as vandalism , theft , breaking and entering , sabotage , tree spiking , arson , bombing , ecotage , or eco-terrorism . Pranks may also be considered

2392-411: A right to life, some control over their environment, company, play, and physical health. Stephen R. L. Clark , Mary Midgley , and Bernard Rollin also discuss animal rights in terms of animals being permitted to lead a life appropriate for their kind. Egalitarianism favors an equal distribution of happiness among all individuals, which makes the interests of the worse off more important than those of

2496-620: A three-year sentence. In February 2007, a number of SHAC supporters were charged with illegal street collecting without a licence. According to the Metropolitan Police, two stalls in London's Oxford Street collected over £80,000 a year. In March 2007, three activists were jailed under the Act for intimidating HLS suppliers; one supplier dropped its contract with HLS after being invaded by demonstrators wearing skull masks. In March 2006,

2600-704: A tool of both owners and workers, and for this reason he included lockouts and cartels , as well as strikes and sabotage . Canadian anarchist Ann Hansen , one of the Squamish Five , wrote in her book Direct Action that "the essence of direct action [...] is people fighting for themselves, rejecting those who claim to represent their true interests, whether they be revolutionaries or government officials". Activist trainer and author Daniel Hunter states 'Nonviolent direct action are techniques outside of institutionalized behavior for waging conflict using methods of protest, noncooperation, and intervention without

2704-429: A worse outcome. There are a number of positions that can be defended from a consequentalist or deontologist perspective, including the capabilities approach , represented by Martha Nussbaum , and the egalitarian approach , which has been examined by Ingmar Persson and Peter Vallentyne . The capabilities approach focuses on what individuals require to fulfill their capabilities: Nussbaum (2006) argues that animals need

2808-497: Is a moral intuition of many, probably most, Americans. We realize that animals feel pain, and we think that to inflict pain without a reason is bad. Nothing of practical value is added by dressing up this intuition in the language of philosophy; much is lost when the intuition is made a stage in a logical argument. When kindness toward animals is levered into a duty of weighting the pains of animals and of people equally, bizarre vistas of social engineering are opened up. Roger Scruton ,

2912-721: 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 government's laws or actions) or to solve perceived problems (such as social inequality). Direct action may include activities, often nonviolent but possibly violent, targeting people, groups, institutions, actions, or property that its participants deem objectionable. Nonviolent direct action may include civil disobedience , sit-ins , strikes , and counter-economics . Violent direct action may include political violence , assault , arson , sabotage , and property destruction . It

3016-492: Is exemplified by Peter Singer , and the latter by Tom Regan and Gary Francione . Their differences reflect a distinction philosophers draw between ethical theories that judge the rightness of an act by its consequences (consequentialism/teleological ethics, or utilitarianism), and those that focus on the principle behind the act, almost regardless of consequences (deontological ethics). Deontologists argue that there are acts we should never perform, even if failing to do so entails

3120-587: Is harm directed toward living things. American civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. , who used direct action tactics such as boycotts and sit-ins , felt that the goal of nonviolent direct action was to "create such a crisis and foster such a tension" as to demand a response. Mahatma Gandhi 's methods, which he called satyagraha , did not involve confrontation and could be described as "removal of support" without breaking laws besides those explicitly targeted. Examples of targeted laws include

3224-453: Is known as secondary and tertiary targeting. Activists engage in direct action —ranging from lawful protests to intimidation, harassment, and violent attacks—not only against HLS, its employees, and its employees' families, but also against secondary and tertiary targets such as HLS's business partners, and their business partners, insurers, caterers, cleaners, children's nursery schools, and office suppliers. A New York yacht club, for example,

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3328-499: Is not known when the term direct action first appeared. Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset wrote that the term and concept of direct action originated in fin de siècle France. The Industrial Workers of the World union first mentioned the term "direct action" in a publication about the 1910 Chicago strike . American anarchist Voltairine de Cleyre wrote the essay "Direct Action" in 1912, offering historical examples such as

3432-418: Is right. "The holders of rights must have the capacity to comprehend rules of duty governing all, including themselves. In applying such rules, [they] ... must recognize possible conflicts between what is in their own interest and what is just. Only in a community of beings capable of self-restricting moral judgments can the concept of a right be correctly invoked." Cohen rejects Singer's argument that, since

3536-481: Is violent falls along a spectrum or gradient—lesser property damage is not violence, injuries to humans are violent, and acts in between could be labelled either way depending on the circumstances. Rucht states that definitions of "violence" vary widely, and cultural perspectives can also color such labels. American political scientist Gene Sharp defined nonviolent direct action as "those methods of protest, resistance, and intervention without physical violence in which

3640-605: The Boston Tea Party and the American anti-slavery movement , and writing that "direct action has always been used, and has the historical sanction of the very people now reprobating it." In his 1920 book Direct Action , William Mellor categorized direct action with the struggle between worker and employer for economic control. Mellor defined it "as the use of some form of economic power for securing of ends desired by those who possess that power." He considered it

3744-801: The British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection by Cobbe in London in 1898; the Animal Welfare Board of India by Rukmini Devi Arundale in 1962; and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals , co-founded by Ingrid Newkirk in 1980. In the Netherlands, Marianne Thieme and Esther Ouwehand were elected to parliament in 2006 representing the Parliamentary group for Animals. The preponderance of women in

3848-552: The NYSE Arca electronic exchange. HLS is no longer a publicly traded company after being bought by CEO Andrew Baker. In June 2005, Vancouver-based brokerage Canaccord Capital announced that it had dropped a client, Phytopharm PLC, in response to the May 2005 Animal Liberation Front (ALF) firebombing of a car belonging to Canaccord executive Michael Kendall. The ALF stated on its website that activists placed an incendiary device under

3952-598: The Sharia . This recognition is based on both the Qur'an and the Hadith . The Qur'an contains many references to animals, detailing that they have souls, form communities, communicate with God, and worship Him in their own way. Muhammad forbade his followers to harm any animal and asked them to respect animals' rights. Nevertheless, Islam does allow eating of certain species of animals. According to Christianity , all animals, from

4056-498: The University of Texas at El Paso states that the animal liberation movement, as characterized by the Animal Liberation Front and its various offshoots, "is a significant threat to global capital." ... Animal liberation challenges large sectors of the capitalist economy by assailing corporate agriculture and pharmaceutical companies and their suppliers. Far from being irrelevant to social movements, animal rights can form

4160-669: The salt tax and the Asiatic Registration Act . His preferred actions were largely symbolic and peaceful, and included "withdrawing membership, participation or attendance in government-operated [...] agencies." Gandhi and American civil rights leader James Bevel were strongly influenced by Leo Tolstoy 's 1894 book The Kingdom of God Is Within You , which promotes passive resistance . Other terms for nonviolent direct action include civil resistance , people power , and positive action . Insurrectionary anarchism ,

4264-683: The Averys and James were jailed for six months in 2002 – declared his support for the ALF, and Robin Webb , spokesman for the ALF in the UK, attended and addressed SHAC conferences in the United States. In 2006 the ALF warned that it was targeting HLS suppliers, and that year firebombed a car belonging to the finance director of Canaccord Capital, a brokerage firm. Members of SHAC said the company had acted as brokers for Phytopharm , which had used HLS for contract testing. The FBI linked SHAC with attacks claimed by

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4368-411: The British philosopher, argued that rights imply obligations. Every legal privilege, he wrote, imposes a burden on the one who does not possess that privilege: that is, "your right may be my duty." Scruton therefore regarded the emergence of the animal rights movement as "the strangest cultural shift within the liberal worldview", because the idea of rights and responsibilities is, he argued, distinctive to

4472-529: The Cartesian view of animals. Darwin noted the mental and emotional continuity between humans and animals, suggesting the possibility of animal suffering. The anti-vivisection movement emerged in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, driven significantly by women. From the 1970s onward, growing scholarly and activist interest in animal treatment has aimed to raise awareness and reform laws to improve animal rights and human–animal relationships. For some

4576-707: The FBI's counter-terrorism division referred to SHAC's activities in the United States as domestic terrorist threats. In 2009 and 2010, 13 members of SHAC, including Avery, James, and Dellemagne, were jailed for between 15 months and eleven years on charges of conspiracy to blackmail or harm HLS and its suppliers. HLS tests household cleaners, pesticides, weedkillers, food additives, chemicals for use in industry, and drugs for use against Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, diabetes, multiple sclerosis, and cancer. It kills around 75,000 animals every year, including rats, rabbits, pigs, dogs, and primates (marmosets and macaques). The company has been

4680-552: The Hill Grove Cats against Hill Grove farm in Oxfordshire, which bred cats for laboratories. The farm closed after two years. They would meet every three months to receive updates from colleagues in the United States and Europe. Sarah Whitehead, an experienced campaigner known in the group as "Mumsy", would lead younger members and carry out up to five attacks in a night, according to the judge. SHAC's modus operandi

4784-645: The Law (1995) was the first extensive jurisprudential treatment of animal rights. In it, Francione compares the situation of animals to the treatment of slaves in the United States , where legislation existed that appeared to protect them while the courts ignored that the institution of slavery itself rendered the protection unenforceable. He offers as an example the United States Animal Welfare Act , which he describes as an example of symbolic legislation, intended to assuage public concern about

4888-522: The SHAC 7 rested largely on the 1969 case Brandenburg v. Ohio , in which the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that political speech is legal unless it can be shown that a defendant incited others to commit imminent unlawful acts of violence. During the trial, the defendants were prohibited from providing evidence of animal cruelty taking place at Huntingdon Life Sciences testing laboratories. In 2011, NPR reported that Andrew Stepanian of

4992-676: The SHAC 7—since released—had been imprisoned in the highly restrictive Communication Management Unit of the U.S. federal prison system. In 2019 Joaquin Phoenix produced 'The Animal People'; a documentary about the SHAC 7 defendants. On 1 May 2007, a series of raids—Operation Achilles—took place against SHAC in Europe, involving 700 police officers in England, Amsterdam, and Belgium. Thirty-two people were arrested, including Greg and Natasha Avery, and Heather Nicholson, who were charged with blackmail, along with nine others. Prosecutors told jurors that

5096-567: The Seventh Circuit debated the issue of animal rights in 2001 with Peter Singer. Posner posits that his moral intuition tells him "that human beings prefer their own. If a dog threatens a human infant, even if it requires causing more pain to the dog to stop it, than the dog would have caused to the infant, then we favour the child. It would be monstrous to spare the dog." Singer challenges this by arguing that formerly unequal rights for gays, women, and certain races were justified using

5200-461: The US before 1989 were taught to ignore pain, he writes, and at least one major veterinary hospital in the 1960s did not stock narcotic analgesics for animal pain control. In his interactions with scientists, he was often asked to "prove" that animals are conscious, and to provide "scientifically acceptable" evidence that they could feel pain. Scientific publications have made it clear since the 1980s that

5304-547: The United States, direct action is increasingly used to oppose the fossil fuel industry, oil drilling , pipelines, and gas power plant projects. Direct action was taken at arms factories in the United States and the United Kingdom that supplied arms to Israel during the Israel–Hamas war . Anarchists organize almost exclusively through direct action, which they use due to a rejection of party politics and

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5408-582: The United States, incorporating as Life Sciences Research (LSR), and secured a $ 15m loan from investment bank Stephens, Inc , its largest shareholder. In September 2005, after the firebombing of the homes of a Canadian brokerage employee and a British pharmaceutical executive, the New York Stock Exchange asked LSR to delay moving its listing from the OTC Bulletin Board to the main exchange. LSR has since transferred its listing to

5512-544: The Western world, Aristotle viewed animals as lacking reason and existing for human use, though other ancient philosophers believed animals deserved gentle treatment. Major religious traditions, chiefly Indian or Dharmic religions , opposed animal cruelty. While scholars like Descartes saw animals as unconscious automata and Kant denied direct duties to animals, Jeremy Bentham emphasized their capacity to suffer. The publications of Charles Darwin eventually eroded

5616-628: The ability to initiate action in pursuit of their desires and goals; a psychophysical identity over time; and an individual welfare in the sense that their experiential life fares well or ill for them, logically independently of their utility for others and logically independently of their being the object of anyone else's interests. Whereas Singer is primarily concerned with improving the treatment of animals and accepts that, in some hypothetical scenarios, individual animals might be used legitimately to further human or nonhuman ends, Regan believes we ought to treat nonhuman animals as we would humans. He applies

5720-554: The ability to suffer, nothing more, and once it is established that a being has interests, those interests must be given equal consideration. Singer quotes the English philosopher Henry Sidgwick (1838–1900): "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." Singer argues that equality of consideration is a prescription, not an assertion of fact: if

5824-630: The animal rights movement; indeed, the terms "animal protection" and "protectionism" are increasingly favored. His position in 1996 was that there is no animal rights movement in the United States. Mark Rowlands , professor of philosophy at the University of Florida, has proposed a contractarian approach, based on the original position and the veil of ignorance —a "state of nature" thought experiment that tests intuitions about justice and fairness—in John Rawls 's A Theory of Justice (1971). In

5928-627: The animals, shouting at them, throwing them into their cages, and mocking them for having fits in response to toxicity tests. In 1997, Zoe Broughton came out with footage showing puppies being hit and shaken. A year later, Michelle Rokke allegedly obtained footage of the vivisection of a monkey in HLS in New Jersey, in which a technician expresses concern that the animal is inadequately anaesthetized. Between 2006 and 2008, an Animal Defenders International employee filmed undercover inside HLS after securing

6032-512: The attack – and HLS marketing director Andrew Gay was attacked on his doorstep with a chemical spray to his eyes that left him temporarily blinded. On 21 December 2000, HLS was dropped from the New York Stock Exchange because its market capitalization had fallen below NYSE limits, and on 29 March 2001, HLS lost both of its market makers and its place on the London Stock Exchange. Shortly after this, HLS moved its headquarters to

6136-531: The attitude of individuals regarding the treatment of animals and animal rights. These include gender, age, occupation, religion, and level of education. There has also been evidence to suggest that prior experience with pets may be a factor in people's attitudes. According to some studies, women are more likely to empathize with the cause of animal rights than men. A 1996 study suggested that factors that may partially explain this discrepancy include attitudes towards feminism and science, scientific literacy, and

6240-538: The basis for a broad coalition of progressive social groups and drive changes that strike at the heart of capitalist exploitation of animals, people and the earth. R. G. Frey , professor of philosophy at Bowling Green State University, is a preference utilitarian. In his early work, Interests and Rights (1980), Frey disagreed with Singer—who wrote in Animal Liberation (1975) that the interests of nonhuman animals must be given equal consideration when judging

6344-487: The basis of animal rights is in religion or animal worship (or in general nature worship ), with some religions banning killing any animal. In other religions animals are considered unclean . Hindu and Buddhist societies abandoned animal sacrifice and embraced vegetarianism from the 3rd century BCE. One of the most important sanctions of the Jain , Hindu, and Buddhist faiths is the concept of ahimsa , or refraining from

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6448-452: The better off. Another approach, virtue ethics , holds that in considering how to act we should consider the character of the actor, and what kind of moral agents we should be. Rosalind Hursthouse has suggested an approach to animal rights based on virtue ethics. Mark Rowlands has proposed a contractarian approach. Nussbaum (2004) writes that utilitarianism, starting with Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill , has contributed more to

6552-558: The car, which was in Kendall's garage at home when it caught fire during the night. Kendall and his family went into hiding. Phytopharm was targeted, as were those doing business with it, because it had business links with HLS. In May 2006, an anonymous group said it would be writing to every one of GlaxoSmithKline's 170,000 small investors warning them to sell their shares. The letters began arriving at investors' home addresses on 7 May 2006, asking that shares be sold within 14 days, and that

6656-399: The consequences of an act—on the grounds that animals have no interests. Frey argues that interests are dependent on desire, and that no desire can exist without a corresponding belief. Animals have no beliefs, because a belief state requires the ability to hold a second-order belief—a belief about the belief—which he argues requires language: "If someone were to say, e.g. 'The cat believes that

6760-552: The day after the convictions new posts on SHAC's website indicated that the campaign would continue. Animal rights Many advocates of animal rights oppose the assignment of moral value and fundamental protections on the basis of species membership alone. They consider this idea, known as speciesism , a prejudice as irrational as any other. They maintain that animals should not be viewed as property or used as food, clothing, entertainment, or beasts of burden merely because they are not human. Multiple cultural traditions around

6864-516: The destruction of life. According to Buddhism, humans do not deserve preferential treatment over other living beings. The Dharmic interpretation of this doctrine prohibits the killing of any living being. These Indian religions' dharmic beliefs are reflected in the ancient Indian works of the Tolkāppiyam and Tirukkural , which contain passages that extend the idea of nonviolence to all living beings. In Islam, animal rights were recognized early by

6968-469: The door is locked,' then that person is holding, as I see it, that the cat holds the declarative sentence 'The door is locked' to be true; and I can see no reason whatever for crediting the cat or any other creature which lacks language, including human infants, with entertaining declarative sentences." Carl Cohen , professor of philosophy at the University of Michigan, argues that rights holders must be able to distinguish between their own interests and what

7072-410: The equality of the sexes were based only on the idea that men and women were equally intelligent, we would have to abandon the practice of equal consideration if this were later found to be false. But the moral idea of equality does not depend on matters of fact such as intelligence, physical strength, or moral capacity. Equality therefore cannot be grounded on the outcome of scientific investigations into

7176-449: The extent to which it satisfies the preferences (interests) of those affected. His position is that there is no reason not to give equal consideration to the interests of human and nonhumans, though his principle of equality does not require identical treatment. A mouse and a man both have an interest in not being kicked, and there are no moral or logical grounds for failing to accord those interests equal weight. Interests are predicated on

7280-547: The group be informed of the sale by e-mail via a Hotmail address. The number of letters sent was smaller than claimed; the BBC said at least 50 shareholders received the warning. Writing in The Sunday Telegraph the following week, British Prime Minister Tony Blair expressed support for animal experimentation in the face of an "appalling ... campaign of intimidation." Kevin Kjonaas – who took charge of SHAC UK while

7384-558: The human condition, and it makes no sense to spread them beyond our own species. He accused animal rights advocates of "pre-scientific" anthropomorphism , attributing traits to animals that are, he says, Beatrix Potter -like, where "only man is vile." It is within this fiction that the appeal of animal rights lies, he argued. The world of animals is non-judgmental, filled with dogs who return our affection almost no matter what we do to them, and cats who pretend to be affectionate when, in fact, they care only about themselves. It is, he argued,

7488-406: The intelligence of nonhumans. All that matters is whether they can suffer. Commentators on all sides of the debate now accept that animals suffer and feel pain, although it was not always so. Bernard Rollin , professor of philosophy, animal sciences, and biomedical sciences at Colorado State University, writes that Descartes's influence continued to be felt until the 1980s. Veterinarians trained in

7592-567: The introduction of sections 145–149 of the British Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005 , which created new offences intended to protect animal-testing facilities, including prohibiting acts or threats intended to cause someone to terminate or not enter into a contract with such a facility. The first person to be convicted under the Act was Joseph Harris, a doctor of molecular biology , who attacked property owned by companies supplying materials to HLS; he received

7696-591: The laws of the land and would probably get rougher sanctions than if it were a human. My point is that like laws govern all who interact within a society, rights are to be applied to all beings who interact within that society. This is not to say these rights endowed by humans are equivalent to those held by nonhuman animals, but rather that if humans possess rights then so must all those who interact with humans. In sum, Garry suggests that humans have obligations to nonhuman animals; animals do not, and ought not to, have uninfringible rights against humans. Women have played

7800-562: The legitimization of political violence , as a core part of its politics. While radical activism has been effective as part of the civil rights movement , forceful or violent environmental sabotage (FVES) can have a "negative impact on voter attitudes toward all environmental organizations", though that effect is contingent on the organizations' prior record. In polls conducted in the United Kingdom , two thirds of respondents supported non-violent environmental direct action, while

7904-473: The majority of researchers do believe animals suffer and feel pain, though it continues to be argued that their suffering may be reduced by an inability to experience the same dread of anticipation as humans or to remember the suffering as vividly. The ability of animals to suffer, even it may vary in severity, is the basis for Singer's application of equal consideration. The problem of animal suffering, and animal consciousness in general, arose primarily because it

8008-428: The members of the nonviolent group do, or refuse to do, certain things." American anarchist Voltairine de Cleyre wrote that violent direct action utilizes physical, injurious force against people or, occasionally, property. Some activist groups, such as Earth Liberation Front and Animal Liberation Front , use property destruction, arson, and sabotage and claim their acts are nonviolent as they believe that violence

8112-718: The membership of the British RSPCA in 1900. The modern animal advocacy movement has a similar representation of women. They are not invariably in leadership positions: during the March for Animals in Washington, D.C., in 1990—the largest animal rights demonstration held until then in the United States—most of the participants were women, but most of the platform speakers were men. Nevertheless, several influential animal advocacy groups have been founded by women, including

8216-719: The militant animal rights group, the Animal Liberation Brigade . They issued an arrest warrant for Daniel Andreas San Diego , who they described as being "involved with the Stop Huntington Animal Cruelty campaign", in connection with bomb attacks against two of HLS's clients in California. San Diego was added to the FBI Most Wanted Terrorists List in 2009 and remains at large. SHAC's campaign prompted

8320-434: The mistreatment of animals, and in many countries there are laws that seem to reflect those concerns, "in practice the legal system allows any use of animals, however abhorrent." The law only requires that any suffering not be "unnecessary". In deciding what counts as "unnecessary", an animal's interests are weighed against the interests of human beings, and the latter almost always prevail. Francione's Animals, Property, and

8424-690: The moral rights of humans are based on their possession of certain cognitive abilities, and because these abilities are also possessed by at least some nonhuman animals, such animals must have the same moral rights as humans. Although only humans act as moral agents, both marginal-case humans, such as infants, and at least some nonhumans must have the status of "moral patients". Moral patients are unable to formulate moral principles, and as such are unable to do right or wrong, even though what they do may be beneficial or harmful. Only moral agents are able to engage in moral action. Animals for Regan have " intrinsic value " as subjects-of-a-life, and cannot be regarded as

8528-408: The movement has led to a body of academic literature exploring feminism and animal rights, such as feminism and vegetarianism or veganism , the oppression of women and animals, and the male association of women and animals with nature and emotion, rather than reason—an association that several feminist writers have embraced. Lori Gruen writes that women and animals serve the same symbolic function in

8632-415: The original position, individuals choose principles of justice (what kind of society to form, and how primary social goods will be distributed), unaware of their individual characteristics—their race, sex, class, or intelligence, whether they are able-bodied or disabled, rich or poor—and therefore unaware of which role they will assume in the society they are about to form. The idea is that, operating behind

8736-453: The presence of a greater emphasis on "nurturance or compassion" among women. A common misconception on the concept of animal rights is that its proponents want to grant non-human animals the exact same legal rights as humans, such as the right to vote . This is not the case, as the concept is that animals should have rights with equal consideration to their interests (for example, cats do not have any interest in voting, so they should not have

8840-415: The real distinction between persons and animals." Tom Regan countered this view of rights by distinguishing moral agents and moral patients. According to a paper published in 2000 by Harold Herzog and Lorna Dorr, previous academic surveys of attitudes towards animal rights have tended to suffer from small sample sizes and non-representative groups. However, a number of factors appear to correlate with

8944-407: The recognition of the moral status of animals than any other ethical theory. The utilitarian philosopher most associated with animal rights is Peter Singer, professor of bioethics at Princeton University . Singer is not a rights theorist, but uses the language of rights to discuss how we ought to treat individuals. He is a preference utilitarian , meaning that he judges the rightness of an act by

9048-531: The respondents who were strong Christian fundamentalists and believers in creationism were less likely to advocate for animal rights than those who were less fundamentalist in their beliefs. The findings extended previous research, such as a 1992 study which found that 48% of animal rights activists were atheists or agnostic . A 2019 study in The Washington Post found that those who have positive attitudes toward animal rights also tend to have

9152-406: The right to vote). A 2016 study found that support for animal testing may not be based on cogent philosophical rationales, and more open debate is warranted. A 2007 survey to examine whether or not people who believed in evolution were more likely to support animal rights than creationists and believers in intelligent design found that this was largely the case—according to the researchers,

9256-635: The same set of intuitions. Posner replies that equality in civil rights did not occur because of ethical arguments, but because facts mounted that there were no morally significant differences between humans based on race, sex, or sexual orientation that would support inequality. If and when similar facts emerge about humans and animals, the differences in rights will erode too. But facts will drive equality, not ethical arguments that run contrary to instinct, he argues. Posner calls his approach "soft utilitarianism", in contrast to Singer's "hard utilitarianism". He argues: The "soft" utilitarian position on animal rights

9360-545: The smallest to the largest, are cared for and loved. According to the Bible, "All these animals waited for the Lord, that the Lord might give them food at the hour. The Lord gives them, they receive; The Lord opens his hand, and they are filled with good things." It further says God "gave food to the animals, and made the crows cry." The two main philosophical approaches to animal ethics are utilitarian and rights-based. The former

9464-725: The species barrier, but others oppose it because it predicates moral value on mental complexity rather than on sentience alone. As of November 2019 , 29 countries had enacted bans on hominoid experimentation ; Argentina has granted captive orangutans basic human rights since 2014. Outside of primates , animal-rights discussions most often address the status of mammals (compare charismatic megafauna ). Other animals (considered less sentient) have gained less attention— insects relatively little (outside Jainism ) and animal-like bacteria hardly any. The vast majority of animals have no legally recognised rights. Critics of animal rights argue that nonhuman animals are unable to enter into

9568-524: The strict Kantian ideal (which Kant himself applied only to humans) that they ought never to be sacrificed as a means to an end, and must be treated as ends in themselves. Gary Francione, professor of law and philosophy at Rutgers Law School in Newark, is a leading abolitionist writer, arguing that animals need only one right, the right not to be owned. Everything else would follow from that paradigm shift . He writes that, although most people would condemn

9672-461: The subject of several undercover investigations since 1989. Sarah Kite of the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection (BUAV) secured a job and filmed inside HLS in 1989. Zoe Broughton did the same for Channel 4 in 1996, as Michelle Rokke claimed to have done for PETA in 1997. Lucy Johnston for The Daily Express gained access in 2000. A diary kept by Kite, who worked undercover there for eight months, alleged that HLS workers routinely mishandled

9776-492: The treatment of animals, but difficult to implement. He argues that a focus on animal welfare, rather than animal rights, may worsen the position of animals by making the public feel comfortable about using them and entrenching the view of them as property. He calls animal rights groups who pursue animal welfare issues, such as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals , the " new welfarists ", arguing that they have more in common with 19th-century animal protectionists than with

9880-564: The use or threat of injurious force. Anti-globalization activists forced the Seattle WTO Ministerial Conference of 1999 to end early via direct action tactics and prefigurative politics . On April 28, 2009, Greenpeace activists, including Phil Radford , scaled a crane across the street from the Department of State , calling on world leaders to address climate change. Soon thereafter, they dropped

9984-578: The veil of ignorance, they will choose a social contract in which there is basic fairness and justice for them no matter the position they occupy. Rawls did not include species membership as one of the attributes hidden from the decision-makers in the original position. Rowlands proposes extending the veil of ignorance to include rationality, which he argues is an undeserved property similar to characteristics including race, sex and intelligence. American philosopher Timothy Garry has proposed an approach that deems nonhuman animals worthy of prima facie rights. In

10088-597: The world such as Jainism , Taoism , Hinduism , Buddhism , Shinto and Animism also espouse forms of animal rights. In parallel to the debate about moral rights, law schools in North America now often teach animal law , and several legal scholars, such as Steven M. Wise and Gary L. Francione , support the extension of basic legal rights and personhood to non-human animals. The animals most often considered in arguments for personhood are hominids . Some animal-rights academics support this because it would break

10192-699: Was argued that animals have no language . Singer writes that, if language were needed to communicate pain, it would often be impossible to know when humans are in pain, though we can observe pain behavior and make a calculated guess based on it. He argues that there is no reason to suppose that the pain behavior of nonhumans would have a different meaning from the pain behavior of humans. Tom Regan, professor emeritus of philosophy at North Carolina State University, argues in The Case for Animal Rights (1983) that nonhuman animals are what he calls "subjects-of-a-life", and as such are bearers of rights. He writes that, because

10296-429: Was covered in red paint because members of the club worked for Carr Securities, which traded in HLS shares. The campaign drove down HLS's profits, suppressed its share price, and made it difficult to find business and financial partners. In 2001, HLS managing director in the UK, Brian Cass , was beaten outside his home by three masked men – animal rights activist David Blenkinsop was sentenced to three years in prison for

10400-496: Was founded in November 1999 by Greg Avery; his second wife, Natasha Avery (née Dellemagne); and his first wife, Heather Nicholson (née James). Avery and Nicholson had been involved in previous high-profile campaigns against facilities in the UK that bred animals for laboratories. In 1997, after a ten-month campaign, they caused the closure of Consort Kennels , which bred beagles for animal research. Later that year, they started Save

10504-401: Was later dropped from the case. They were charged with conspiracy to violate the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act , in the first application of the 1992 statute. Jonas, Gazzola, Conroy, and Harper were charged with conspiracy to harass using a telecommunications device (discussing black faxes ), while Jonas, Gazzola, Conroy, and SHAC USA were charged with stalking via the internet. The defence of

10608-885: Was replicated by researchers at the Oklahoma State University , who found similar results: 73% of respondents answered "yes" to the question "Were you aware that slaughterhouses are where livestock are killed and processed into meat, such that, without them, you would not be able to consume meat?" In the U.S., many public protest slaughters were held in the late 1960s and early 1970s by the National Farmers Organization . Protesting low prices for meat, farmers killed their animals in front of media representatives. The carcasses were wasted and not eaten. This effort backfired because it angered television audiences to see animals needlessly and wastefully killed. Direct action Direct action

10712-554: Was revoked for six months. PETA stopped its protests against the company after HLS threatened it with legal action, and SHAC took over as a leaderless resistance . The campaign used tactics ranging from non-violent protest to the alleged firebombing of houses owned by executives associated with HLS's clients and investors. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which monitors US domestic extremism, has described SHAC's modus operandi as "frankly terroristic tactics similar to those of anti-abortion extremists," and in 2005 an official with

10816-457: Was started by three British animal rights activists— Greg Avery , Heather James , and Natasha Dellemagne—after video footage supposed to have been shot covertly inside HLS in 1997 by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) showed HLS staff shaking, punching, and shouting at beagles in their care. The footage was broadcast by Channel 4 in the UK, the employees were dismissed and prosecuted, and HLS's licence to perform animal experiments

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