Animal Rights and Welfare

Over the millennia, humans have used animals for a variety of food, clothing, labor, transportation, war, hunting, magic, medicine, and companionship. For the most part, they could not have survived without doing so. The question of what constitutes proper treatment of animals has therefore been much debated by ethicists and moralists. What is our proper role with regard to nonhuman creatures? May we do as we like to them? Are we constrained from using them in some circumstances, but not in others? Or should our goal be complete separation between us and them, if such a thing were even possible? The campaign to achieve recognition of an inherent right of animals to live without human interference (or some modified form of that right) is the subject of the first section in this book. The second section examines in detail the confrontation between animal-rights activists and medical researchers over the use of sentient creatures in scientific experiments. The third section covers a variety of institutions that have come under attack by animal advocates, including factory farming, the fur industry, and blood sports; it also looks at the history of the movement and its prospects for the future.