Animal liberation movement
From Freepedia
The animal liberation movement or animal rights movement is the worldwide movement of individual activists, academics, and groups who campaign or engage in direct action against the use of non-human animals in animal testing, the meat, dairy, and fur farming industries, and in entertainment and sports.
Members of the movement can be found all over the world but tend to be concentrated in the United Kingdom and United States.
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Methods
The movement espouses a number of disparate philosophies regarding methodology. Some groups reject using violence against persons, intimidation, threats, or the destruction of property: for example, the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection (BUAV) and Animal Aid. These groups concentrate on education and research, including carrying out undercover investigations of animal-testing facilities.
Other groups advocate and support the destruction of property or intimidation of those involved, even remotely, in what they perceive as animal abuse, but do not themselves engage in those activities, concentrating instead on education, research, and media campaigns: for example, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA).
A third category of activists operates using the leaderless resistance model, working in cells consisting of small numbers of trusted friends, or even one individual acting alone. These cells engage in direct action, for example by carrying out raids to release animals from laboratories and farms (the Animal Liberation Front), or by otherwise engaging in the destruction of property and intimidation of people: e.g. Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC). However, these groups say they do not engage in or support violence against persons.
Groups that acknowledge carrying out or threatening acts of physical violence are the Animal Rights Militia (ARM) and the Justice Department, both believed to be alternative names for the Animal Liberation Movement.
Philosophical and legal aims
The movement aims to include animals in the moral community by putting the basic interests of non-human animals on more of 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.
A related aim is to remove animals from the sphere of property, and to award them personhood; that is, to see them awarded legal rights to protect their basic interests.
Animal rights activists 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. The Texas Animal Cruelty Laws apply only to pets living under the custody of human beings. They exclude birds, deer, rabbits, squirrels, and other wild animals not owned by humans. The U.S. Animal Welfare Act excludes "pet stores ... state and country fairs, livestock shows, rodeos, purebred dog and cat shows, and any fairs or exhibitions intended to advance agricultural arts and sciences." The Department of Agriculture 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, [and] farm animals used for food, fiber, or production purposes.” [1]
Regarding the campaign to change the status of animals as property, the movement has seen success in two countries. Switzerland passed legislation in 1992 recognizing non-human animals as beings, not things. In 2002, rights for non-human animals were enshrined in the German constitution when the words "and animals" were added to the clause obliging the state to respect and protect the dignity of human beings. [2]
The Seattle-based Great Ape Project (GAP) — founded by Australian philosopher Peter Singer, the author of Animal Liberation (which is widely regarded as one of the bibles of the movement) — is campaigning for the United Nations to adopt its Declaration on Great Apes, which would see chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas and orang-utans included in a "community of equals" with human beings. The declaration wants to extend to the non-human apes the protection of three basic interests: the right to life, the protection of individual liberty, and the prohibition of torture. [3]
See also
- Animal Liberation Front
- Animal Liberation Front Supporters Group
- British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection
- People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals
- Animal Aid
- Rod Coronado
- Keith Mann
- Steven Best
- David Barbarash
- Greg Avery
- Justice Department (animal rights)
- Barry Horne, Henry Spira
- GANDALF trial
- Animal testing, Vivisection
- Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty
- People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals
- Animal rights, Animal rights activism
- Peter Singer, Tom Regan
- Vegetarianism, Veganism
References
- "How animal rights took on the world" by Simon Cox and Richard Vadon, BBC Radio 4, November 18, 2004
- Taylor, A. Animals and Ethics. Broadview Press, 2003. ISBN 1551115697
- "A Critique of the Kantian Theory of Indirect Moral Duties to Animals" by Jeff Sebo, AnimalLiberationFront.com, undated, retrieved September 4, 2005
