Animal rights movement

• IDENTIFICATION: Social movement involving groups and individuals concerned with the basic rights and welfare of animals

The animal rights movement brought about a number of changes in laws as well as in public perceptions of issues involving animals in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century, but debates continue concerning the extent of the rights to which animals are entitled have remained a topic of controversy.

People involved in the animal rights movement share philosophical beliefs based on the idea that all animals are entitled to an equal claim on life and liberty and possess the same rights to existence as humans. Animal rights activists oppose those who believe that animals exist for human use as objects of study, testing, and experimentation, as food, as beasts of burden, or as objects of amusement and recreation.

The philosophical concept of animal rights arose during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, along with the development of biological science. The growing interest in biology gave rise to a sort of sideshow in which living, conscious dogs were cut open so that the animals’ internal organs could be displayed to crowds of onlookers. A variety of blood sports were popular as well, including bull baiting and bearbaiting. In these, a bull or a bear was chained in a ring along with one or more dogs that were trained to attack the larger animals. Dogfighting, in which various terrier breeds were encouraged to attack each other, was also popular.

Birth of Animal Rights

Legislation directed at preventing animal cruelty was first overseen in 1824. The Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) was founded in Great Britain to enforce new anti-cruelty laws. However, the laws and their enforcement had little, if any, effect in rural areas, which were far from the watchful eyes of the police or RSPCA agents. On many farms, animals were still kept in filthy conditions and beaten if they balked at hauling overloaded wagons. The slaughter of animals for market was carried out as simply and quickly as possible. A series of laws were enacted in the United States, beginning with the Animal Welfare Act of 1966, that limited the use of animals in scientific or other research.

Biomedical research, especially in human anatomy and physiology, advanced rapidly in Europe during the early to mid-nineteenth century. While anatomical study could be satisfied with human corpses, physiologists required living material, and animals became their targets. Although many of the animals used in medical research were rats and mice, dogs were also frequently used. Many of the animals were stolen pets, while others were strays that were found roaming on the streets. The treatment that dogs received in medical laboratories varied, but, for good science, the animals had to be maintained and treated in clean, sanitary, and relatively stress-free environments. Many dogs died at the hands of medical researchers, and opposition to the practice quickly grew. Objections came from members of the public, who had heard stories of both real and imagined horrors suffered by animals in the experiments.

The British government sought to quiet the complaints by passing the Cruelty to Animals Act of 1876. The act did not prohibit the practice of experimenting on live animals; rather, it set regulatory procedures that had to be followed in the laboratories. Animal rights were no less an issue in the United States at that time. The first documented humane society in the United States was the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA), incorporated in 1866. Another pioneer group, the American Antivivisection Society (AAS), was founded in 1883.

The animal rights movement in the United States was relatively quiet until the first Earth Day in 1970, after which it rapidly expanded with the help of various environmental organizations. Dozens of animal rights and animal welfare organizations were developed in the United States, such as Actors and Others for Animals, the League of Humane Voters, and the American Fund for Alternatives to Animal Research. Additionally, several confrontational groups with direct action tactics formed, such as Greenpeace, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, and the Animal Liberation Front (ALF).

Animal Rights Issues

One issue that quickly attracted animal rights proponents was the plight of the whales. For centuries, whaling was conducted from sailing ships with handheld harpoons in the manner made famous in Herman Melville’s novel Moby Dick (1851). By the 1800s, the whaling industry was thriving, and whales, primarily sperm whales, were hunted and killed for their blubber, which was the source of prized whale oil. Even with such crude equipment and methodology, whalers significantly reduced the whale population in the Atlantic Ocean and then turned their attention to the Pacific Ocean. In the late nineteenth century, steam (and, later, diesel) vessels and cannon-fired harpoons increased the whalers’ efficiency. The methods of the whalers aroused the ire of many people. Frequently, a harpooned whale was forced to tow the steel “catcher” ship for hours until the animal succumbed to the injuries from the explosive-headed harpoon. Another whaling technique was to harpoon and kill a whale calf. The mother and other adults hovered around the injured or killed calf and were also harpooned.

Economics, rather than animal rights, brought about the formation of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) in 1946. The commission was established to manage and increase whale stocks. It had no regulatory authority, however, and Norway, Iceland, and Japan continued to hunt whales despite the recommendations of the IWC as of 2025. These nations defended their activities as a sustainable use of a natural resource. Opponents view whaling as an archaic activity and a violation of animal rights. In 1971, several environmental groups, including the Animal Welfare Institute, launched the Save the Whales Campaign in an effort to significantly reduce the harvesting of whales. In 1972, the US government passed the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA) as a move to protect the whales.

Dolphins are at risk from indirect human exploitation. In the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean, yellowfin tuna frequently swim below pods of dolphins, and commercial fishermen learned to set their nets around schools of dolphins to capture the tuna. As the fish are netted, the trapped dolphins drown. The killing of tens of thousands of dolphins each year in this manner led to protests by animal rights groups that included a nationwide boycott of canned tuna. In response to the public outcry, the US government instituted regulations that required both domestic and foreign fishers to follow practices that release the dolphins from their nets and still retain most of the tuna. Within a few years, the accidental catch and kill of dolphins was reduced by 25 percent. Animal rights groups remained concerned that dolphins were still being chased and encircled by fishermen in search of tuna, so in 1992, the International Dolphin Conservation Program Act was passed, which allowed only "dolphin-safe tuna" (only tuna that had been caught without chasing, encircling, or killing dolphins) to be sold in the United States. Critics of the act accused tuna manufacturers of using the dolphin-safe label as a marketing tool, and that the term was no guarantee that dolphins had been protected. Regulations were strengthened in 2004, 2013, and 2016 to further protect dolphins, which included requiring courses for all vessel captains concerning dolphin safe practices. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) estimated in 2022 that the number of dolphins unintentionally caught in tuna nets had been reduced to 819 annually worldwide.

The animal rights movement also brought increased scrutiny to the fur trade and to circuses, zoos, theme parks, and any other activity in which live animals are used. For example, Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus, a storied American traveling circus dating to the mid-nineteenth century, went out of business in 2017, due in part to recurring legal battles with animal rights groups such as PETA and the Humane Society.

Bibliography

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