Animal Rights

Although scholars and animal exploiters recognize that animal rights and animal welfare are very different approaches to the human/animal relationship, many animal advocates elide the difference. These animal advocates seek to reduce suffering, but they regard this reduction as casually related to their long term goal of abolishing all institutionalized animal exploitation. They purport to embrace animal rights at least as a long-term matter, but they regard rights theory as "unrealistic" in that it cannot provide any short-term strategy to acheive the long-term goal. Consequently, they urge the pursuit of welfarist reforms as an interim strategy to achieve the abolition of animal exploitation. I call these animal advocates "new welfarist" because they support many of the reforms and approaches of classical animal welfare theory but do so in order to acheive a goal not shared by traditional welfarists.

Because both new welfarists and more traditional welfarists pursue the same strategy - to reduce animal suffering - albeit with different long term goals, some animal advocates have collapsed the rights and welfare views, claiming that there is no difference between the theories in that both requires only that people act with "compassion" and seek to reduce animal suffering. But that position is not an argument in favor of ignoring the theoretical differences between rights and welfare; indeed, the position merely asserts - and incorrectly - that the central concern of the animal "rights" movement is the "compassionate" treatment of animals and the reduction of suffering, both hallmarks of the classical welfarist approach.

Finally, the suggestion has been made that rights language plays only a "rhetorical" role in the ideology of the animal movement. But for those who take animal rights seriously, rights concepts are more than mere rhetoric, as Rowan suggests. For example, Helen Jones, founder of the International Society for Animal Rights (ISAR) and one of the true pioneers of the animal rights movement, stated that her group did not use the term "animal rights" in some rhetorical fashion: "Profound and deliberate thought led to the adoption in 1972 of the term Animal Rights in the name of Society for Animal Rights (SAR)." Jones added that "SAR, now International Society for Animal Rights, was the first organization in the US, and to the best of our knowledge, in the world, to employ the term Animal Rights in its name to reflect the Society's moral and philosophical position". As early as 1981, Jones argued that those who supported welfarist regulation should "have the grace and fairness not to invoke 'animal rights' as their philosophy and program. By doing so, they confuse the issue, the press and the public. Animal rights is too serious an issue to be invoked as a mere slogan."

Francione, Gary L., Rain Without Thunder - The ideology of the Animal Rights Movement, Temple University Press, 2007, Philadelphia, p.45