Category: Utilitarianism

The Evolution of Animal Ethics in Japan by Dr. Koichi Tagami

8/6/2015

Over a number of exchanges with Dr. Koichi Tagami of Rissho University, Tokyo, Japan, I have been exploring how the issue and idea of animal rights is evolving in Japan. Dr. Tagami is an expert on Marx's theory of alienation and is the author of "Practical Environmental Ethics" (2006).

I am grateful to Dr. Tagami for giving me permission to reproduce the following exchange.

Dear Dr. Tagami,

Hello and I hope you are well. As you are aware I am sure, I am interested in the philosophical evolution of the "animal rights movement". I see that in a very short period of time, you have realised and appreciated that one must turn away from Peter Singer's utilitarianism, and turn toward theorists such as Gary Francione and Tom Regan, if one wishes to gain a genuine animal rights understanding of human relations with the nonhuman world.

Given this, you have taken a journey that the "animal rights movement" refuses to take. Therefore, I would be interested to hear of your philosophical journey, so to speak, in your exploration of animal ethics. At the present time, in Europe and North America, there is a struggle going on involving animal advocates who are serious about rights and animal advocates who merely use rights rhetorically, in group names for example. I would very much appreciate your comments on this, should you wish to share them.

With very best wishes and respect,

Dr. Roger Yates.

Dear Dr. Roger Yates.

First of all, I would like to explain how I have come to accept the theory of animal rights.

To begin with, my main research theme is 'the formation of ideas in early Marx’, and since the publication of my first article in 1991 I have been writing on issues surrounding the texts of early Marx, such as Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts and the German Ideology. After collecting the results of my research in a book entitled The Theory of Alienation in Early Marx, I obtained a doctorate in 2000.

However, this does not mean that I had no interest in, nor knowledge of, animal ethics. For I have been asked to teach ethics in university since 1994, and as a result, I have come to study issues in modern ethics, and become familiar with Peter Singer’s work. As you well know, Animal Liberation describes in detail the horrific conditions which animals suffer in factory farming, and this strongly impressed on me the strength of Singer’s argument. Yet, at the same time, I felt antagonistic towards his demand for vegetarianism. A ‘meal without meat’ seemed to me at that time unimaginably ‘abnormal’. I loved meat and was under the impression that I could not tolerate vegetarian meals. Besides, the fact that there were no vegetarians around me, and the fact that no one recommended it really worked against me.
In terms of my profession, there are many ‘academics’ who teach ethics, but there are no vegetarians, nor an ‘ethicist’ who supported animal rights (this is still the case).

On the contrary, the common attitude among the ethicists around me was that it was ‘ridiculous’ to put animals in the same category as humans, and that Singer’s argument was ‘extreme’ and did not deserve to be taken seriously. Consequently, although I felt that Singer’s argument was quite persuasive, I pretended to ‘look away’, and decided ‘not to think about it’. Nevertheless, ever since obtaining a doctorate, I have come to research environmental ethics in earnest. While re-reading books relevant to animal rights, I was becoming more convinced than ever of the evil of meat-eating. And Singer’s message that ‘one should become a vegetarian’ had changed from an irritation like ‘something in-between one’s teeth’ to an intolerable discomfort.

Yet the reason I still could not decide to be a vegetarian was that I believed that if I became a vegetarian, my muscles would deteriorate. I like training myself and I thought I couldn’t stand losing the results of all the exercise I had done over the years. That I used to worry about such a small thing is quite laughable now I think about it, but I didn’t know any vegetarians and couldn’t get rid of the stereotype of a ‘pale vegetarian’.

Around that time, I happened to come across an opportunity of going to India. It was December 2002. This trip to India turned out to be the biggest turning point in my life. It was literally a ‘culture shock’. One of the culture shocks I experienced was their diet. Apart from expensive restraints for tourists, diners for the Indian general public Alwasa served a set meal of dahl (a kind of soup) and vegetable curry, and even for snacks it was the rule not to use meat rather than the exception. In India ‘not eating meat’ is neither ‘abnormal’ nor ‘strange’, but rather a ‘natural’ thing to do. To witness the fact that far more people than Japan’s population are vegetarian made me feel certain that it is impossible to damage one’s health by not eating meat. After I came back to Japan, I had gradually reduced the amount of meat and animal product I consumed. And before long I became almost vegan at home, although I still consumed a tiny amount of dairy product. When I went out for a meal, if there was no way I could avoid it, I ate a small amount of animal product. Even in such cases, I chose sea food over meat. This is how my present eating habit became established.

Eating a small amount of animal product when I go out is a compromise I have to adopt in order to survive in Japan, which is an extremely backward country when it comes to vegetarianism. Of course I don’t want to consume animal product at all, but otherwise I wouldn’t be able to go out at all. Japan really is a difficult place for the vegetarian to live in. Once I became a vegetarian, I discovered that my worry that ‘I would lose muscles’ was totally unfounded. On the contrary, my muscles came to develop more easily through training. Being able to lead a much healthier life when I am vegetarian than when I was a meat-eater has allowed me to feel that it is right to be a vegetarian. And as I lived a vegetarian life, before I knew it, the desire for meat had disappeared. By becoming a vegetarian, I felt as though the thorn with which Singer had pricked my heart had been pulled out, and this gave me a stirring feeling that I was finally released from hypocrisy. I no longer have to adopt an attitude that is unworthy of an ethicist – that is to say, an attitude of pretence that animals are excluded as the objects of moral consideration.

However, once I became a vegetarian and seriously committed to animal issues as my own problems rather than somebody else’s, I started to look at Singer’s argument differently from the way I used to.

Although I used to think that Singer’s argument was a radical extremist one which forced people to become vegetarian, I began to think that in fact his argument is full of holes; a ‘loose’ argument. For although Singer emphasises that we should not inflict suffering on animals, he does not criticise the use of animals by humans in itself. Therefore, if animals are kept in comfortable environments and slaughtered painlessly, he will have no right to criticise factory farming. And as for animal experiment, if the ‘benefit’ humans gain outweighs the loss inflicted on animals, then, in Singer’s argument, animal experimentation is acceptable as an ‘exception’.

Soon after I became a vegetarian and started to engage with animal issues seriously, I discovered that Singer’s argument cannot be a true rationale for the protection of animals. For, because Singer’s theory is not a ‘rights theory’ that regards animals as ‘rights-bearers’, I cannot help but think that his theory is one that accumulates ‘deferral’ which allows the use of animals, and ends up rolling down the ‘slippery slope’, and that such a theory would make the animal rights movement spineless. Thus, although Singer made me aware that we should protect animals by becoming vegetarians, once I actually became one, I began to think that in order truly to protect animals, we should not stop at Singer’s position, but proceed to genuine animal rights theories such as Tom Regan’s or Gary Francione’s.

This is how I have become an animal rightist. Compared to the study on Marx, I have but begun to research animal rights. As a beginning I have submitted an essay [now published] entitled the Reality of Animal Rights Theories to a human rights organisation journal. The aim is to cause a stir in the present situation where Peter Singer is mistaken to be a representative of animal rights theories. Although you may find it unbelievable, in Japan there are few ethicists who subsequently declare themselves to be vegetarians and then support vegetarianism or animal rights theories. There is a gap between theory and practice. Against this tendency, I intend to deepen my research as a vegetarian animal rightist and to present my own position.

Yours truly,

Dr. Koichi Tagami.

We can only hope that, as Dr. Tagami continues his journey toward veganism, that it becomes as easy as it is elsewhere. It is a noteworthy and welcome development that there is someone in Japan able to explain what is - and what is not - animal rights.

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Rights and Animal Rights (Part One)

6/27/2015

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Francione, Regan & Singer.

Philosopher Tom Regan [1] recognises that, in thoughts about the human use of other animals, social attitudes are influenced not only by dominant forms of thinking, but also by "established cultural practices." Indeed, he states that the rights view on human relations with other sentient beings involves "issuing condemnations" of such practices. However, Regan maintains that animal rights, properly conceived, is, contrary to pro-use claims, "not anti-business, not anti-freedom of the individual, not anti-science, not anti-human." For Regan, the rights view is "pro-justice," seeking as it does to alter the "scope of justice" to include many animals other than human.

Regan further recognises that the case for animal rights will be heavily contested, not least because "prejudices die hard." In addition to the issue of prejudice, Regan is keen to underline the influence of the "insulating" function of "widespread secular customs" and religious belief, likewise acknowledging the "sustaining authority" of "large and powerful economic interests." Finally, in this diverse matrix of social constructionism, he appreciates the protection afforded to the whole system by the common law.

Ultimately a political battleground is sketched out in which any philosophy of animal rights is bound to be substantially criticised and contested. Criticised and contested by philosophers who just do not agree that "the case" has been adequately made – but also by many who have personal or vested interests in the continuation of the human exploitation of other animals. It is tempting, furthermore, to suspect that many objections to animal rights, whether from trained philosophers such as Frey [2] and Cohen,[3] or journalists, or various other commentators, arise in the first instance at least from efforts to find the justification for a bacon and egg breakfast already eaten, and the steak dinner planned for later on.

Regan insists that moral philosophy can and will play a role in political action associated with the notion of animal rights because "history shows that ideas do make a difference." Indeed, he wrote The Case for Animal Rights in order that the animal protection movement would benefit by being well versed about the foundations on which much of their claims-making rests. The hoped-for result being substantial cultural change that Regan regards as a prerequisite for a widespread adoption of genuine animal rights thinking over animal welfarism.

Regan also articulates his firm belief that "moral philosophy is no substitute for political action," but insists, "still, it can make a contribution. Its currency is ideas." This assertion was made many years ago in 1983. However, it appears that large sections of the animal advocacy movement was not (and is not) listening to this important message. Many factions in the modern animal protection movement do not agree that a well worked out philosophical position assists in the furtherance of altering the moral standing of other animals. Moreover, many of those that do seem to agree with the general point that social movements require a solid basis for claims-making, appear not to accept the case for animal rights in the first place.

Recent developments in the animal movement tends to confirm such a view. For example, Francione [4] states that "the modern animal 'rights' movement has explicitly rejected the doctrine of animal rights." In fact, it might be tempting to claim, analogous to Gilroy’s [5] declaration that "there ain’t no black in the Union Jack," that there ain’t much rights in "animal rights" either. This tends to beg the question, if not rights violations, what do modern animal advocates substantially rely upon in order to make claims on behalf of nonhuman animals?

Francione argues that the contemporary animal movement appears content to rely on a new formulation of traditional ideas, which he labels "new welfarism." He describes this conception of new welfarism as a "hybrid position" which may be understood to be a more progressive, or in Francione’s terms, a "modified" welfare position compared with traditional animal welfarism, especially in the sense that this "version of animal welfare…accepts animal rights as an ideal state of affairs that can be achieved only through continued adherence to animal welfare measures."

This appears to be a crucial defining issue of so-called new welfarism: that its adherents are content talking about the eventual ending of animal exploitation, rather than expecting that the best the animal movement can or should do is tightly regulate nonhuman exploitation to such an extent that "cruelty" and "unnecessary suffering" is greatly reduced or, ideally, eliminated altogether. However, for Francione, new welfarists – despite what sets them apart from traditionalists of the genre - should be regarded as committed to the endorsement of measures "indistinguishable" from policies put forward by those "who accept the legitimacy of animal exploitation."

Unsurprisingly, such statements have angered many animal advocates. Francione puts forward two reasons to help explain apparent disparity between theory and practice:

First, many animal advocates believe that, as an empirical matter, welfarist reform has helped to ameliorate the plight of nonhumans and that these reforms can gradually lead to abolition of all animal exploitation. Second, although animal advocates embrace as a long-term goal the abolition of animal exploitation, they regard rights theory as "utopian" and as incapable of providing concrete normative guidance to day-to-day movement strategy and practice.

When animal advocates discuss Francione’s position on email lists and forums, many object bitterly to the assumption that supporting a number, many, or all animal welfare measures does indeed "accept the legitimacy of animal exploitation" – they claim the opposite, that accepting welfare improvements does not diminish their commitment to abolitionism.

Contributors have difficulty accepting Francione’s claim that new welfarism necessarily accepts, on some level, the legitimacy of the animal exploitation issue in question. On the contrary, many argue that any "welcoming" of a welfare measure, or even sets of them, and over an extended period of time, can be done within an acknowledgement that their position is ultimately abolitionist in intent. Debate such as this amounts to beliefs about whether forms of animal welfarism are able to provide "stepping stones" toward the ending of the human exploitation of other animals or not.[6]

Francione appears to have assumed that campaigners will be concerned about his claim that welfarist strategies have failed – and will continue to fail – to advance the cause of animal rights, and that a perspective based on genuine rights formulation can likely bring greater advances for nonhuman animals. He acknowledges that "rights talk" is a rhetorical matter in the movement which has lead to non-rightist Peter Singer being regarded as the foremost "animal rights philosopher" ever since the mid-1970s publication of Animal Liberation.

For Francione, therefore, the contemporary animal movement continues to commit cardinal philosophical and tactical errors:

These modern advocates, whom I have called new welfarists, defend the use of nonrights means to achieve a rights end, on the grounds that ideological distinctions are meaningless or, alternatively, that welfarist reforms will somehow lead someday to the abolition of animal exploitation.

Future historians of the animal protection movement may well take an interest in such questions. Anecdotal evidence and contributions to email listings suggest that Francione’s view expressed in the quote above may well be vindicated: many activists continue to suggest that the welfare + welfare + welfare = rights equation bears fruit for the animal movement.

One must hope that Francione was not mistaken in believing animal activists would take the time to explore the problem he raises.

In effect, some sort of impasse exists. On the one hand, Francione suggests that the animal movement makes ethical and tactical errors by not sorting out its philosophical position that directs its action. That, because it does not provide what is required, animal welfarism ought to be rejected by all seeking to radically alter human-nonhuman relations. On the other hand, however, many activists and the careerists in established organisations care less about philosophical purity as long as something is being done on behalf of nonhuman animals and membership numbers are maintained.

Advocates who wish to pursue a position based on rights thinking are very few in number and, furthermore, do not often feature in "leadership" positions within the current animal protection movement. Francione has had the frustrating experience of seeing his ideas - and indeed those of Regan - largely marginalised within the animal movement over the years. Attempts to bring bona fide rights thinking into the heart of a social movement bearing the name has been largely rejected. Francione’s work, especially because it includes a strong critique of new welfarism, has not so much been regarded as a source of philosophical clarity within a social movement, nor helpful in terms of strategic thinking, but rather labelled "disruptive," "divisive," and "elitist."

In retrospect, it may well have been somewhat unwise to call activists who see themselves as "radical," "full-on," "cutting-edge" campaigners "new welfarists" and expect them to welcome or even tolerate the criticism.

Nevertheless, the evidence points to the fact that the modern animal movement remains content with the philosophical leadership provided by Singer (to the extent that philosophy is thought important in the first place). It financially supports an organisational leaderships that includes many who may be welfarist in orientation, even in the traditional sense of the word, or else essentially use the term animal rights as a rhetorical devise only. Some opponents of rights-based formulations are careful to consistently use terms such as "animal liberation," more often, and thus ironically, than has Peter Singer.

Francione complains that Singer’s consequentialist utilitarian approach, based on reducing animal suffering and balancing interests,[7] has marginalised the abolitionist approach to animal rights. When McDonald’s announced in 2002 an animal welfare initiative to increase battery cage space and phase out "beak trimming" practices by its suppliers, the move was greeted by many animal protectionists, including Singer himself, as the most important "advance" for nonhuman animals since the publication of Animal Liberation in the 1970s.

For understandable psychological reasons, "victories" on any scale tend to be loudly trumpeted within social movements. While this could be characterised as a movement getting what little it can when it can, supporters state that they are being "practical," displaying a poverty of ambition apparently predicated on them "knowing for sure" that the public will and will always reject the notion of animal rights. In any event, they suggest, how can animal advocacy mobilisations be seen to reject measures that seem to ease the plight of so many suffering nonhumans?

For such advocates the McDonald’s case and others may be seen as further indication, since larger cage space and specific alterations in production procedures were the only proposals "on offer," that campaigning on an "extreme" or a "fundamentalist" rightist platform, and seeking the rapid abolition of major aspects of commercial animal exploitation, is totally unrealistic – utopian indeed.

Such a position begs questions.

Why, since the modern animal protection movement has rarely if ever pursued an abolitionist agenda for any prolonged period, are many advocates apparently and unequivocally so sure that it is doomed to failure?

Why are they so convinced that it will take hundreds of years? Why, moreover, that a philosophical grounding in widely accepted ideas of rights undoubtedly represent demands that unrealistically call for "too much?"

What follows outlines Francione’s and Regan’s rights-based approaches to human-nonhuman relations: approaches that are often regarded as "utopian" and "extreme" both within and without the "animal rights" movement. These are approaches not adopted or widely followed within the present animal movement. Francione agrees with Regan that philosophy and political action go together. Indeed, in contrast to many in the movement, he claims the latter requiresthe former to inform its direction:

A social movement must have a theory if it is to have action at all… I suggest that we need a new theory to replace the one that we have. I am not unrealistic. I recognise that even if we adopt an abolitionist theory, abolition will not occur immediately. Change will necessarily be incremental. But it is my view that the explicit goal must be abolition and that abolition must shape incremental change.

Regan and Francione are generally acknowledged as the major theoreticians of perspectives that seek to build on established rights formulations, and apply - or extend - to them to nonhuman animals. Regan is a Kantian deontologist who argues that many nonhumans are "subjects-of-a-life," a factor demanding that humans respect their inherent rights. Francione is a law professor particularly critical of the property status of other animals. His rights-based formulation is thought less complicated than Regan’s; he claims basic rights for all sentient beings.

Reganite and Francionian positions on human relations with other sentient beings can be regarded as attempts to bring genuine rights views to bear on the issue of the human treatment of other animals. Such approaches are different in nature to traditional or classical welfarist stances; and different also from Peter Singer’s version of utilitarianism which is the principal philosophical grounding of modern day new welfarism.

Neither Regan nor Francione use rights concepts, or the language of rights, in a rhetorical manner as many other animal activists do, and both believe that protective rights formulations can be plausibly extended to prevent current large-scale institutionalised human exploitation of certain species of nonhuman animals. As stated, Regan’s and Francione’s works have been effectively marginalised, so the following acknowledges and highlights a paradoxical situation in which the so-called "animal rights movement" virtually rejects genuine rights theories while embracing a non-rights animal liberation position as its main philosophical stance.

As implied above, however, it should be recognised that even the phrase "philosophical stance" can be quite misleading in relation to much current animal advocacy in which "philosophising" per se is actively frowned upon, and/or seen as a very poor second to "doing things" (doing anything) "for animals."

[1] Regan, T. (1983) The Case for Animal Rights. Berkeley: University of California Press.

[2] Frey, R.G. (1980) Interests and Rights: The Case against Animals. Oxford: Oxford University Press; (1983) Rights, Killing, and Suffering. Oxford: Blackwell.

[3] Cohen, C. (1986) ‘The Case for the Use of Animals in Biomedical Research’, New England Journal of Medicine,315(14) (Oct 2): 865-70.

[4] Francione, G. L. (1996) Rain Without Thunder: The Ideology of the Animal Rights Movement. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

[5] Gilroy, P. (1987) There Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack. London: Hutchinson.

[6] Among other arguments, Francione responds to such points by saying that, "as a practical matter, [animal welfarism] does not work. We have had animal welfare laws in most western countries for well over a hundred years now, and they have done little to reduce animal suffering and they have certainly not resulted in the gradual abolition of any practices… As to why welfarism fails…the reason has to do with the property status of animals. If animals are property, then they have no value beyond that which is accorded to them by their owners. Reform does not work because it seeks to force owners to value their property differently and to incur costs in order to respect animal interests." www.vegdot.org/special/Gary%20Francione

[7] Benton and Redfearn write: "Peter Singer’s Animal Liberation is…within the utilitarian tradition, and it may be that the animal welfare movement’s concern with animal suffering is a measure of the pervasiveness of utilitarianism as the ‘common sense’ of secular morality." Benton, T. & Redfearn, S. (1996) ‘The Politics of Animal Rights - Where is the Left?’ New Left Review, Jan/Feb: 43-58

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Rights and Animal Rights (Part Two)

6/27/2015

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Rights as Social Constructs.

The modern animal advocacy movement, as well as its countermovement mobilisations, frequently (and correctly) presents the book Animal Liberation as the origins of second wave animal advocacy (assuming acceptance that the efforts of Henry Salt’s Humanitarian League amounts to the "first wave"), along with an implicit and often explicit (and incorrect) claim that the book, and therefore the movement, is based on Peter Singer’s (nonexistent) "animal rights perspective."

The frequent characterisation of his utilitarian perspective as an animal rights position, and presumably the number of times Animal Liberation has been described as "the animal rights bible,"[1] has seemingly led its author to regret ever having used rights language, even rhetorically and, according to Regan,[2] Singer remains committed to his claim that attributing rights to other animals is not possible.

Some of the misrepresentation of Singer’s work as rights-based theorising, especially by pro-use countermovements, appears on the face of it to be deliberately ideological in intent. However, in relation to what Singer says about his own position, Gary Francione fully accepts that Singer is entirely consistent to the extent that he rejects the notion of moral right holding in the case of human and nonhuman animals. Moreover, his consistent utilitarian principles have led Singer to accept that "there might be circumstances" in which human and animal exploitation…could be justified in light of consequences.[3]

Francione suggests, however, that rights concepts are always likely to be important and invoked as resources in human affairs and, therefore, utilitarian "balancing" of human and nonhuman interests are extremely dangerous in terms of nonhuman interests. Dangerous precisely because protective rights considerations are not conceptually available "to limit the results of the balancing process." Francione clarifies the point by putting it in a different way, while at the same time revealing how authentic animal rights theorists attempt to build on already established ways of thinking about the protection afforded by bearing rights:

the utilitarian notion of “consequences” cannot be interpreted in a way that does not prejudice the issue of animal protection. Even if we do accept that animals have interests, it is simply difficult to make determinations of those interests from a humanocentric perspective; it is because we systematically devalue and underestimate the interests of disempowered populations that rights concepts are necessary in the first place. Although rights theory rests ultimately upon a consideration of animal interests, rights theory does not permit the sacrifice of animal interests simply because human interests would be served. Rather, rights theory assumes that at least some animal interests are entitled to prima facie protection and that the sacrifice of those interests require a justification not dissimilar to that required when we seek to override human interests protected by rights.

The questions, "where do rights come from?" and "how are 'rights' used in animal rights thinking?" are, of course, pertinent. Perhaps the first thing to be said about matters concerning any formulation of rights, following Steve Kangas,[4] is that "the origin of rights is a messy and complex debate." Kangas suggests that the understanding of the first question of where rights "come from" can be aided by separating out three types of thinking about rights: conservative, liberal, and libertarian, and also by thinking about four initial bases put forward for the creation of rights: that rights are "natural" (following Locke), "inalienable," "God-given," and "self-evident."

Kangas states that until a few hundred years ago, most philosophers believed that rights could be defined in these four ways. However, "today, most philosophers agree that rights are social constructs, open to change." He says that this view accords well with the "liberal" stance, since, "Liberals believe that rights are social constructions, defended by force and open to change and improvement." Kangas is almost certainly correct to state that rights cannot be regarded as self-evident because, as he notes, "philosophers have been vigorously arguing about them for thousands of years."

It is not difficult to find support for Kangas’ assertion that debates about rights can be messy and complex. For example, Carl Cohen, in his 1986 article, "Why Animals Have No Rights,"[5] states that "The differing targets, contents, and sources of rights, and their inevitable conflict, together weave a tangled web." Cohen’s title itself indicates philosophical controversy over recent rights claims. He has published a number of works addressing human rights concepts and the whole idea of nonhumans being right holders.

Whereas theorists such as Cohen argue that nonhuman animals, as a matter of logic, cannot ever be said to bear rights, Regan and Francione disagree and have put forward differing ways by which they argue that rights formulations can and should protect sentient nonhuman interests. While Regan’s position has been described as a liberal rights perspective, Regan characterise Cohen, like Singer, as a utilitarian theorist, at least "when reasoning in support of continued widespread and possible expanded reliance on nonhuman animals in biomedical research." [2] The difference between Cohen and Singer is that Singer argues that no animal, human or nonhuman, can hold rights, while Cohen argues that all humans do and nonhumans do not.

Tom Regan claims to adhere seriously to a commitment to develop an "informed, thoughtful moral outlook." According to Benton and Redfearn,[6] strength within Regan’s strategy accrues from the "benefit of latching on to the currently near-universal moral priority attached to human rights." Although it may be rather unkind of them to label Regan’s approach "a strategy," as if his commitment to human rights was only for the following reason, Benton and Redfearn acknowledge that, "Regan was the first theorist to ‘get ‘rights’ across the species barrier."

Therefore, Regan can be credited with breaching that hitherto solid defensive ethical barrier based exclusively on species membership, of which the construction, maintenance, and usage of has featured prominently in some of my other blog entries.

[1] Adam Kydd’s on-line review (http://www.animalaid.org.uk/) of Francione’s Introduction to Animal Rights argues thatthis book should be seen ‘as the true bible of the Animal Rights Movement’.

[2] Regan, T. (2001) Defending Animal Rights. Urbana & Chicago: University of Illinois Press; Throughout Animal Liberation Singer is careful to talk about the "Animal Liberation movement" and never speaks of a clash between human and nonhuman rights, rather human and animal interests. In the 2nd edition of Animal Liberation, Singer was motivated to say something about rights formulations: "The language of rights is a convenient political shorthand. It is even more valuable in the era of thirty-second TVA news clips" (Singer, cited by Francione 1996: 49, 240). Francione, G. L. (1996) Rain Without Thunder: The Ideology of the Animal Rights Movement. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

[3] Francione, G.L. (1995) Animals, Property, and the Law. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

[4] www.huppi.com/ kangaroo/L-rights.htm

[5] Originally printed in the New England Journal of Medicine, Vol 315(14) (October 2, 1986): 865-69, this citation is taken from wysiwyg://19/http://www.responsiblewildlife management.org/carl_cohen.htm Critics of Cohen (including Regan [fn 2] and Nathan Nobis [http://courses.ats.rochester.edu/ nobis/papers.cohen-kind.html]) have noted how rare it is for a philosophical work to feature as the lead article in a medical journal.

[6] Benton and Redfearn write: "Peter Singer’s Animal Liberation is…within the utilitarian tradition, and it may be that the animal welfare movement’s concern with animal suffering is a measure of the pervasiveness of utilitarianism as the ‘common sense’ of secular morality." Benton, T. & Redfearn, S. (1996) "The Politics of Animal Rights - Where is the Left?" New Left Review, Jan/Feb: 43-58.

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The Evolution of Animal Ethics in Japan by Dr. Koichi Tagami

Rights and Animal Rights (Part One)

Rights and Animal Rights (Part Two)

Roger Yates

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