The Universal Declaration of Human Rights allows people to live free from persecution and torture, but other inhabitants of the earth are not so lucky, particularly those who are not of the same species. Dr Dan Lyons looks at how our attitude to animal rights have changed over the past 60 years.
However, the acknowledgement of human rights took place in the context of major shifts in knowledge about the relationship between humans and other animals. Indeed, Darwin’s theory of evolution had already undermined the dogma of absolute human uniqueness. From the late 19th Century, evolution provided intellectual backing for the common sense view that nonhuman animals also felt pain and had emotional lives – that they were in some sense individuals who deserved, at the very least, consideration and compassion.
In this context, links drawn by anti-vivisectionists in the 1940s between experiments on concentration camp prisoners and animal experimentation had new resonance. In 1944, Donald Watson founded the Vegan Society having come to the belief that world peace and opposition to the killing of animals were inextricably linked. In his view, animals’ feelings were essentially similar to humans and thus implied the need for equal respect. Moreover, the arrogance and selfishness inherent in human aggression towards animals would always carry through into human-human relations. Respect for animals was thus seen as a necessary condition for human rights.
However, simultaneous to this growing public opposition to animal cruelty came the industrialisation of vivisection and animal farming. The overwhelming political power of these interests and their pivotal role in the British economy meant that the Government was deaf to calls for better animal protection.
As a result, tension grew between public attitudes and growing animal cruelty, leading to increased politicisation of animal rights issues. In 1951, the Government was forced to initiate an enquiry into bloodsports, followed by the Balfour enquiry into live exports and the Brambell enquiry into intensive farming. Finally, in 1962 the Government was forced to set up the Littlewood enquiry into animal experiments. However, the narrow remit and pro-vivisection composition of the Committee meant that the Enquiry’s conclusions offered no meaningful recognition of animal rights, and even the minor recommendations were ignored by the Government for two decades. The same went for the other three enquiries. In retrospect, the establishment of such enquiries seems to have been a Government tactic to take the heat out of the issue. Indeed, cynical manipulation of public concern – dynamic conservatism - has been the hallmark of animal protection governance in Britain for 125 years.
Despite the existence of intellectual foundations for an explicit ‘animal rights’ movement, it wasn’t until the late 1960s that the concept was clearly articulated. The next pioneer of animal rights was Richard Ryder. Ryder’s previous experiences of animal research as an experimental psychologist led him to believe that the public’s general acquiescence to animal experimentation in the late 1960s was based on a false view of the validity, benefits and level of suffering involved. Consequently he campaigned to raise public awareness through the media and directly through leaflets and protests.
Ryder’s activities accompanied a philosophical upsurge of interest in the ethics of human-animal interactions in this period, leading to the publication in 1971 of a collection of essays by Oxford academics entitled ‘Animals, Men and Morals’, to which Ryder contributed. Singer’s review of the book made an ideological link between this emerging intellectual critique and previous ones against racial and sexual discrimination. Singer’s book ‘Animal Liberation’, published in 1975, is widely credited with providing a groundbreaking intellectual springboard for the animal rights movement. He argues that just as it is wrong to abuse any human being regardless of intelligence or their ability to make moral choices, it is wrong to exploit or cause pain to other sentient animals that also have an interest in not suffering. This theme was worked up into an explicit animal rights theory by Tom Regan in his seminal 1983 work ‘The Case for Animal Rights’.
The upsurge in animal rights activity in the late 1970s finally culminated in, amongst other measures, the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986, which replaced the 110 year old Cruelty to Animals Act. The secrecy of the new Act’s operation and its dominance by animal researchers means that little has actually changed. But, on paper at least, the 1986 Act marked a fundamental change in the moral and legal status of animals. Previously, licenses for animal research were granted without any scrutiny of the potential value of the proposals or the potential pain likely to be caused to animals. This reflected an instrumental view that it was routinely acceptable to sacrifice animals’ interests for human purposes – animals were seen as little more than objects.
However, the regulatory system introduced by the 1986 Act is based on a cost-benefit assessment where for the first time animals – theoretically - had a de facto right to have their interests considered and weighed against alleged human benefits. While this utilitarian approach is not a full-blown animal rights position, it is a major step towards it. Similarly, the EU officially recognised animals as sentient beings in 1997.
Progress towards the actual protection – rather than mere consideration – of animals’ basic moral rights has been slow but inexorable. The most significant step has been the Spanish Government’s moves towards granting non-human great apes the fundamental right to life, the freedom from arbitrary deprivation of liberty, and protection from torture.
The resolutions have majority cross-party support and are likely to enter the statute within a year, making Spain the first nation to commit to the project. Pedro Pozas, Great Apes Project’s Spanish director, enthused: “This is a historic day in the struggle for animal rights and in defence of our evolutionary comrades, which will doubtless go down in the history of humanity.”
Dr Lyons is one of the UK’s leading voices for animal protection and Campaigns Director of animal rights group Uncaged. He is an honorary research fellow at the University of Sheffield and serves as a Green Party Councillor on Stocksbridge Town Council.
Uncaged organise International Animal Rights Day on 10 December every year. Contact Uncaged to participate: info@uncaged.co.uk, www.uncaged.co.uk
