On defining rights vs welfare
It's come up lately that many people out there don't seem to know the difference between animal rights and animal welfare (and I'm getting sick of non-vegans telling me that they support animal rights*). Here's a quick summary, which I do encourage comment and elaboration on, because I know there are some damn clever people who read this who will have many more interesting ideas to add.
Animal Rights (sometimes called Animal Liberation): The belief that non-human animals have the right to exist and live for their own means, and for their own reasons. Non-human animals are not property that humans can (ab)use as they see fit. This is generally based on sentience.
Animal Welfare: The belief that it's ok for humans to use non-human animals, as long as it's done in a "humane" or "compassionate" manner where suffering to the individual is minimised. Welfare can be measured and is often seen in terms of physical welfare, mental welfare and if the individual has the chance to express "natural" behaviours.
Rights vs Welfare: AR and AW are fundimentally different, one regulates animal abuse, the other seeks to elliminate it. There are many suitations in our modern society where welfare and rights clash (eg happy meat**) and in some issues where the push for welfare is more common than the push for rights within the animal protection movement (eg a whole bunch of companion animal issues). Some people hold rights as the ideal, but still think that there is benefit to also work for welfare measures in the short term. Some people take an abolutionist view, where they believe working for welfare measures hinders the goal of reaching animal liberation.
You cannot be for animal rights if you aren't vegan. It's like being for pacifism, except when you kill people on occassion. If you are going out and killing someone because you like the way they taste (or pay someone else to do your dirty work) you cannot wish to give them rights because you still see them as something (rather than someone) that you can own and use for your own means.
* I'd just like to add that whilst you cannot support animal rights without being vegan, you can be vegan without supporting animal rights
** "happy meat" is the term given to free range/organic/humane/non intensively farmed animal flesh products due to the idea that animals are "happy" before they are killed and butchered. For more information on this I suggest looking at humanemyth.org
EDIT: I repeated the first two paragraphs accidently when first posted (oops!), so have now changed that :) Thanks to
alias_sqbr for pointing it out.
Animal Rights (sometimes called Animal Liberation): The belief that non-human animals have the right to exist and live for their own means, and for their own reasons. Non-human animals are not property that humans can (ab)use as they see fit. This is generally based on sentience.
Animal Welfare: The belief that it's ok for humans to use non-human animals, as long as it's done in a "humane" or "compassionate" manner where suffering to the individual is minimised. Welfare can be measured and is often seen in terms of physical welfare, mental welfare and if the individual has the chance to express "natural" behaviours.
Rights vs Welfare: AR and AW are fundimentally different, one regulates animal abuse, the other seeks to elliminate it. There are many suitations in our modern society where welfare and rights clash (eg happy meat**) and in some issues where the push for welfare is more common than the push for rights within the animal protection movement (eg a whole bunch of companion animal issues). Some people hold rights as the ideal, but still think that there is benefit to also work for welfare measures in the short term. Some people take an abolutionist view, where they believe working for welfare measures hinders the goal of reaching animal liberation.
You cannot be for animal rights if you aren't vegan. It's like being for pacifism, except when you kill people on occassion. If you are going out and killing someone because you like the way they taste (or pay someone else to do your dirty work) you cannot wish to give them rights because you still see them as something (rather than someone) that you can own and use for your own means.
* I'd just like to add that whilst you cannot support animal rights without being vegan, you can be vegan without supporting animal rights
** "happy meat" is the term given to free range/organic/humane/non intensively farmed animal flesh products due to the idea that animals are "happy" before they are killed and butchered. For more information on this I suggest looking at humanemyth.org
EDIT: I repeated the first two paragraphs accidently when first posted (oops!), so have now changed that :) Thanks to
alias_sqbr for pointing it out.