Animal Rights

While veganism includes practical lifestyle choices, at its heart it rests on a central idea: Animals morally matter.

For many vegans, this means believing that animals should have certain basic rights by virtue of being sentient – that is, capable of experiencing pain, pleasure, and having preferences of their own (1).

There is ongoing debate within philosophy and within the vegan community about exactly which rights animals should have, and how those rights should be framed. However, there are a few core principles that most vegans broadly agree upon.

The Right to Life

First and foremost is the idea that animals have a right to continue living.

This view is closely associated with rights-based animal ethics, and can be seen as a central premise in the work of philosopher Tom Regan, who argued that beings who are “subjects-of-a-life”, and therefore possess inherent value independent of their usefulness to humans (2).

This means that an animal’s life has value in and of itself, regardless of how useful or profitable that life may be to us. Just as we recognise our own interest in continuing to live, vegans argue that animals share that same fundamental interest.

In practical terms, this principle comes into tension with the use of animals for food, clothing, and experimentation. Even when animals are treated comparatively “kindly” before slaughter, their lives are still ended prematurely to service the interests of humans.

From a rights-based perspective, the issue is not how animals are treated, but whether we are justified in taking their lives at all when it is not usually necessary for our survival.

Self-Determination

Another principle often discussed is self-determination, which is the idea that animals should be allowed (as far as reasonably possible), to pursue their own natural behaviours and interests.

This does not mean imagining animals living as humans do, voting, being educated, getting married etc. Rather, it means acknowledging that animals have their own preferences: To move freely, to socialise, to avoid confinement, and to engage in species-typical behaviours.

Industries such as egg, honey or wool production are sometimes defended on the grounds that they do not always require killing, at least not inherently. However, even if harm is intentionally reduced, most vegans will argue that using animals as production units still restricts their ability to live on their own terms.

The ethical concern, in this view, is not only about suffering, but about exploitation and control. If an animal exists solely to serve the interests of their owner, vegans would argue that this animal is being exploited, no matter how much space they have to roam in or how “humanely” they are killed.

Bodily Autonomy

Closely related is the idea of bodily autonomy – that an animal’s body is not ours to use.

The idea suggests that even if an animal is not visibly injured, taking what their body produces for human benefit (such as milk, eggs, or honey) comes with moral issues of their own.

For example, honey is produced by bees for their own survival and healthy functioning as a colony, it is primarily intended as their winter food source. From a rights perspective, removing it for human use prioritises our interests over theirs, and takes something from them that we do not have a right to.

Not everyone will agree with this framing, especially those who prioritise only reducing pain or suffering, but for vegans, bodily autonomy is a meaningful part of the ethical discussion.

The Property Status of Animals

Many animal rights theorists argue that the most fundamental animal rights isuse that we must contend with is the fact that animals are legally regarded as property.

Property can be protected from “unnecessary” harm, but it ultimately exists to serve its owner. As long as animals are legally classified as property, their interests will be balanced against economic interests, and they will typically lose.

Some vegans therefore contend that meaningful protection requires challenging animals’ legal status as property. This is one influential perspective within animal rights theory, though not all vegans approach the issue from a strictly legal framework.

Equality and Interests

It is important to clarify that believing in animal rights does not require believing that humans and animals are identical, or that they should have the same rights as humans.

Philosopher Peter Singer frames this in terms of equal consideration of interests (5). Rights are generally tied to interests, and obviously animals do not need the right to vote or to drive a car. But they clearly have interests, such as an interest in avoiding pain, in continuing to live, in having access to food, shelter and socialisation, and in not being confined unnecessarily.

If we accept that those interests exist, then it follows that these interests should be taken into account when we are making decisions which will effect the lives of non-human animals. If animals have interests, and these interests morally matter, then disregarding them when it is convenient for us becomes difficult to justify.

Speciesism

When human interests are automatically prioritised over similar or stronger animal interests, this is often described as speciesism – a term popularised by Singer to describe bias in favour of one’s own species (3).

Psychological research has since shown that speciesist attitudes correlate with support for animal exploitation and resistance to animal protection policies (4). Even those who support animal welfare reform will often balk at the notion of the right to life, or to bodily autonomy. The acceptance of these rights necessarily involves giving up the entitlement that we feel towards animals, their bodies and what they can produce for our benefit.

The concept of speciesism does not claim that all human and animal interests are equal in every situation. There may be cases where human survival or serious needs outweigh the interests of non-human animals, and likewise, where the interests of one group of non-human animals is prioritised over another’s.

However, when the comparison is between relatively minor human preferences, such as taste or convenience, and an animal’s interest in continuing to live, it is not difficult to argue that favouring ourselves in those cases reflects bias rather than necessity.

That, in essence, is the moral tension at the centre of animal rights.

Bibliography

1. Birch, J. (2022). The Sentience of Animals and the Foundations of Animal Welfare Science. Animal Sentience.
2. Regan, T. (1983). The Case for Animal Rights. University of California Press.
3. Singer, P. (1975). Animal Liberation. HarperCollins.
4. Caviola, L., Everett, J., & Faber, N. (2019). The moral standing of animals. Social Psychological and Personality Science.

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