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 many 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, particularly 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, most 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 for human purposes.

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 necessary for our survival.

Self-Determination

Another principle often discussed is self-determination – 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 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 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.

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 functioning as a colony, it is their winter food source. From a rights perspective, removing it for human use prioritises our interests over theirs.

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 issue is 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 identical rights.

Philosopher Peter Singer frames this in terms of equal consideration of interests (5). Rights are generally tied to interests. 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 and shelter, and in not being confined unnecessarily.

If we accept that those interests exist, then ignoring 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).

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 need outweighs the interests of non-human animals.

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.