Rights Advocacy and Other Animal Advocacy: Examples

Rights
Other Types of Animal Advocacy
Food and Fiber
Eliminate use of nonhuman animals by establishing* their right not to be used by humans. Teach, and demand that institutions teach, truth about animal nature, including humans’ herbivorous nature, and nonhuman animals’ experience, including debasement through enslavement, breeding, and use in addition to suffering from use. Welfarism: Oppose “cruelest” practices through consumerism and legislation; urge people to eat less meat but do not alienate caring people by opposing industries. Abolitionism: Promote vegan lifestyle; support legislation if it bans a practice rather than merely regulates it. Both: Expose “cruelty”; urge people to care more about nonhuman animals.
Experimentation & Testing
Eliminate use of nonhuman animals by establishing their right not to be used by humans. Teach, and demand that institutions teach, origins of human disease and suffering in delusional practice and institutions rather than in lack of biomedical research; origins of perceived need of personal-care and household products in civilization rather than in nature. Teach unreliability of animal experiments & tests vis á vis human wellbeing. Welfarism: Urge scientists to use “less-invasive” rather than “more-invasive” methods and agencies and institutions to require them. Do not alienate caring people by opposing animal use; don’t publicly renounce claims that “some good” comes of animal use. Abolitionism: Fight animal use by protesting particular experiments, and their funding; expose extreme suffering; promote literature showing harm to humans as well as nonhumans from animal use.
Recreation
Eliminate use of nonhuman animals by establishing their right not to be used by humans. Teach delusional origins of hunting, fishing, and other recreational animal use; nonhuman animals’ experience; and their unjust loss & deprivation when used by humans as well as acute and prolonged pain and suffering. Welfarism: Oppose “cruelest” trapping and hunting methods; work to improve laws and regulations don’t alienate people by opposing all hunting and fishing. Abolitionism: Describe all trapping, hunting, and fishing as “cruel”; expose suffering build opposition. Support some bans. Oppose organized community kills.
Pets
Eliminate use of nonhuman animals by establishing their right not to be used by humans. Teach origins of current pet fetish in meat and allied industries and humans’ loss of extended-family social unit. A happy slave is a debased animal – human or nonhuman. Welfarism: Work for stricter animal-welfare laws and enforcement; teach people best animal- care methods. Avoid alienating people by opposing animal breeding and ownership. Abolitionism: Oppose breeding, racing; equivocate on service and using animals for love. Both: Promote spaying & neutering; oppose giving or selling animals to laboratories. Model love, affection, and compassion for nonhuman animals.

* To protect and empower, rights must be established in the human brain-mind and in the Constitution. Responsible Policies for Animals works to do that.

Revised June 2010

See a PDF of this document.