animal-rights movement definition of animal-rights movement in the Free Online Encyclopedia.

animal-rights movement, diverse individuals and groups concerned with protecting animals from perceived abuse or misuse. Supporters are specifically concerned with the use of animals for medical and cosmetics testing, the killing of animals for furs, hunting for pleasure, and the raising of livestock in restrictive or inhumane quarters, so-called factory farming. Concern for inhumane treatment of animals has led many supporters of the movement to advocate vegetarianism. Although the movement can trace its roots to the antivivisection campaigns (see vivisection vivisection (vĭv'ĭsĕk`shən), dissection of living animals for experimental purposes.
..... Click the link for more information. ) of the 19th cent., the modern movement is closely tied to environmental issues. In the early 1970s, environmental activist organizations, such as Greenpeace Greenpeace, international organization that promotes environmental awareness and addresses environmental abuse through direct, nonviolent confrontations with governments and companies. Founded in 1971 to oppose U.S.
..... Click the link for more information. , began protesting against the annual slaughter of Canadian fur seals and against commercial whaling whaling, the hunting of whales for the oil that can be rendered from their flesh, for meat, and for baleen (whalebone). Historically, whale oil was economically the most important.

Early Whaling

Whaling for subsistence dates to prehistoric times.
..... Click the link for more information. . The movement gained support in the 1980s with increasing opposition to the commercial fur industry and objections to the indiscriminate or routine use of laboratory animals in research and testing. By the 1990s, membership in major national animal-rights organizations, such as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, had grown dramatically. Animal-rights campaigns have been responsible in large part for substantial tightening of regulation in the use of animals for research.

Bibliography

See P. Singer, Animal Liberation (1975); T. Reagan, The Case for Animal Rights (1983).