Animal Liberation Movement

1. Animal Liberation Movement

2. Historical/Social Context • Animal Experimentation • Animal testing is when scientists, students or commercial firms such as cosmetic companies use animals for biological research, typically in a laboratory setting. • Defenders of animal testing credit it for major medical breakthroughs, including penicillin, insulin, the polio vaccine, chemotherapy for childhood leukemia, hip replacement and heart bypass surgeries. They find the loss of animal life and well-being an acceptable price to pay for the benefits to humans. • Those against animal testing generally argue that it's cruel, unnecessary, scientifically unsound and expensive, and that the results are misleading. They believe that more accurate testing can be carried out with computer modeling, clinical trials, epidemiological studies, human tissue and cell cultures, autopsies and biopsies.

3. Historical/Social Context • Factory Farming • The practice of raising farm animals in confinement at high stocking density; and also sometimes used more generally to refer to usage of farm animals as factory parts as is typical in industrial farming by agribusiness. • Animals in factory farms are fed and sprayed with huge amounts of pesticides and antibiotics.

4. Animal Liberation (1990) Peter Singer

5. Peter Singer • Australian Philosopher • Specializes in practical ethics, approaching ethical issues • Best known for his book Animal Liberation, widely regarded as the touchstone of the animal rights movement.

6. Animal Liberation • Major Problem: • Specieism- a prejudice or attitude of bias in favor of the interests of members of one’s own species and against those of members of other species. • Humans support specieism by: • Allowing or supporting animal testing and by their “readiness to cause pain to animals when they would not cause a similar pain to humans”. • “Readiness to kill other animals when they would not kill human beings…”

7. Animal Liberation • Solution: • Experiments serving no direct and urgent purpose should stop immediately. • Eliminate specieism.

8. Animals are vulnerable, defenseless and completely in man's power and Singer is acting as a spokesperson for them. • Animals are an important part in our society and Singer raises the idea that they don’t get the choice to make decisions so if we are the one’s making decisions for them, we should have their best interest in mind and make our decisions fair. • Singers text is vivid in his thoughts and beliefs, and therefore can act as an eye opener for the people doing the testing, farming and inhuman treatment and also to those who are less educated.