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Animal Rights
The idea of according rights to animals dates to at least the eighteenth century, but only since the 1970s has it become an important branch of applied ethics. This growing academic interest was accompanied—in Britain, Europe, and the United States in particular—by the emergence of an animal rights movement that has now become an established part of the social movement scene. There is now a considerable body of legislation regulating the treatment of animals, and the ways in which humans treat them—as experimental subjects and sources of food in particular—often provoke heated public debate. Moreover, the tactics of some animal rights activists has raised questions of public order and the legitimacy of direct action.
The debate about animal rights, however, has been largely neglected by political ...
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