List of animal rights advocates

Advocates of animal rights as well as activists for animal liberation hold the view that to deny the most basic needs of sentient creatures—such as the avoidance of pain—to non-human animals, on the basis of species membership alone, is a form of discrimination akin to racism or sexism. Many animal rights advocates argue that non-human animals should be regarded as persons and members of the moral community whose interests deserve legal protection.

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The animal rights movement emerged in the 19th century, focused largely on opposition to vivisection, and in the 1960s the modern movement sprang up in England around the Hunt Saboteurs Association. In the 1970s, the Australian and American philosophers, Peter Singer and Tom Regan, began to provide the movement with its philosophical foundations. Singer argued for animal liberation on the basis of utilitarianism, first in 1973 in The New York Review of Books and later in his Animal Liberation (1975), while Regan developed a deontological theory of animal rights in several papers from 1975 onwards, followed by The Case for Animal Rights (1983).

A distinction persists within the movement—based on the utilitarian/deontological divide—between those who seek incremental reform, a position known as animal protectionism, and those on the abolitionist side, who argue that reform that aims to regulate, rather than abolish, the property status of animals is counter-productive.

Historically speaking it could well be argued that the genesis of the Animal Rights movement was truly in India given the impact that both Buddhism and Jainism had on people in India and the neighbouring countries in Asia. The largest number and highest percentage of Vegetarians per population for any country is in India. Buddhism among the global religions is an animal rights religion par excellence. It has long subscribed to the belief that all life forms including that of non-human animals are sacred and deserving of respect, and extolls kindness and compassion as utmost virtues worthy of cultivation. Buddhism unreservedly embraces all living beings in its ethical cosmology without discrimination on grounds of species, race, or creed. Buddhist tenets—including the first precept, “Do not kill”—extend to both human and non-human sentient beings. The Buddha was so adamant and protective of the more vulnerable members of the moral community—namely the animals—that he declared that: “He who has laid aside the cudgel that injures any creature whether moving or still, who neither slays nor causes to be slain—him I call an Arya (Noble person) ” (Dhammapada).