Animal Rights: All That Matters

Book excerpt: Animal Rights is a big deal. From animal testing to vegetarianism, and hunting to preservation of fish stocks, it's a topic that's always in the news. Mark Rowlands, author of The Philosopher and the Wolf, is the world's best known philosopher of animal rights. In this, the first introduction he has written to the topic, he starts by asking whether there is anything about humans that makes us psychologically or physiologically distinctive - so that there might be a moral justification for treating animals in a different way to how we treat humans. From this foundation, he goes on to explore specific issues of eating animals, experimentation, pets, hunting, zoos, predation and engineering animals. He ends with a challenging argument of how an improved understanding of animal ethics can and should affect readers' choices.