What is the difference between the movements for animal rights and animal welfare?
The animal welfare movement accepts the idea that non-human animals can be used as resources, as long as as little suffering as possible is inflicted upon them. The animal welfare movement is speciesist, in that it accepts that non-human animals’ interests can be ignored or undervalued when there is a perceived human interest in doing so. In practice, the animal welfare movement seeks to regulate the ways in which animals are used. Examples of welfare demands are that animals be kept in a bigger space than a cage provides, that transport to the slaughterhouse should not exceed a certain amount of hours and that killing should be preceded by effective stunning. In contrast, the animal rights movement defends the concept that animals have significant interests that should be respected and protected by legal rights. In practice, the animal rights movement aims at progressively abandoning the use of animals so that fewer and fewer animals have to suffer and die for purposes such as, food,
