ANIMAL RIGHTS

ANIMAL RIGHTS

Protection of animals from cruelty through requirements of humane treatment. Laws protecting animal rights proscribe certain forms of brutal and merciless treatment of animals in medical and scientific research and in the handling of and slaughter of animals for human consumption.

By the end of the 1980s, membership in animal advocacy organizations had reached 10 million people in the United States and opposition to the use of animals in laboratory experiments was rapidly growing. By 1990, some 76 medical schools claimed that demonstrations and breakins by animal rights advocates had cost them more than $4.5 million, according to a report from the Association of American Medical Colleges.
As the conflict between animal rights
activists and medical and scientific researchers
has grown, federal and state regulation of activ-
ities involving animal research has also
expanded. At the federal level, the Animal Wel-
fare Act (7 U.S.C.A. § 2131 et seq. [1994]) regu-
lates the treatment of animals used in federally
funded research. Under amendments added to
the act in 1985, the secretary of agriculture was
required to promulgate standards to govern the
humane handling, care, treatment, and trans-
portation of animals by dealers, research facili-
ties, and exhibitors. These standards were to
include minimum requirements for housing,
feeding, watering, sanitation, ventilation, shelter
from extremes of weather and temperature,
adequate veterinary care, and separation by
species where necessary; for exercise of dogs, as
determined by an attending veterinarian; and
for a physical environment adequate to pro-
mote the psychological well-being of primates.
In addition, the standards were to include
requirements for animal care, treatment, and
practices in experimental procedures in
research facilities.

In February 1991, the secretary of agriculture issued final regulations under the act (56 Fed. Reg. 6426; 9 C.F.R. § 3). Shortly thereafter, two animal rights organizations, the Animal Legal Defense Fund and the Society for Animal
Protective Legislation, along with several individuals, sued the U.S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICUL-
TURE (USDA), claiming that the final
regulations were ARBITRARY and capricious, in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act
(APA) (5 U.S.C.A. § 551 et seq. [1994]). Under
the APA, a court can compel agency action that
is unlawfully withheld or unreasonably delayed
and can set aside agency action that is arbitrary
and capricious, an ABUSE OF DISCRETION,or
otherwise in violation of the law.
The plaintiffs challenged the USDA on sev-
eral grounds, including the lack of minimum
requirements regarding exercise for dogs and the
psychological well-being of primates; the
amount of delay permitted under the regula-
tions in complying with new cage requirements;
and the loophole in the regulations’ provision
for special cage designs, which permitted facili-
ties to evade the existing minimum require-
ments for cage sizes.
In February 1993, a federal district court
found that the USDA’s treatment of laboratory
animals waiting to be used in biomedical exper-
iments violated federal statutes providing for the
humane treatment of such animals. In Animal
Legal Defense Fund v. Secretary of Agriculture,
813 F. Supp. 882 (1993), the U.S. District Court
for the District of Columbia ruled that the regu-
lations enacted by the secretary of agriculture
and the USDA failed to comply with the man-
date of Congress to ensure the well-being and
humane treatment of animals, notwithstanding the importance of research.

The defendants appealed the district court’s
decision. In Animal Legal Defense Fund v. Espy, 29
F.3d 720 (1994), the U.S. Court of Appeals for the
District of Columbia Circuit ruled that the animal
rights organizations and other plaintiffs did not
have standing to challenge the USDA. (Standing is
a legal requirement that the plaintiff must have
been injured or threatened with injury by the
action complained of and focuses on the question
of whether the plaintiff is the proper party to bring
the lawsuit.) Because the plaintiffs lacked standing,
the court ordered that the case be dismissed.
Whereas the Animal Welfare Act governs the
general treatment of research animals, other
federal statutes govern the testing procedures
that may be used on animals in the course of scientific
and commercial research and in product
testing. The Toxic Substances Control Act (15
U.S.C.A. § 2601 et seq. [1994]) authorizes the
use of two procedures that have been particularly
controversial: the Draize test and the lethal
dose 50 (LD50) test.
The Draize test measures the irritancy of a
substance such as a cosmetic or pesticide by
applying it to the eyes of live rabbits for twentyfour
hours. The LD50 test is used to calculate the
median lethal dose of a substance by feeding it
to a defined population of animals until 50 percent of them die. Some product manufacturers,
such as Avon Products, Revlon, Faberge, Amway
Corporation, Mary Kay Cosmetics, and Noxell
Corporation, have discontinued some or all animal
testing as a result of continued protests over
the use of these tests.
During the late 1980s, the FEDERAL BUREAU
OF INVESTIGATION reported more than fifty
incidents of VANDALISM annually at research
facilities and attacks on researchers themselves.
In response, the U.S. Congress and numerous
state legislatures enacted protective legislation.
In August 1992, Congress passed the Animal
Enterprise Protection Act (18 U.S.C.A. § 43
[1994]), which provides, in part, that anyone
who “intentionally causes physical disruption to
the functioning of an animal enterprise by
intentionally stealing, damaging, or causing the
loss of any property (including animals or
records) used by the animal enterprise, and
thereby causes economic damage exceeding
$10,000 to that enterprise, or conspires to do so
shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not
more than one year, or both.”
If serious bodily injury or death to another
person occurs in the course of the prohibited
activity, the statute provides for imprisonment
up to a life term. The act defines an animal enterprise as “(A) a commercial or academic
enterprise that uses animals for food or fiber
production, agriculture, research, or testing; (B)
a zoo, aquarium, circus, rodeo, or lawful competitive
animal event; or (C) any fair or similar
event intended to advance agricultural arts and
sciences.”
By 1995, more than 20 states had passed
similar legislation, including Alabama, Arizona,
Arkansas, Colorado, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois,
Louisiana, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Missouri,
Montana, Nebraska, New York, North Carolina,
North Dakota, Oregon, South Carolina, Tennessee,
Virginia,Washington, and Wisconsin.
Several states also regulate the use of animals
kept in pounds for use in research. Maine prohibits
the use of pound animals for any research
(Me. Rev. Stat. Ann. tit. 17, § 1025 [West 1994]).
California requires that any pound or animal
regulation department where animals are
turned over to a research facility post a sign stating
“Animals Turned in to This Shelter May Be
Used for Research Purposes,” in a clearly visible
place (Cal. Civ. Code § 1834.7 [West 1994]). In
Oklahoma, pounds are required to supply
unclaimed animals to research institutions,
unless the owner of an animal bringing it to the
pound specifies it is not to be used in research
(Okla. Stat. Ann. tit. 4, § 394 [West 1994]).
At least three states regulate the sale of animals
to research facilities. Minnesota law prohibits
the transfer of a dog or cat by a person
other than the owner to a research animal
dealer, the possession of a dog or cat by a dealer
without the owner’s permission, or the transfer
of a dog or cat by a dealer to an institution with-out the owner’s permission (Minn. Stat. Ann. §
346.55 [West 1994]). California law provides
that anyone who steals an animal for purposes
of sale, medical research, or other commercial
use, or who knowingly defrauds another person
of any animal for purposes of medical research
or slaughter, may be imprisoned for up to one
year (Cal. Penal Code § 487g [West 1994]). New
York law prohibits the selling or giving away of a
dog to a research institution without the written
permission of its owner (N.Y. Agric. & Mkts.
Law § 366-a [McKinney 1994]).
On the federal level, the Animal Welfare Act
was amended in 1990 to regulate the use of
pound animals in research. A new section titled
“Protection of pets” provides that dogs and cats
acquired by a pound, humane society, or similar
entity or research facility must be held for not
less than five days before being sold to dealers, so
as to allow their recovery by their owners or
their adoption by other individuals (7 U.S.C.A. §
2158 [1994]).
The use of animals in scientific, medical, and
commercial research is expected to remain controversial.
In her book The Monkey Wars, Deborah
Blum advocated that animal rights activists
and researchers share their viewpoints together
in education programs to achieve a realistic
understanding of the issues. According to Blum,
such an understanding could end the two sides’
long and bitter standoff.
The largest and most active animal rights
group is PEOPLE FOR THE ETHICAL TREATMENT
OF ANIMALS (PETA), originally founded in 1980
in Norfolk, Virginia. Since its founding, PETA
has claimed a certain level of success in curbing unethical treatment of animals. Its self-proclaimed
successes include the closing of the
largest horse slaughterhouse in the United
States, the closing of a military laboratory where
animals were shot, and the end of the use of cats
and dogs in wound laboratories. PETA not only
details its “victories” on its web site, it also provides
“action alerts” that identify instances that
the group believes constitute animal cruelty.
Although PETA has had a significant impact
on the use of animals in medical and scientific
research, as well as other uses, its tactics have
created an equal level of controversy. For
instance, according to PETA president Ingrid
Newkirk, human beings should not drink milk
produced by cows, eat turkey meat, or wear fur
because of the practices involved in preparing
these goods. PETA’s protests have ranged from
vandalizing fur coats sold at a Macy’s outlet in
Boston to advocating the bombing of a New Jersey
laboratory that uses animals for research.
PETA claims that it does not support TERRORISM,
but it has funded, for example, the legal
defense of an arsonist that set fire to a Michigan
research lab.
PETA has been active in the court system,
with various levels of success. In one case, PETA
sought entry into a public art event held in 2000
in New York City called “CowParade.” One of
PETA’s entries showed a cow divided into sections
that resembled a butcher’s chart. On each
of the sections was a statement or quotation
“concerning the health and ethical problems
associated with the killing of cows for food.” The
committee responsible for the parade rejected
the entry as too harsh and inappropriate for the
parade. PETA brought suit in the U.S. District
Court for the Southern District of New York, but
the trial court granted SUMMARY JUDGMENT in
favor of the parade organizers, and the U.S.
Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit
affirmed the summary judgment. People for the
Ethical Treatment of Animals v. Giuliani, 18 Fed.
App. 35 (2d Cir. 2001).
FURTHER READINGS
Blum, Deborah. 1995. The Monkey Wars. Don Mills, ON,
Canada: Oxford Univ. Press.
Congressional Record. 1990. 136 (July).
Kistler, John M. 2000. Animal Rights: A Subject Guide, Bibliography,
and Internet Comparison. Westport, Conn.:
Greenwood.
Sherry, Clifford J. 1994. Animal Rights: A Reference Handbook.
Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC-CLIO.
Singer, Peter. 1975. Animal Liberation: A New Ethics for Our
Treatment of Animals. New York: Avon.
CROSS-REFERENCES
Agriculture Department; People for the Ethical Treatment of
Animals.

Welcome to the Monkey Lab: The Battle over Animal Research

In May 1981, Alex Pacheco, cofounder
of an animal rights organization called
PEOPLE FOR THE ETHICAL TREATMENT
OF ANIMALS (PETA), went to
work as a volunteer at the Institute for
Behavioral Research, a private research
center in Silver Spring, Maryland.
Pacheco told the institute’s chief research
scientist, Edward Taub, that he was fascinated
by animal research. Taub’s research
involved the surgical crippling of monkeys
using a procedure called deafferentation,
in which the spinal
cord is opened and various
nerves leading to arms and legs
are sliced away, causing numbness.
At the time Pacheco joined
his lab, Taub had performed
the procedure on 17 macaques,
attempting to show that function could
be restored to limbs by forcing new nerve
growth. He had destroyed the nerves to
only one arm on some of the monkeys,
and then used straitjackets, binding up
the good arms to force the animals to use
their damaged arms, and had also applied
electric shock to restrained monkeys if
they did not move their numbed limbs.
Taub planned to kill the monkeys after a
year in order to determine whether this
forced movement had stimulated nerve
growth.
After receiving permission from
Taub to work at night, Pacheco set to
work documenting the filthy, cramped
conditions of the lab, and the stressed
behavior of the monkeys, many of which
were chewing their numbed limbs open.
With his PETA cofounder, Ingrid
Newkirk, stationed outside with a walkietalkie,
Pacheco took photographs and
brought in sympathetic veterinarians and
scientists to provide affidavits about the
lab conditions. Several months later, he
took his documentation to the
local police department, which
seized the lab’s monkeys and
filed 17 charges of animal cruelty
against Taub, under state
law. The scientist was convicted
on all the charges, but an
appellate court decided that a
federally-funded researcher was not
required to comply with state laws. Eventually,
Taub’s lab lost its federal funding
and discontinued animal research.
Many participants in the debate over
animal rights view the 1981 seizure of the
Silver Spring monkeys as a turning point
for the animal rights movement in the
United States, heading it in a more combative
and less compromising direction.
Animal welfare has long been an
issue in the United States. As early as the
mid-1600s, the Puritans prohibited cruelty
toward animals, and by the nineteenth
century, groups such as the
American Society for the Prevention of
Cruelty to Animals and the American
Anti-Vivisection Society had been
organized. Animal experimentation has
been controversial not only between the
animal rights movement and the scientific
and medical research communities
but also between the activist groups
themselves.
Supporters of the use of animals in
research are as adamant in their advocacy
of the use of animals in research as animal
rights activists are in their opposition
to such use. Supporters of the use of animals
in research point out that virtually
every major advancement in medicine
during the past century has been made
possible by the use of animals in research.
Researchers point out that, with the use
of animals as subjects, scientists may be
capable of curing or reducing the death
and disability rates caused by such diseases
as kidney and liver failure, birth
defects, cancer, and AIDS. Former U.S.
SURGEON GENERAL Joycelyn Elders
said, “The use of animals in biomedical
research and testing has been, and will
continue to be, absolutely critical to the
progress against AIDS and a wide range
of other applications in both humans and
animals.”
The biomedical research industry has
responded vigorously to criticisms of
animal research. A 1988 study by the
National Research Council, the research
arm of the National Academy of Sciences,
acknowledged the controversy over animal
testing, stating that although animal
research has saved human lives, it has
caused suffering and death for the animals
involved. Nevertheless, the study
concluded that such experimentation has
contributed significantly to the increase
in human life expectancy since 1900 and
that animals have been critical to research
on most antibiotics and other drugs.
Frankie Trull, executive director of the
National Association for Biomedical
Research, has argued that animal testing
is necessary to sustain the human race.
Supporters of animal research frequently
direct attack towards animal
rights activists, often labeling animal
rights groups as “extremists.” Joseph
Murray, who in 1990 won the Nobel Prize
for medicine in recognition of his work
on organ transplants, said, “None of this
could have been done without animal
experimentation. It’s a tragedy and a
waste of resources that scientists have to
combat the anti-vivisectionists,” referring
to animal rights groups. Animal research
supporters often argue that the tactics
employed by animal rights groups
impede the progress being made in the
medical community through the use of
animals in research.
The supporters of animal research
and the animal rights activists have
clashed in both the courts and in the legislatures.
Concerned that animal rights
activists would cause the dismantling of
all animal research, the biomedical
research community lobbied successfully
for years against the passage of all legislation
restricting such research. But in the
early 1950s, Christine Stevens founded
the Animal Welfare Institute and the
Society for Animal Protective Legislation,
which successfully worked against passage
of state laws that would require
pounds to turn their dogs and cats over
to researchers. Stevens then began working
for passage of federal legislation that
would also protect laboratory animals. In
1966, Congress enacted the Animal Welfare
Act (7 U.S.C.A. § 2131 et seq.
[1994]), which regulates the treatment of
animals in federally funded research.
Congress charged the U.S. DEPARTMENT
OF AGRICULTURE (USDA) with overseeing
the inspection of laboratories for
compliance.
In 1985, after Stevens documented
continuing inhumane laboratory conditions,
the Animal Welfare Act was
amended to strengthen standards for the
humane handling, treatment, and transportation
of animals by dealers, research
facilities, and exhibitors. In 1991, the secretary
of agriculture issued regulations
implementing the amended act.
During this period, the animal protection
movement continued to expand.
By the early 1990s, PETA had grown to
more than 400,000 members and had an
annual budget of nearly $10 million. Over
400 animal rights groups had been organized
in the United States, claiming a total
membership of 10 million. Although each
of these groups can be said to support the
humane treatment of animals, their
philosophies vary dramatically.
The most radical group is the Animal
Liberation Front (ALF), an underground
organization formed in 1982 with an estimated
worldwide membership of several
hundred as of the mid-1990s. ALF
opposes the use of all animals in medical
and scientific research, including psychological
and surgical experimentation on
living animals; ALF also opposes using
animals for testing new drugs and cosmetics,
for instructional purposes in biology
and medical school classes, and for
food, clothing, sports, circuses, and pets.
ALF claimed responsibility for more than
75 attacks in the United States between
1979 and 1995, including stealing animals
from labs in Arizona, California,
Florida, Maryland, Oregon, Pennsylvania,
and Washington, D.C.; burning and
vandalizing the University of Arizona’s
veterinary lab and a new $3 million veterinary
diagnostic center for farm animals
at the University of California,
Davis; vandalizing offices of researchers
and stealing their research animals in
Michigan and Texas; and starting small
fires in four of Chicago’s largest department
stores to protest the sale of furs.
Although most of ALF’s targets have been
scientific research labs, the group claimed responsibility for bombing the cars of
two research scientists in England in June
1990. ALF has also conducted raids in
more than a dozen other countries.
By 1988, in response to raids by ALF
and other groups, more than 20 states
had enacted protective legislation prohibiting
interference with animal
research and agricultural facilities. In
August 1992, citing the inability of state
and local law enforcement agencies to
conduct interstate or international investigations,
Congress passed comparable
federal legislation. The Animal Enterprise
Protection Act of 1992 (18 U.S.C.A. § 43
[1994]) prohibits the disruption of “animal
enterprises” such as research facilities
and zoos by intentionally stealing or
damaging property including animals or
records.
Many scientists believe that ALF is a
thinly disguised division of PETA. PETA
denies any connection between the two
groups but has expressed its admiration
for ALF’s activities and often publicizes
the group’s raids. Both ALF and PETA
share a common goal of ending all animal
research, a philosophy that represents
a fundamental split from other
animal rights organizations such as
Stevens’s Animal Welfare Institute and
the Humane Society of the United States,
which accept animal experimentation
but work for the humane treatment of
animals in that and other contexts.
Supporters of animal research
debunk many of the claims of animal
rights activities as pure myths. For
instance, animal rights activists often
direct their attention towards the use of
such animals as dogs, cats, and nonhuman
primates in medical research, but
scientists point out that the use of such
animals accounts for less than 1 percent
of the total number of animals used in
research. The vast majority of animals
used in research, according to these scientists,
are rodents, including mice and
rats bred specifically for the purpose of
testing them. Similarly, these scientists
refute animal rights advocates’ claims
that alternatives to animal research exist
in the form of computer models and tissue
cultures but that the scientific community
refuses to accept them. Scientists
claim that even the most sophisticated
technological model cannot replicate the
genetic and physiological systems of
humans as those found in live animals.
According to the Foundation for Biomedical
Research, the limitations in the
use of computer models and other alternatives
may overcome the need for animals
in research, but these alternative
methods serve only as adjuncts to basic
animal research.
In a nationwide survey conducted in
December 1993 by the Los Angeles Times,
respondents were asked whether they
agreed with the following statement by
PETA’s Newkirk: “Animals are like us in
all important things—they feel pain, act
with altruism, they talk and suffer fear.
They value their lives, even if we don’t
understand those lives.” Of the 1,612
adults polled, 47 percent agreed with
Newkirk’s statement and 51 percent disagreed.
The survey also found that 54
percent opposed hunting for sport and
50 percent opposed the wearing of fur.
Forty-six percent said the laws protecting
animals from inhumane treatment were
satisfactory, whereas 30 percent said the
laws did not go far enough, and 17 percent
said the laws went too far. Animal
rights leaders expressed surprise that so
many Americans agreed with some of the principle tenets of the animal protection
movement.
A new wrinkle in the Animal Rights
movement has been the attempt to gain
the recognition of legal rights for animals.
Animal rights advocates in both
PETA and ALF had spoken for years
about the need for animals to have legal
rights under U.S. law. But this theory
remained abstract until the end of the
twentieth century.
Then in 2000, Stephen Wise published
an influential animal rights book.
Rattling the Cage: Toward Legal Rights
for Animals took a legalistic approach in
arguing that at least two human-like
species, chimpanzees and bonobos, and
perhaps other species that were similarly
developed, should be considered
“persons”. The book was reviewed in
such noted publications as the Yale Law
Journal and the Harvard Law Review.
Among those legal scholars discussing
the book were RICHARD POSNER, eminent
professor at the University of
Chicago law school and judge for the
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth
Circuit, and Lawrence Tribe, professor
of CONSTITUTIONAL LAW at Harvard
University.
Tribe seemed especially taken with
the book’s arguments. “Broadening the
circle of rights-holders, or even broadening
the definition of persons, I submit, is
largely a matter of acculturation,” said
Tribe in a speech in Boston in support of
the book. “It is not a matter of breaking
through something, like a conceptual
sound barrier. With the aid of statutes
like those creating corporate persons, our
legal system could surely recognize the
personhood of chimpanzees, bonobos,
and maybe someday of computers that
are capable not just of beating Gary Kasparov
but feeling sorry for him when he
loses.”
In 2002, Wise published a book
called Drawing the Line: Science and the
Case for Animal Rights, in which he
expanded his rights arguments to include
other species. But the arguments
remained very similar. “On what nonarbitrary
ground,” he asks, “could a judge
find [that a] little girl has a common-law
right to bodily integrity that forbids her
use in terminal biomedical research but
that Koko [a gorilla with an IQ equal to
that of a 4- or 5-year-old child] shouldn’t
have that right, without violating basic
notions of equality?”What influence this
nascent movement for the legal rights of
animals has on the general animal rights
movement promised to be interesting to
observe.
Many legal commentators have been
supportive or, at least, sympathetic
toward the views of Wise and writers
with similar opinions. Other legal scholars,
on the other hand, have pointed out
that granting broad rights to animals
conflicts with some of the basic assumptions
of the U.S. legal system, as well as
the legal system elsewhere. Even where
laws provide heightened protection for
animals against abuse, the animals are
still treated as a special form of property.
If the law were to extend recognition of
animals as holders of certain legal rights,
their status as something greater than
property raises difficult questions. For
instance, when would these rights conflict
with recognized HUMAN RIGHTS,
and could the right of an animal in a certain
case be greater than a right enjoyed
by a human? Likewise, how can society
merge the recognition of animal rights
with the traditional, and in some cases,
fundamental uses of animals, including
their functions as sources of food and as
goods and services that may be bartered?
Scholarship and debate by legal experts
continues to grow regarding these questions.
FURTHER READINGS
Carbone, Larry. 2004. What Animals Want:
Expertise and Advocacy in Laboratory Animal
Welfare Policy. New York: Oxford
Univ. Press.
Monamay, Vaughn. 2000. Animal Experimentation:
A Guide to the Issues. New York:
Cambridge Univ. Press.