Animal Rights

Great book, written by a fervent animal rights supporter but in a clear and logically defended way.
The book begins with a discussion of the changes in our attitudes towards animal suffering and treatment over the past few decades. It begins to use philosophical theory to decide whether animals have rights or not, whether they are sentient and whether they have a concept of "the future" without which killing them humanely would not be cruelty. What is clear is that he does not think that Animal Husbandry should be allowed  certainly not with modern farming methods and probably not with even a "family farm". He does allow that pets, particularly cats and dogs, may be permissible under his ethical guidelines and the odd zoo might still be in existence. The chapter on research is the most nuanced and this is clearly where the frontier of the argument lies, he seems to have little sympathy for the animal campaigners who destroy research labs and states that the main thrust of their efforts would best be directed at factory farms 5 billion animals a year being slaughtered rather than a maximum of 100 million in research labs.  I did not agree with all his arguments but they were cogently put and it has certainly accomplished the purpose of the book, it has made me think about animal rights in a different light.