ABSTRACT

The contemporary background So what is unusual or odd about my contribution to the moral and philosophical issues which bedevil discussion of our treatment

of animals? Several significant books have appeared in recent years, most notably by Andrew Linzey (1976), Stephen Clark (1977), Bernard Rollin (1981), Mary Midgley (1983), Tom Regan (1983), Vicki Hearne (1987), and, best known of all, Peter Singer (1983) whose Animal Liberation, first published in 1975, is generally credited with having galvanised contemporary enthusiasm in topics with a considerable history but, until then, a low profile. These have generated numerous satellite articles in the so-called scholarly press and even the publication of new journals, such as Ethics and Animals and Between the Species, exclusive to the area. Neither has the press, nor television, of the western world been idle. The quality newspapers bristle with items about intensive farming, hunt saboteurs or endangered species and magazines such as Newsweek and the UK Sunday Supplements highlight lengthy reports on topics such as recent research on animal learning, the less than peaceable activities of the Animal Liberation Front, and the use of animals in science. As if all this were not enough it is dwarfed by a wealth of scientific and technical literature from relevant disciplines as diverse as ethology, bio-medicine, economics and jurisprudence.