Since I keep going the rounds with this, with speciesists big and small:

Animal rights is the ethical position that all sentient beings are inherently free beings, and that humans – who have the option of recognizing this – have no moral justification for denying that fundamental freedom where possible.

Breeding and selling animals denies this freedom.

Consuming animals denies this freedom.

Using animals as objects for experimentation denies this freedom.
Exploiting animals for our entertainment denies this freedom.

Using animals as property – in all the many ways we choose to do it – denies this freedom.
Yes, even pet-keeping denies this freedom (but, in the interim, it may be the best of a bad set of options, under certain conditions).

It’s not up to us to grant animals the basic freedom that is their inherent right: it’s up to us to recognize it, just as we’ve expanded the sphere of freedom to many classes of humans to which it was once denied.

Is the animal rights case perfect? Of course not. No theory of moral rights ever devised by humans perfectly allows for the absolute freedom of all beings. Many human societies recognize a right to free speech (among humans), but nevertheless curtail some kinds of speech, anyway.
Will animal rights ever be “perfect?” Probably not. But we can do better that we’re doing now with regard to the rights of nonhumans. We just have to stop being selfishly concerned with our own desires – and ONLY those desires.

We didn’t sit down and make a careful rational assessment of things like sapience, a capacity for abstract thinking or cognition before we decided to domesticate animals, and despite abstract debates about it, we don’t do it out in the world to justify further animal use. We domesticated animals because we wanted to. We use animals because we want to. We chose then and we choose now to override the animals’ interests in favor of our wishes. It’s a nice idea to think that this is being done in some interest of a given animal’s well-being in some cases, but the whole proposition of use is very heavily weighted in favor of satisfying human desires at the outset. Most of the time (nearly all of the time, I’d say) animal well-being is a secondary concern, at best. If we tell ourselves that a given animal use meets some particular desire we may have, we’re going to do it. If we can reduce suffering in some cases, some number of humans may choose to do that, but it doesn’t really change the fundamental issue. That use will happen with or without “minimal” suffering if enough humans are willing to provide an incentive for it.

We may fetishize dogs and cats in our culture (so we punish people who do things we judge cruel to dogs and cats), but we don’t fetishize pigs, cows or chickens, etc. so we don’t criminalize the same treatment (or far worse), simply because we wish to use *those* animals as food. It doesn’t ultimately matter that we may dance around making a claim of “humane” treatment of those animals. That use will persist, so long as people choose to eat animals, and actual concern for the welfare of those animals will only occur to the extent that there’s a financial incentive for it. If a majority of the market were willing to pay exorbitant prices for happy meat, factory farming would not exist. The market is completely unwilling to do this, so factory farming exists, and will persist, as long as humans continue eating these beings. This is as certain as the sunrise.

I think that humans made a wrong choice, regardless of the fact that the tradition of animal use is well-entrentched at this point. I think that the direct results of that wrong choice are suffering on a massive scale.

Folks may argue back and forth whether or not it should or shouldn’t have been done, but I think that really won’t ever get anywhere. If you think there’s no moral consequence to use, there’s no case against use you’ll ever listen to. If you think use *never could have been justified at the outset* (as I do), it doesn’t matter that some animals may be treated in relatively benign ways today, and in any event benign treatment in the edge cases doesn’t have anything to do with the routine suffering we choose to cause in the majority of cases.

As an animal rights advocate, I’m often asked to “prove” why I think the use of animals is wrong; this is largely a dodge. Folks demanding such proof aren’t usually interested in really considering any particular response, and will instead look for reasons to disagree, and tell themselves that x particular animal use, under y “humane” conditions should be viewed as ethically neutral.

The problem is that there’s ultimately no fundamental justification for either position. You can either agree or disagree on the fundamental question: animals are not ours to use. If you agree, the animal rights case follows rationally from that initial premise. If you disagree, you may hang all sorts of modern scientific (or, more likely pseudoscientific) justifications on that disagreement. We may say nonhumans are “less sentient” or “lack sapience” by way of making a claim that a particular use is justified.

This is flawed at the outset.

We domesticated animals thousands of years ago, and we didn’t make any determination about those animals sapience or sentience when we did it. We simply decided to do it, because we wanted to do it. The justifications for it come after the fact, not before. Given that, any justification for animal use is inevitably going to be weighted in favor of the human’s given use of a given animal. We may hang what seem to be “good” arguments on that to make that use seem rational, but it doesn’t really change anything.

We’re simply making a choice to override an animal’s interests in favor of our own, whenever, wherever and however we may wish, and then coming up with an argument for why that use is justified after the fact. But the situation is rigged: in these cases the conclusion is foregone: there’s no possible objection to use, so any justification has to be viewed in light of that inherent bias. The game is rigged, and we’ve rigged it in our favor, always. Our use of animals is habitual; rationalizing those habits is a secondary (if that) concern.

The animal rights case departs from that position at the premise: no use is ethically justified. Yes, human and nonhuman interests will conflict in places, but that doesn’t have anything to do with setting up a circumstance where entirely optional uses of animals will be perpetuated for the foreseeable future. The animal rights position is an attempt – in many ways an imperfect attempt, given the hurdles we face in getting society to reevaluate its use of animals, but an honest attempt, nevertheless – to readdress the issue of use not from the foregone conclusion that use is going to happen, no matter what, but from the starting premise that none of it is justifiable, and then working to come up with solutions that progressively eliminate that use.

The fundamental premises in either case can’t be argued: they’re both based on a founding assumption: use either is, or isn’t permissible. If it is permissible, the animal rights case says that use will ALWAYS turn animals into property – objects to be exploited, because we’re deciding at the outset that these are not beings with their own interests. We may claim to respect some animal interests – the interest in not suffering “excessively,” perhaps, but that again assumes at the outset that a given use is going to happen no matter what. Our definitions of “excessive” suffering become, therefore, highly elastic and the whole matter is always going to be weighted in favor of the human’s desired use, instead of the animal’s interest in not suffering at all.

If use is not permissible, then it simply doesn’t matter what claimed justifications humans may come up with for those uses – it doesn’t matter if animal testing may cure diseases, or if happy meat may have lived a relatively comfortable life before being killed and eaten – the presumption of permissibility of use automatically overrides the animal’s interest giving automatic preference to the human desire.

People will either wake up to this, or they won’t. But getting ensnared in a side debate with a committed speciesist on justifying the premise is a waste of time. Those persons are never going to make any other determination than permitting animal use. They may advocate for kinder treatment in some cases while such animals are being used (typically before we finally kill them and do something else to their bodies), but that kind treatment isn’t really being done in the interests of the animal – those interests have already been overridden, inherently. Treating animals “kindly” in this context is largely an aesthetic question: We’ll nearly always only do what’s the bare minimum standard of “humane” treatment so we can tell ourselves we’ve done something kind for that animal. But it’s not really about that animal – it’s about justifying the use of that animal to ourselves.