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Animal Liberation

Peter Singer·1975·English

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The book that launched the modern animal rights movement. Singer's argument is straightforward: if suffering matters, and if animals can suffer, then their suffering matters. The species of the sufferer is irrelevant, 'speciesism' is as arbitrary a prejudice as racism. Factory farming and animal experimentation, by these lights, are moral catastrophes.

The question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer? This is the question that must be asked when we consider the justification for our treatment of other animals. The pain and suffering of a pig or a cow is no less real than the pain and suffering of a human being; why then do we so easily dismiss it?

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