(from The Times, July 6, 1996)

Organised groups have defied the law in order to prevent the export of calves; others have disrupted fox-hunts and angling competitions; the more militant have set fire to milk-yards and sent bombs through the post to scientists engaged in animal research. Public opinion has been stirred up against the fur-trade, against whaling, against the culling of seal cubs, and against the eating of veal. Academic reputations have been made through the defence of animal rights. And yet this vast body of public opinion, faced with the pointless slaughter of millions of healthy animals, falls silent.

Surely, if animals have any rights, then they have the right to be spared from slaughter when the only motive is to appease our masters in Brussels? Anyone who has witnessed the tears of a farmer as his carefully tended herd is condemned to destruction will know who really has had the interest of these animals at heart. One could be forgiven for thinking that the animal-rights movement is less interested in defending animals than in attacking the people who look after them.

Such a conclusion would be unjust. The fact is that we have become deeply confused about the nature of animals, and about the proper way of relating to them. The loss of the religious worldview, and the sanitised view of nature that people obtain from television, has caused us to overlook the real distinctions between animals and people and to pass rapid and arbitrary judgment in matters that require a symptom of moral laziness: it bespeaks a failure to take the question of their welfare as seriously as we should.

Of course, animals can be helped and harmed; they experience joy and suffering; and they are crucially dependent upon human beings to safeguard their long-term interests. But not all interests are rights. A right is an interest that cannot be overridden without its owner's consent. We assign rights in order to protect the sovereignty of the individual, so that he is to enter into negotiated relations with others of his kind. Unlike the animals, we make free choices based on the evaluation of alternatives. We criticise one another's actions. We offer reasons for doing or not doing what another proposes. We exert a kind of sovereignty over our lives, which obliges us to respect the sovereignty of others. In short, we are moral beings - and we must purchase our rights by assuming responsibilities. If animals had rights then they would have duties too; in which case whole species should be condemned, like the lion, the fox and the heron, to ignominious exile from the fold of Creation.

Because animals make no moral judgments, it would be cruel and ultimately senseless to treat them as though they were members of a moral community. The attempt to broker our relations with other species through concepts of right and duty would inevitably lead to a breakdown of all cordial sentiment between us and them. It is because the advocates of animal rights know this that they fall silent when the real test of their convictions arises. Meanwhile, however, their vociferous spokesmanship has so clouded people's minds that we are left helpless in the face of the catastrophe that faces Britain's cattle.

How then can we fulfil our moral duties towards animals ? Everything depends upon the relationship between us. Towards pet and domestic animals we have assumed a duty of care: we have undertaken a responsibility for their well-being, which we cannot arbitrarily set aside just because it would be convenient. If you have bred and raised an animal who is totally dependent upon you for its well-being, then you are not entitled to put it down without a good reason. It is a good reason that the animal is sick or suffering; it is for a good reason that it is healthy but required as human food - for in that case it owes its existence to the fact of being eaten. But it is not a good reason that some bureaucrat requests it, in order to appease your competitor in another country. It is not a good reason that public hysteria cries out for it.

Towards animals in the wild we have assumed no duty of care. But this does not mean that we can treat them in any way we please. Sympathy towards the joys and sufferings of other creatures sets limits to our treatment of them; so do our conceptions of human vice and virtue. Those who understand what is at stake in hunting, shooting and fishing know that these serve the interest of wild animals far more effectively than any belief in their rights. But as long as people prefer simple solutions to arduous moral thinking it will be hard to persuade them of this truth.

The time has come, it seems to me, to address the moral question of animals with the seriousness that it deserves. This is a duty that we owe, not only to the animals but to all those who are charged with looking after them - and to farmers in particular.