Understanding the history of animal welfare advocacy provides context for current campaigns and inspiration from the often-slow but real progress that dedicated advocates have achieved over centuries.
The animal welfare movement has a rich history of advocates who faced significant opposition and scepticism to advance protections that are now widely accepted. From the small group that founded the RSPCA in a London coffee house in 1824, to the scientists, lawyers, and activists who built the modern welfare movement in the latter twentieth century, progress has been slow but real. Each generation has expanded the circle of moral concern to include more species and more practices. The current generation faces the challenge of tackling the most institutionally entrenched forms of animal suffering — intensive farming, wild animal exploitation, and the emerging frontiers of invertebrate and fish welfare — with tools including science, law, markets, and culture that are more powerful than any previous generation of advocates possessed.