The history of animal welfare legislation traces the evolving moral understanding of animals' capacity to suffer. Understanding this history reveals both how far we have come and how far we still have to go.
The history of animal welfare legislation is a story of moral circle expansion: from a narrow focus on large working animals in 1822, to companion animals, to farmed animals, to wild animals, and now to invertebrates and potentially insects. Each expansion was resisted by commercial interests and those who argued that the previous boundary was sufficient. Each expansion has eventually been recognised as obviously right. The trajectory suggests that future expansions - to fish, crustaceans, cephalopods and potentially insects - are not radical departures but continuations of a consistent moral logic. Understanding this history makes the current advocacy for expanded animal welfare protection seem not utopian but historically inevitable.