Our treatment of, and attitudes towards, animals vary from respect and concern at one end of the scale to cruelty and neglect at the other. Acts of violence to animals are countered by acts of violence on the behalf of animals. This book is about these apparently contradictory responses. It seeks to examine moral theories which endeavour to tell us how we ought to treat animals as well as how individuals and the law actually do treat them. In this work the author combines his professional knowledge as a political scientist with his interest in, and concern for, the plight of animals and our moral obligations towards them. He puts his case for fundamental changes in the way we think about, and behave towards, the other species with whom we share the planet.

Robert Garner is Reader in Politics at the University of Leicester