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Animal Welfare

Animal rights and animal welfare cover a huge spectrum of ideas and beliefs.

The animal rights viewpoint is basically that humans do not have the right to use animals for their own gain at all—in the laboratory, on the farm, in entertainment or in the wild. The animal welfare viewpoint advocates for limiting or preventing cruel treatment of animals. According to the animal welfare perspective, human use of animals is acceptable if animal suffering is preventable. In practice however it is not always that simple to make this distinction between animal rights and animal welfare positions. In many cases, organizations or individuals who describe themselves as animal rights advocates may support animal welfare efforts as an intermediate step on the path to a true animal rights solution. While the perspectives differ, both involve a concern for the suffering of others.

Some of the information and action ideas on our site are from the animal welfare perspective and others are closer to animal rights. Read about the issues and figure out how you personally feel on this topic.

Animal Cruelty

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Cruel treatment comes in many forms - learn about them and see what you can do.

Animal Homelessness

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There are 4-6 million homeless pets in the U.S. in need of a good home. Learn more about the cause…

Animal Testing

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An estimated 2,000,000 animals are used in research in the U.S. each year.

Endangered Species

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Since 1600, more than 700 species of plants and animals have gone extinct.

Factory Farms

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These operations treat animals with hormones and antibiotics to prevent disease.

Puppy Mills

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Behind the cute pet store showroom is an entire industry of inhumane animal breeding.



Related Animal Welfare news

Journey for Change Blog: Scouting animals and fighting poverty

DoSomething.org continues to feature guest blogger Tyler from Journey for Change. The teen is traveling through South Africa to volunteer and gain global perspective. Here's his latest report.

We just arrived at Kruger National Park. We got there by going on a Turbo Jet plane! It was the second time I have ever been
on such a small plane. I went to sleep as soon as they turned on the plane. It was so silent, even when we took off…silence!


11 Shocking Cause Campaigns

New York Department of Health has released another wave of ads discouraging people from drinking soda. It's pretty disgusting:

Interesting social action tactic - disgusting people into doing something.

"You have no idea how many times I see this ad and put that soda can down. This ad is persuasive enough, in all of its disgusting glory, to at least start the steps to changing," said a DoSomething user when we posted this picture online.


Act Now! (the matrix)

Select from the options below and hit search. We will give you tons of easy ways to do something!