5 Animal Rights Books Every Vegan Should Read

Over the last few years, I have been reading widely about the topic of animal rights to improve my own activism and argumentation. Having a strong philosophical basis for veganism is essential, and frankly, I believe the arguments laid out in these books are pretty irrefutable by the honest person.

Whether you’re a seasoned animal rights activist or someone who has no knowledge of veganism and animal rights, I highly recommend each of these books.

Without further ado, here are my recommendations for books every vegan should read:

1) Animal Liberation by Peter Singer

“As for the cages themselves, an ordinary citizen who kept dogs in similar conditions for their entire lives would risk prosecution for cruelty. A pig producer who keeps an animal of comparable intelligence in this manner, however, is more likely to be rewarded with a tax concession or, in some countries, a direct government subsidy.”

Peter Singer’s Animal Liberation is one of the most important texts of the animal rights movement. It is a thorough investigation and indictment of speciesism– the predjudiced treatment of individuals based solely on species membership– and its manifestations in our society. Though I think Singer gives a little too much legitimacy to more “moderate” forms of resistance (e.g., “conscientious omnivorism”), I think Animal Liberation is an indispensable text for anyone interested in animal rights.

This year, the updated edition, Animal Liberation Now was released, and I recently reviewed it on this blog.

2) The Case for Animal Rights by Tom Regan

“To be ‘for animals’ is not to be ‘against humanity.’ To require others to treat animals justly, as their rights require, is not to ask for anything more nor less in their case than in the case of any human to whom just treatment is due. The animal rights movement is a part of, not opposed to, the human rights movement. Attempts to dismiss it as anti human are mere rhetoric.”

Tom Regan’s The Case for Animal Rights is another classic treatise on the subject of veganism and animal rights. While Singer’s arguments in Animal Liberation have utilitarian undertones, focusing mainly on the meat industry’s disregard for animal welfare, Regan takes a more rights-based approach. In my opinion this is a more thorough defense of veganism, as the rights-based approach focuses on animals as individuals and advocates for taking that “right to life” society confers on humans and extending it to our non-human friends.

3) Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs and Wear Cows by Melanie Joy

“Often, vegan advocates assume that a person’s defensiveness is the result of selfishness or apathy, when in fact it is much more likely the result of systematic and intensive social conditioning.”

“Carnist” is a term often flung by vegans at those who ridicule or dismiss animal rights as a frivolous, illogical, or even stupid ethical position. Carnism is the ideology responsible for the paradigm of inconsistency we abide by with regard to animal welfare and treatment. Take the dichotomy between pigs and dogs, for example. Dogs are protected by animal welfare legislation and most humans in the West feel a drive to protect them from harm. However, most people have a completely different idea of what is acceptable to do to pigs, despite the fact that pigs and dogs have very similar cognitive capacities and behaviors. If you’ve ever spent time around pigs, like I have, you’d know how dog-like they are in their behaviors.

Melanie Joy, a psychologist, attempts to explain the societal conditioning behind society’s disregard for animals we’ve deemed as food. Understanding how it got this way is essential for deprogramming speciesist views.

4) This Is Vegan Propaganda by Ed Winters

“It is a clear indictment of how ingrained our state of cognitive dissonance is that we see attempts at moral consistency as signs of extremism. Is it not strange that we call those who kill dogs animal abusers, those who kill pigs normal and those who kill neither extremists? Is it not odd that someone who smashes a car window to rescue a dog on a hot day is viewed as a hero but some one who rescues a piglet suffering on a farm is a criminal?”

Ed Winters, known as “Earthling Ed” on YouTube, is one of my favorite activists and public speakers on the topic of veganism and animal rights. His newest book, This Is Vegan Propaganda, is a general overview of veganism and the urgency of animal rights, focusing on the way that the meat industry lies to the public. Like Tom Regan, Ed Winters takes a more rights-based approach to the topic.

5) Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer

“Just how destructive does a culinary preference have to be before we decide to eat something else? If contributing to the suffering of billions of animals that live miserable lives and (quite often) die in horrific ways isn’t motivating, what would be? If being the number one contributor to the most serious threat facing the planet (global warming) isn’t enough, what is? And if you are tempted to put off these questions of conscience, to say not now, then when?”

Though its author is a bit of a hypocrite, Eating Animals is nonetheless an important and well-researched indictment of factory farming, which is by far the most widespread contributor to animal abuse today. It was one of the first books I read when I was transitioning away from eating meat, and essentially gave me the push I needed to go fully vegan.

Here’s my blog review of Jonathan Safran Foer’s Eating Animals.

For more vegan resources, check out this spreadsheet.

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