There exist two fundamental moral principles common to most people: that it is wrong to cause another to suffer and that it is wrong to exploit others for our own benefit. Scientific discoveries over the past century have confirmed what we intuitively know; that most non-human animals have a capacity to suffer- physically, psychologically and even emotionally - in a way that is similar to our own.

Animal rights therefore rests on the logical extension of these moral principle to members of other species, who have their own interests and a capacity to suffer in similar ways to ourselves.

Animal rights and animal welfare are profoundly different movements and ideas. Animal welfare seeks to regulate the exploitation of animals. Animal rights seeks to end it.

On the frontiers of animal abuse - such as genetic engineering - and in more traditional settings like vivisection and meat production, animal welfare's task is to minimise unnecessary suffering where possible. The greater good of humanity is always the primary concern, and will almost always justify "necessary" suffering. The greater good may include an improved washing detergent or lipstick; food that takes more energy, more land and more water to produce; or an amusing pastime, like hunting.

Animal rights does not believe in addressing 'symptoms' through monitoring and regulating animal abuse. Animal rights instead addresses the fundamental root of animal suffering, which lies in the supremacist belief that animals, as part of the non-human environment, exist only for human purposes. This belief results in the trivialisation of the lives of animals because they are viewed merely as expendable, replaceable property of a worth measured only by human standards of money or utility.

Non-human animals, like humans, do not exist for other's sakes. They exist for their own. The case for animal rights does not come from an animal's ability to conceive of rights. The most common excuse for animal exploitation is that the rule against causing suffering does not apply to animals because they are amoral. Yet human babies and the severely disabled, who are justly assigned rights, are also amoral in the sense that they can neither comprehend nor reciprocate rights.

The extension of moral consideration to humans who are incapable of moral judgement rests on empathy, on imagining ourselves in their place such that we desire to treat them in ways that will not cause them suffering. These double standards towards humans and non-human animals are applied because for centuries it has been a useful ideology for rationalising the exploitation and infliction of harm on non-human animals for human benefit, an ideology known as speciesism.

Prior to our understanding of the physiological similarities and common evolutionary origins between species, animal interests could easily be supported by reference to common sense about superficial differences (such as inability to "speak" to humans), to religious texts, or to intellectual ideas made popular for their usefulness (such as those of Descartes, who saw animals as machines that did not feel pain).

Today it is tradition; vested corporate and state interests; and a socialisation so insidious that many take our oppressive relation to other species as "natural" synergistically maintain exploitation on an unimaginable scale. These barriers to equality remain to the detriment of the Earth, other animals and our own spiritual, moral and physical health.

The abuse of power through hierarchical order manifests in many interacting problems. Just as unequal power relations between nations, genders, races, ethnicities, classes, and sexualities have resulted in the historical oppression of certain groups, so have unequal power relations (as a result of different evolutionary adaptations) have resulted in the historical oppression of all other species by one.

The animal rights movement exists alongside other social movements in its fight for holistic justice and for a more peaceful world, a world in which all beings live free from prejudice, oppression, exploitation and cruelty.

In animal welfare, there are glimmers of recognition that animals have interests of their own. But these are unfailingly beaten back by human interests, however trifling. Animal rights' core idea is that these interests should be balanced properly. It is an empty answer to simply insist that we're human and they're not. Humans remain unique. But all species, by very definition, are unique. Uniqueness does not create a coherent moral argument for treating animals in whatever way we please.

Animal rights does not try to invent a non-existent equality between humans and animals. Species have different needs and cannot, and should not, be measured according to a single arbitrary standard.

We recognise different rights and responsibilities among humans, so it is both absurd and discriminatory to suggest that recognizing animal rights means giving them the same rights as us (such as "voting rights").

Instead, animal rights means equal consideration of animals' interests, rather than our current delusion that they have none at all.