" Rights, and even the right to life, apply only to human action because we alone are moral actors capable of deliberate good and evil, as Mr. Scruton and other debunkers of animal rights never tire of reminding us. They have not paused to consider what follows from this, namely that rights exist, by definition, as a check against human wrongdoing. They attach to all human conduct, wherever human beings are capable of doing wrong. Once it is granted, therefore, that humans can act wrongfully in our power over animals, what grounds are left for denying that animals have a right not to be treated wrongfully at our hands?

If a right is a prohibition on human wrongdoing, and if animals can be the object of wrongful human action, then to precisely that extent animals have rights - not, of course, among one another, but only in their encounters with us. "

― Matthew Scully , Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call to Mercy