This change in thinking was a very gradual process that began in the eighteenth
century when a few noted philosophers began writing treatises on the
rights of animals. Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832) considered the question of animal
rights and concluded, “The question is not, Can they reason? nor Can they
talk? but Can they suffer?” Bentham and others believed the answer was “yes,”
and therefore, animals had the right to be treated humanely and to be free from
pain and suffering. The idea of treating animals humanely spread until New
York passed the first anticruelty statute in the United States in 1829. The law—
which prohibited the malicious injuring or killing of farm animals such as
horses, oxen, cattle, or sheep—followed an 1822 English law known as Martin’s
Act that was the first law to prohibit cruelty toward animals. By 1907 every
state had passed anticruelty legislation, and by 1923 the laws also prohibited
animal neglect and abandonment, cockfighting, and certain hunting traps,
among other restrictions.