Philosopher and leading advocate of the animal liberation movement, Singer was born in Melbourne, Australia. While teaching at Oxford University in England, Singer encountered a group of people who were vegetarians not because of any personal distaste for meat, but because they felt, as Singer later wrote, that "there was no way in which [maltreatment of animals by humans] could be justified ethically." Impressed by their argument, Singer soon joined their ranks. Out of his growing concern for the rights of animals came the book Animal Liberation,a study of the suffering we inflict upon animals in the name of scientific experimentation and food production. Animal Liberation caused a sensation when it was published in 1972 and soon became a major manifesto of the growing animal liberation movement in...