Thus, the Rule of St. Benedict forbade monks from eating meat unless they were ill. The American philosopher Tom Regan argued that most current uses of animals are wrong, not because they cause suffering but because they violate animals' inherent rights as much as slavery violates basic human rights. St. Augustine's influence, and later St. Thomas Aquinas's similar views, turned this perception of animalus domesticus into the accepted Christian ethic. In contrast to Native and eastern philosophies, which saw animals as having souls and therefore as being part of these philosophies' sphere of ethical concerns, western thought excluded animals from our legal and moral systems until the nineteenth century. Nevertheless, strong biblical injunctions fostered a common social consensus forbidding wanton cruelty to animals.
History justifies claims that the idea of animal rights reflects our distancing from nature.
Indeed, western civiliation was agrarian until the last two centures. Industrialism's ascendency in the nineteenth century not only created urbanization but also renewed interest in human-animal relationships. The humane movement spawned numerous societies for the enactment of legal rights for animals in many countries. The anti-vivisection movement of the late 1890s sought a total ban on animal experimentation. Husbandry involved keeping them in conditions to which they were biologically adapted, supplemented with additional feed, water and protection from predators and the elements.