Many people who protested against the Criminal Justice Act last summer have been down to Shoreham to stop the calves being exported. For them too, disillusionment with traditional politics has encouraged a concern with animal rights. What he means is that radicals today think that it is wrong to discriminate against animals, or to see humans as superior. Of course people are superior to animals. Only people could come up with an idea like rights or suffering - concepts which are quite alien to the animal world.
People use animals all the time.
If people like William Waldegrave had not bred them in the first place there would be no calves to feel sorry for. Young children often empathise with animals. Children's stories often give animals human characteristics, like Mrs Tiggy-Winkle, or Walt Disney's Lion King. But when adults are still moved to tears by the bleating of sheep they could only be going out of their way to recapture the innocence of their youth. Like the conservatives, radicals take up the cause of animal rights because they are cynical about the politics of human liberation.