why animal rights?

And what is the distinction between animal rights and animal welfare? I mean, I think most of us when asked would say that we love animals, protect them when we can, and are certainly not opposed to their welfare or well-being. But invariably when the term rights are used in the same sentence as animals, people tend to ask "Well what about human rights?" as if the two are mutually exclusive. It's like saying that if you're concerned about the one, you can't care about the other. Not true in my opinion. In my own life I see my increasing involvement with animal rights as a natural progression of all the other rights that have occupied my time at one point or another: human rights, women's rights, gay rights, children's rights, disability rights, and now, animal rights. Perhaps too my focus these days is more on those whom I view as having the least amount of power, the least able to give voice, but I don't see the different rights as necessarily unconnected.