Richard Ryder

Richard Hood Jack Dudley Ryder (born 3 July 1940) is an English writer, psychologist, and animal rights advocate.

Ryder became known in the 1970s as a member of the Oxford Group, a group of intellectuals loosely centred on the University of Oxford who began to speak out against animal use, in particular factory farming and animal research. He was working at the time as a clinical psychologist at the Warneford Hospital in Oxford, and had himself been involved in animal research in the United Kingdom and United States.In 1970, he coined the term speciesism to describe the exclusion of nonhuman animals from the protections available to human beings. In 1977 he became chairman of the RSPCA Council, serving until 1979, and helped to organize the first academic animal-rights conference, held in August 1977 at Trinity College, Cambridge. The conference produced a "Declaration Against Speciesism", signed by 150 people.Ryder assisted in achieving the legislative animal protection reforms in the UK and EU between the years 1970 and 2020.

Ryder is the author of a number of books about animal research, animal rights, and morality in politics, including Victims of Science (1975), Animal Revolution (1989), and Painism: A Modern Morality (2001).

Since 2020 Ryder has been President of the RSPCA.