Animal rights ideas go mainstream?

Redwood Shores, Calif.-Who knows what the future holds?

An ethnofuturist, whose job it is to sleuth out lasting consumer trends,says the animal rights movement is changing the way society views animals,and in the next 20 years its increasing influence will become even moreevident.

When you take away the extremism of the animal rights movement, certainideas focused on improving the health and welfare of animals in societywill "go mainstream" explains Lee Shupp.

Shupp is strategic director and ethnofuturist with Cheskin Research,a consulting firm that has decidedly gone mainstream with a virtual Who'sWho in corporate clientele such as Microsoft, AT&T, Nestle and Kodak.Ethnography is the study of culture through deep immersion into everydaylife. If you understand consumer behavior, you can make products and servicesto meet those needs.

In an interview with DVM Newsmagazine, he says this new growing academicniche-called futures-could be looked at as part anthropology, part statistics,part behavioral observation and part psychology with a goal of predictinglarge-scale trends in the next 20 years.

To figure out what is happening mainstream, you have to wander into thefringe social movements of today, he explains

"If you look at fringe movements over time, you start to see patterns.You take things like civil rights, women's suffrage or the environmentalmovements; they all started with a small group of very vocal people thatmost people thought were kind of nutty. They kept up the message, and iteventually spread mainstream."

Shupp adds, "I am seeing a lot of the same patterns with the animalrights movement."

Shupp says the vote in San Francisco recently to change its legal languagefrom pet owners to pet guardians is further proof that mainstreaming is starting to happen.