Animal rights and animal welfare are two different concepts.
The former is an ideology that creates an explicit moral equivalence or equality between animals and humans. In this view, what is done to an animal must be judged in the same manner as if done to a human being, or one is a “speciesist.” Hence, cattle ranching is an equivalent evil to slavery.
Animal welfare, on the other hand, deals with setting humane treatment standards and preventing abuse.
Animal welfare is a duty of human exceptionalism. Animal rights is opposed to human exceptionalism, explicitly and in implication. A lot of people–me included–support animal welfare but adamantly oppose animal rights.
That is why a new change in the influential AP style book is so biased. From the newly amended standards:
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Animal welfare activist. Use instead of animal rights activist.
But true animal rights activists oppose animal welfare because it accepts that humans may domesticate and use animals. Activists like Gary Francione are honest about it, PETA often hides its true ideology behind animal welfare-type advocacy.
Thus the AP’s guidelines would not only hide the truth in specific circumstances, but permits animal rights activists to hide their true beliefs–which is a big way in which they raise money.
When an animal rights activist makes an assertion–such as PETA’s Ingrid Newkirk saying, “A rat, is a pig, is a dog, is a boy”–and she is called an animal welfare activist, that is like hiding the wolf in sheep’s clothing. But she is still a wolf.