'Property' Under the Law

I am convinced of the need to abolish human utilization of animals in the economic sphere. I don't think that animals need to be removed from the human social sphere altogether, but accorded the basic rights they deserve in their interaction with moral-agent humans. Animals are not capable of entering into a contract and therefore any utilization of them in an economic setting is forced labor. Naturally using their very flesh is a violation of their most basic rights.

The tactics of the animal right's movement varies, but Regan is right in pointing out that physical violence against humans is solidly off the table for almost all activists. Civil disobedience is widely supported, especially due to the enormity of animal suffering and the peripheral nature of the movement. Between violence against humans and civil disobedience  an we justify the use of violence against property itself?

In a certain sense, property is an extension of an individual, in a similar way that a persons pinky belongs to them their land belongs to them. 

To limit this discussion to a specific type of case, assume a laboratory owns a dog that will be vivisected and thereby killed in a most brutal way. Assuming a custodian had access to that dog and could 'steal' it without causing any property damage, the law would take this as a type of violence but animal rights ethics could not. It seems that the same logic of civil disobedience applies, while acknowledging the right of the state to enforce existing laws, breaking such a law would not be moraly reprehensible because owning an animal is impossible due to it's nature as a right's bearing being thus nothing was being stolen.

Do non-state actors ever have a valid role to play in protecting rights (especially when the state refuses to do so)?