Just for all the PETA idiots out there, I will be feasting on a 24oz. Porterhouse tonight. I'll probably throw in some chicken wings as an appetizer.
Posted on 07/19/2004 7:46:42 AM PDT by presidio9
The website could not have been more explicit. "All headlights and glass smashed, all electrics and air lines, oil lines cut, tyres slashed, fuel tanks, oil and transmission tanks contaminated, cab controls smashed up, approx 100 power cables supplying site electrics were chopped through," it said, describing how members of the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) had broken into the Bournemouth offices of construction company RMC just over a fortnight ago. "Fuse boxes and other bits of electrics smashed, fuel pumps damaged, fuel tanks spilled, all site conveyor belts slashed beyond repair. Slogans painted everywhere, estimated cost £250,000."
According to the anonymous posting on the direct action website Arkangel, ALF members went to work with axes, bolt croppers and crowbars for nearly three hours, causing damage to tractors, bulldozers and a crane. Their message signed off with a challenge: "How do you like it so far, RMC?"
The company had been targeted for the simple reason that it supplied concrete for the construction of a new research laboratory at Oxford University. The £18m lab, in the heart of the university's science area, will unite Oxford's research using animals in one building, drawing together scientific expertise, but drawing too the wrath, some of it violent, of the animal rights groups.
On Saturday, animal rights campaigners from across the country will march through Oxford to show the university the strength of feeling against the construction of the lab. It will be the start of a battle that is likely to last for several months and establish Oxford as the centre of the vivisection controversy.
Construction started on the lab in March and when it opens at the end of next year, it will allow scientists to develop treatments for diseases including leukaemia, heart disease, stroke, arthritis, cancer and diabetes.
With days to go before the first big demonstration, the mood at the university is one of apprehension mixed with defiance. "Terrorism does concern us," said one scientist who is responsible for the welfare of animals used in research at Oxford. "I'd rather work in an environment where you don't have to look over your back. But if we ran scared in this department, the animals would be worse off."
The battle at Oxford is shaping up to be the biggest test so far of the government's commitment to research using animals. Tony Blair has passionately argued the case for such research, but scientists want the prime minister to match this commitment with action. They are calling for tougher laws to prosecute the "terrorism" by a small group of extremists in an otherwise peaceful animal rights movement.
The anti-vivisectionists are made up of several groups operating seemingly independently. But they have a common goal - to prevent the lab being built.
The clandestine ALF has already been violently targeting the companies that are helping Oxford to build the lab, while the newly formed Speak is leading the charge on handing out leaflets, picketing the building site and campaigning in the city.
Speak, led by a veteran animal rights campaigner, Mel Broughton, was set up to bring an end to the primate research laboratory planned recently at Cambridge University. In January, the university dropped its plans, following months of wrangling with animal rights activists and local residents, saying that building the lab would cost too much. Mr Broughton claimed the collapse of the Cambridge project as a victory for Speak. Two months later he moved the group's attention to Oxford.
Vandalism
RMC is just the latest target; the company declined to comment on the damage to its offices around the country. The ALF has claimed responsibility for vandalism and other violent attacks on the companies working for Oxford University and is also thought to be behind letters sent to the shareholders of Montpellier, whose Walter Lilly subsidiary is in overall charge of building the Oxford lab. The letter, purporting to be from Montpellier's chairman, Roy Harrison, encouraged shareholders to sell their stock to avoid reprisals from the animal rights movement. Shares in the company fell 19% on the day the letters were made public.
Speak, which claims to be non-violent, had an early victory in March when Travis Perkins, one of the UK's largest suppliers of building materials, stopped making deliveries to the building site after the group encouraged the company to sever ties with the project.
Mr Broughton insists there is no link between his group and the more violent groups, and no contact at all with the ALF. "We're a legal campaign, we do not encourage people to break the law. There are no links between us and these direct action groups."
However, Mr Broughton has served a prison sentence for smuggling incendiary devices into the premises of HLS, an animal-testing facility.
The other leaders of Speak, Robert Cogswell and John Curtin, are also well-known in the animal rights community. Mr Cogswell edits Arkangel, the leading magazine and website for animal rights activists; Mr Curtin has been jailed several timesfor animal rights-related offences, including desecrating the grave of the Duke of Beaufort in an anti-hunting protest in 1984.
Oxford University says that 98% of the animals used at the new lab will be rodents. There may also be some amphibians, ferrets, fish and primates, depending on the kinds of licences held by the researchers who use the facility.
Professor Tipu Aziz, a consultant neurosurgeon who uses primates in his research on Parkinson's disease, said that the Cambridge primate laboratory could have been a "national asset" and he was dismayed when the university decided to stop the project. "Any patient that's walked into a hospital today or buys a drug over the counter is using a service or product that has been tried out on animals," he said. For him, the loss of Cambridge means that Oxford's lab must go ahead at all costs.
Others prefer to remain anonymous, worried about potential reprisals from extremists. But they are aware that any dedicated anti-vivisectionist could find out who they are.
"Anybody can do a literature survey and work out whether researchers use animals," said a biological scientist who uses rodents to help develop drugs for a range of neurodegenerative diseases.
While some departments at the university do advise against mentioning animal work on their web pages for safety reasons, there is no specific security policy imposed on staff working with animals at Oxford. The university declined to detail the security measures planned for the new laboratory but said that staff would be briefed on the potential risks.
A group set up in March to represent people and companies that have been attacked by extremists, Victims of Animal Rights Extremism, wants the government to introduce an animal rights extremism act, which it says would send a message to universities and companies across the world who might otherwise be reluctant to invest in research in the UK that relies on animal testing.
Prompted by government officials, including the science minister, Lord Sainsbury, the Home Office is looking at whether prosecutions for animal rights extremism are possible under existing legislation, such as the criminal justice act.
Prof Aziz, meanwhile, is taking the argument directly to the public with a lecture in the town hall in Oxford, where he and colleagues will explain the reasons behind the use of animals in research.
On the other side of the battle lines, Mr Broughton is also clear about his plans. "Anyone who does get involved in this in any way, shape or form, we will be protesting against," he said. "Make no mistake about that."
I'd be willing to wager that these terrorists would scream bloody murder if a right-to-life organization did the same things to an abortion clinic. I'd also be willing to wager that they have no problem at all with fetal stem-cell research.
Once these ALF terrorists are caught, they should be great candidates for animal experiments.
It is us vs them, and there are a lot of them amongst us.
I use to be an animal rights activist. I am still vegetarian and have been for over 10 years. However as my mother always taught me, you get more with honey, then you do with vinegar. Meaning, I get more positive response by sitting and chatting with people about being vegetarian, rather then shoving it down thier throats with protests and violence. I think people like the ALF give me and people like me a bad name.
Makes me yearn for the good old days of the Coalition for the Liberation of Itenerant Tree-dwellers or even the Liberate Animals Before Imprisoning Animals movements.
I wish that people who want to ban animal testing outright would have the courage of their convictions. Say "No" to childhood vaccinations, surgery, poison treatments, HIV treatment, stroke rehab, bypass, TENS therapy, etc.
This would be for both themselves and their children, of course, since human life and animal life are of equal value.
Have you ever met an animal rights advocate(so-called) who was pro-life? Nope, me neither.
Is "vivisection" the British word for animal testing? In the US it has connotations of brutal torture, flaying open the skin of an animal while it is still living.
Just for all the PETA idiots out there, I will be feasting on a 24oz. Porterhouse tonight. I'll probably throw in some chicken wings as an appetizer.
Whether ALF gives you a bad name is determined by who you are. If you simply choose to eat only plants, then it does not. If you intend to acheive the same ends (animal testing/eating) than it does to some extent.
Quick Quiz: Do animals have rights or are rights a uniquely human concept?
What may not be known to our American readers is that the Labour Government always talks tough on terrorism, however it's record on dealing with homegrown terrorists can pretty much be described as "do nothing". This group is hardly discouraged by Tony Blair's words, is it? ALF et al have grown brave because the government has passed the buck, saying it was the responsibility of the local police forces to prevent these terrorist attacks. Result: small local towns have been lumbered with multi-million pound policing bills due to the protection that has to be offered to the labs. Then the local populace turns against the companies. It really annoys me. The government could break these lunatics with ease if they wanted to. Slap 50 year jail sentences on the leaders and it would all be over. But it's the usual Labour case of "all mouth and no action".
I would say that I wish that everyone could be vegetarian and not do testing on animals, but that wish is unrealistic. Most of these animal rights activists actually believe that they can a achieve a goal one day of a vegetarian planet, I do not believe this can or will happen. Everyone has a choice, and I respect that. I choose to be vegetarian and not support companies that do testing on animals. If someone wishes to know why I live this way, I will be more than willing to discuss it. Otherwise, I see no sense in protesting fur factories or animal testing labs, simply because it doesnt work. My way of not supporting these companies, or protesting them, is simply by not giving them my money.
I also agree with this. In the Bible it says that humans will have "dominion" over animals. Parents have dominion over thier children, but they dont eat them...
Ya know, the schools are doing a good job teaching the kids not to test on animals. My 8 yr old was looking at the shampoo bottle one day and I asked her why. "I want to make sure they don't test on animals". Why? "They came from the nature center and talked about it to us." I then had to explain to her that alot of very good things came about because of animal testing. I think she understood, and I don't think that side had even been addressed at school! Geez!!
While I agree with you that in school they should be teaching fair and balanced, you would be surprised at how much of the testing on animals is just plain not necessary and extremely frivolous. While I do believe that there are companies out there with a conscience and a sincere attempt to help humanity, there are more companies out there with a demonic attitude and I believe do this sort of thing for fun, or without sincerity.
Oh I don't know about that.
When my kids get out of line I kill em, clean em & cook them and serve them up with a tangy mustard sauce. Then after dinner I grab the wife and start making another that looks just like the first!
You don't eat your children?
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