Militant activism in Washington Post and UK papers 1/31/05

The Washington Post article is headed "Animal Rights Group Aims at Enemy's Allies; Harassment Campaign Targets Suppliers, Customers of Product Testing Company." (Pg A 16.) It is a balanced piece.

It opens:
"Greg Avery was a small-time activist on the fringes of the animal rights movement here when, one day in 1999, he trailed a truck full of cats from a breeding farm to its destination: the gates of Huntingdon Life Sciences, Britain's largest animal research laboratory.

"Suddenly, he recalls, it came to him: Why focus on one little cat farm when you could declare war on a major publicly traded company that experiments on thousands of animals each year?

"Over the next five years, the Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty campaign, known as SHAC, brought Huntingdon to the edge of bankruptcy and forced the company to cease trading on the London Stock Exchange and move its corporate headquarters to New Jersey. Activists with clubs assaulted two of its senior executives, while dozens of other employees reported harassment ranging from damage to their property to threatening phone calls and false allegations of pedophilia.

"The campaign spread to the United States, where a federal grand jury in Newark last May indicted SHAC USA and seven individuals on charges that included violation of the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act. The trial is scheduled for June.

"The campaign against Huntingdon -- a company with 1,400 employees and $120 million in annual sales -- is the longest, most aggressive and most ambitious that the militant wing of the animal rights movement has ever conducted. It marks an escalation in tactics and a new internationalization of the movement, which to a large extent was born and bred in Britain and still follows the lead of British activists.

"Proponents of animal testing argue that without it, most of the drugs and modern therapies developed to combat cancer and a host of other diseases would not exist. But animal rights advocates contend that testing is inhumane and largely unreliable. For activists such as Avery, testing is nothing less than mass murder.

"The key to strangling Huntingdon, says Avery, has been to focus on harassing its suppliers and customers -- ranging from the bank that lent it money to the caterer who supplied its cafeteria food...."

Whereas many stories on the SHAC campaign fail to detail the activists' case against HLS, this reporter, Glenn Frankel, writes:

"Huntingdon, which conducts experiments on up to 75,000 rats, mice, guinea pigs, cats, dogs and monkeys every year, is an obvious target. Two hidden-camera investigations in the 1990s uncovered deliberate abuse of animals by staff members in England and the United States. Company officials say that the incidents were isolated and that strong safeguards are in now in place to ensure they don't recur."

(You can see video of HLS abuses at http://www.shac.net. It includes footage of a scientist punching a beagle puppy in the face, and of a primate on an operating table, with her chest cut wide open, conscious, lifting her head. Those involved in the SHAC campaign feel that given the horrifying abuses they documented, the company should not have been given a second chance.)

It is a fairly long article, and an interesting read, that you will find on line at:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A49937-2005Jan30.html?sub=AR OR http://tinyurl.com/6y6w8

Having just read this line from the Washington Post article: "Proponents of animal testing argue that without it, most of the drugs and modern therapies developed to combat cancer and a host of other diseases would not exist," I read, with a sense of irony, an article from the Sunday, January 30, Saint Paul Pioneer Press (Minnesota) headed, "A biotech firm's tough choice; Business considerations dictate that a St. Paul start-up company must first market a wrinkle filler before turning its attention to developing a lifesaving blood-vessel graft." (Pg 8b)

It tells us:
"Gel-Del Technologies faced a difficult choice: Which biotech material should it bring to market first: a lifesaving technology to repair blood vessels or a filler injected under the skin to smooth wrinkles?

"Both biomaterials are derived from a common scientific approach developed by Gel-Del and are compatible with human tissue; both underwent extensive animal testing with positive results....

"As a start-up, Gel-Del needs money -- and that means satisfying investors and attracting new ones.... Add to that the tremendous interest from potential consumers and drug company partners, and Gel-Del's answer was clear: Come out with the wrinkle filler first."

You can read that whole article on line at:
http://www.twincities.com/mld/pioneerpress/10752442.htm?1c

Meanwhile, "The Sunday People" in the UK, tells us "Scientists are carrying out nearly three million experiments a year on animals, the Government has admitted. That's the highest number since Labour came to power in 1997. The shock figure has infuriated animal rights campaigners because the Government promised tough action to reduce the number of experiments."

And "Crackdown on animal rights extremists" appeared in the Monday January 31 Guardian (UK). That article tells us that due to the success of militant campaigns in blocking the construction of new laboratories, legislation has been introduced aimed specifically at animal rights activists, who would face up to five years in prison for economic sabotage.

Oppression has so often, historically, led to escalations of violence, followed by further oppression, that those of us who would have liked to have seen a peaceful end to the vivisection industry cannot help but worry at news of the crackdown.

You can read the article Guardian article on line at: http://politics.guardian.co.uk/homeaffairs/story/0,11026,1402399,00.html?gusrc=rss

All of the articles cited above give us opportunities for letters to the editor about the way humans treat members of other species.

The Washington Post takes letters at: letters [at] washpost.com The Saint Paul Pioneer Press takes them at: letters [at] pioneerpress.com The Guardian takes them at: letters [at] guardian.co.uk

Always include your full name, address, and daytime phone number when sending a letter to the editor. Shorter letters are more likely to be published.

Yours and the animals',
Karen Dawn

(DawnWatch is an animal advocacy media watch that looks at animal issues in the media and facilitates one-click responses to the relevant media outlets. You can learn more about it, and sign up for alerts at http://www.DawnWatch.com. If you reprint DawnWatch alerts, please do so unedited -- leave DawnWatch in the title and include this tag line.)