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Meetingsnet.com recently published an excellent article on the American Association for Animal Laboratory Science's (AAALS) strategies for dealing with animal rights activists who showed up at its national meeting last November.
After being tipped off by Americans for Medical Progress that the AAALS meeting was being targeted for protest by animal rights activists, AAALS executive director Michael Sondag put together a three-prong approach that succeeded in minimizing confrontation with the activists.
First, he involved local, state and federal law enforcement agencies in the planning and security arrangements of the conference. When 140 or so animal rights activists showed up to protest, AALAS was prepared with over 200 police officers to keep things under control.
Second, Sondag and the AALAS gave conference participants a tip sheet with advice to travel in groups and completely ignore the animal rights activists. Specifically, Sondag advised participants that this conference wasn’t the time or place to debate with the animal rights activists.
"The bottom line is, you’re never going to win that battle," Sondag said. "All it’s going to do is turn into a confrontation with pushing and shoving and someone will get hurt, or sued, or end up in jail."
Sondag made a couple interesting observation about the protests at the conference. First, most of those who showed up to protest the conference weren’t all that interested in convincing through persuasion. "Ninety percent of what [the protesters said] had nothing to do with animal rights. They said filthy stuff, made remarks about people’s anatomy."
Second, many of the protesters apparently weren’t animal rights activists but paid protesters. Sondag said he found classified ads in the local newspaper offering to pay people $5/day to protest the AALAS.
In a very sad commentary, however, part of Sondag’s advice included not discussing the science of animal experiments with the media. "Forget science," he told representatives who talked to the media on behalf of the AALAS. "Most Americans have the equivalent of an eight-grade science education. Speak plainly."
This is a strategy destined to backfire. One of the reasons animal rights activists get some support from otherwise sensible people is precisely because what goes on in a scientific laboratory is largely a mystery to most Americans. By refusing to talk about the science, people will only see labs as even more removed and remote from their lives and become more likely to take the claims of animal rights activists at face value.