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Detroit school teacher and animal rights convict Gary Yourofsky went on a hunger strike immediately after being ordered to serve a six month sentence in a Canadian prison for participating in an April 1997 fur farm raid. Yourofsky said he would not eat for 40 days to protest the killing of 40 million animals each year for fur. Other imprisoned animal rights activists were reportedly joining in with sympathy hunger strikes of their own.
Numerous activists were arrested involving protests during World Lab Animals Week at the end of April. Six activists were arrested and charged with burglary for freeing animals and damaging equipment at laboratories at Southern Methodist University in a protest sponsored by Animal Liberation of Texas (can someone spell R-I-C-O?)
Animal activists broke into three research labs at the University of California at San Francisco, overturning refrigerators and ruining at least one medical experiment according to UCSF officials. Three activists were arrested by UCSF police and charged with burglary. Ironically one of the labs compromised included one where experiments were being conducted aimed at reducing the number of animals being used in medical experiments.
Correction: this article originally described Gary Yourofsky as a "convicted felon." Yourofsky's conviction was in Canada whose legal system does not use this particular way of classifying crimes, and this claim was inaccurate.