AnimalRights.Net

In the first week of August,
a group of New Jersey furriers filed a lawsuit accusing the Animal Defense League of Jersey, the Animal Liberation Front and others of violating
federal racketeering laws. The lawsuit alleges that the ADL was part of
a conspiracy to illegally impair the operation of a legitimate business.

For its part, the ADL took
the odd tactic of putting itself on record in support of some acts of
violence against animal enterprises. ADL spokesman Darius Fuller told
the New Jersey Star-Ledger that although his group is distinct from the
ALF, physical destruction of property is sometimes a necessary act. “It’s
just a simple question of which is more important, life or property,”
Fuller said. Fuller also told the Star-Ledger that his group has regular
contact with the ALF.

Somebody give Fuller a little
more rope — he is on a roll.

Meanwhile, the Animal Defense
League of Pennsylvania and the Coalition to Abolish the Fur Trade announced
a conference in Philadelphia on legal challenges against animal rights
groups and how to respond to them. In a joint press release the two groups,
who were named as defendants in another Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization lawsuit filed by Jacques Ferber, claimed “Jacques Ferber Furs is abusing this RICO suit in an attempt
to achieve an injunction against CAFT and ADL. Yet another step
taken to drive off those fighting to end oppression. Who will be next?”

One of the interesting things
to note about the press releases issued from the various animal rights
groups about these RICO lawsuits is that although lawsuits against pro-life
activists and groups really set the precedent for going after protesters
who express support for illegal actions, none of the animal rights groups
has referenced this precedent much less given an opinion on the application
of the law in those cases. I, for one, would like to know if CAFT and
others believe anti-abortion protesters were also the targets of “oppression.”

    -Animal rights activists apparently
released 3,000 mink from a farm in Kenosha County, Wisconsin recently.
Commenting the on the theft, JP Goodwin of the Coalition to Abolish the
Fur Trade (which you’ll remember from the previous item, only engages
in peaceful demonstrations) lauded the break-in saying “those mink would
have been piled into a gas chamber, but now have a chance at life. We
would much rather see those mink given the opportunity at life, than left
for a certain death.”

    -Two members of the Kansas/Missouri
HorseAid were arrested and charged with several felony counts of theft
as they allegedly purloined four ponies they claimed were being mistreated.
The HorseAid volunteers claimed the adopted owners of the ponies violated
several welfare clauses in a contract they signed and were being “repossessed”
for failure to follow said contract. Hint to HorseAid: you might want
to get a legal judgment before attempting to repossess property based
on an alleged violation of a non-economic clause in a contract.

    -Animal rights terrorists in
the United Kingdom are believed to be behind the destruction of at least
17 vehicles at the Unigate dairy in Oxford. Incendiary devices were placed
under the vehicles and the fire was so intense that 350 campers had to
be evacuated from a nearby campsite (but ALF and others would never dream
of endangering anybody’s life).

One of the major missions of
the U.S. military is to ensure its soldiers have the skills needed to
not only fight effectively but also to train them to survive the myriad of conditions they might face in armed combat. As part of that mission, the military provides training
to soldiers on how to survive if they are trapped behind enemy lines.

Since eating
is a big part of surviving and a stranded soldier cannot just walk into
an Iraqi restaurant and order takeout, the military teaches soldiers how to kill and cook animals.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals is having a fit because the Air Force buys hundreds of rabbits and
uses them to show soldiers how to bludgeon the animal with a club and
then properly prepare them. Soldiers are also taught how to prepare snakes,
turtles and chickens.

According to PETA, “It is
pointless for a soldier to practice killing small domestic mammals and
birds, considering that in a true survival experience, few would have
trouble killing such an animal if survival depended on it.” Well at least
PETA’s not suggesting that soldiers should carry Linda McCartney t-shirts
saying “Go Veggie” on them if in a survival situation, but simply assuming
that all soldiers would know how to kill animals for food is the sort
of assumption that gets people killed when they are finally faced with
emergency situations.

In other news, PETA announced
in a press release that MediaCom Inc. had cancelled the billboard space
that PETA purchased in Regina and Calgary, Canada to run its ad linking
meat eating to impotence. The ad features a woman in a bikini next to
the message, “I threw a party but the cattlemen couldn’t come.” According
to PETA, MediaCom informed the animal rights group that it received so
many calls from “angry residents and women’s groups” that it was yanking
the ads. PETA said its lawyers are studying whether or not PETA might
have a legal remedy against MediaCom for breach of contract.

The “sport” of cockfighting remains legal
in only three states – Louisiana, Oklahoma and New Mexico — but is causing
a widespread controversy following the introduction of a bill by Senator
(and veterinarian) Wayne Allard (R-Colorado) that would ban the interstate
sale of chickens for cockfighting purposes. Both of Louisiana’s senators,
John Breaux and Mary Landrieu, oppose the bill based largely on a states’
rights argument (the individual states should be left to decide whether
or not cockfighting remains legal rather than the federal government).

For his part Allard says he
is only trying to close a loophole in the Animal Welfare Act. The AWA
prohibits the interstate transportation of fighting dogs but is silent
about fighting birds. “The senator doesn’t want to tell the people
of Louisiana what to do,” Allard’s spokesman Sean Conway told the
New Orleans Times-Picayune, “but you’ve got breeders shipping
roosters all over (the country), not just to Louisiana, and law enforcement
people are having a heck of a time cracking down.”

Of course numerous animal
rights groups have endorsed the proposed new law. What has surprised
me is the level of support for cockfighting among otherwise level headed
animal welfare advocates. A completely unscientific poll conducted
on my this site asked people, “Should cockfighting be banned?” Of the
396 people who responded, 131 agreed that it should be banned while 265
said no, cockfighting should not be banned. In discussing this result,
it quickly became apparent that the support of cockfighting was actually
a rather rigid opposition to animal rights groups.

The argument seems
to be that if animal rights groups support it, it must be a bad idea.
Giving any ground to the animal rights movement or conceding that cockfighting
might be abusive would be giving PETA and other groups a victory that
can be ill-afforded, according to proponents of this view.

In my opinion this is a self-defeating
position wrought with numerous problems. First, it gives way too much
credence to the animal rights groups. Whether or not a particular use
of an animals is justifiable should be based on evaluating it from an
animal welfare position rather than on what animal rights groups and
activists think about it. Inevitably animal welfare and animal rights
advocates will occasionally arrive at the same position for different
reasons. Discarding animal welfare views simply because they happen to
coincide with the animal rights position on occasion is neither wise nor
prudent.

Second, it is an obviously
hypocritical position. Nobody is going to (or even should) believe animal
welfare advocates when they claim to want to minimize the suffering of
laboratory animals or animals raised in an agricultural setting if those
same advocates then turn a blind eye to something such as cockfighting.
Where is the consistency in that position?

In fact cockfighting seems
to violate all of the precepts of a reasonable animal welfare philosophy
and should be banned. Cockfighting is not a case of a necessary human
use of animals that simply needs to be regulated so as to minimize suffering.
The whole point of cockfighting is to introduce suffering under a semi-controlled
environment for the visceral thrill of a gathered crowd or for the thrill
of wagering on the often deadly contest. Human beings may need to cause
pain and suffering to animals as an unfortunate side effect of some other
legitimate use, but to cause pain and suffering as an end in itself is
the antithesis of animal welfare.

The Associated Press recently
ran a story about Cesar Cerda, a 26-year-old California resident, who received
what is believed to be the longest prison sentence ever handed down for cruelty to animals. Cerda was sentenced to 7 years in jail for training
dogs to fight each other to the death. As the AP described Cerda, “[he]
earned up to $5,000 a month from gamblers who watched the animals fight
in a bloodstained pit.” Prosecutor Brian Myers described how “he
took these dogs to the brink of death and then nursed them back to health
so they could fight again.” Because of their training, all of the
dogs seized from Cerda had to be euthanized.

The sentence may have been
a bit long, but the principle behind the ban on animal fighting seems
immensely sound to this writer. These animals are being used to study
medical problems or raised for food or even used for their fur. They’re
being trained to fight for the sheer enjoyment that other people get from
watching them fighting.

After recently announcing
that it would end most animal tests, Procter and Gamble was slammed by
animal rights activists for signing a five-year agreement with France’s
Pasteur Institute. The Pasteur Institute is a world class microbiological
research center located in Paris. Procter and Gamble said the agreement
was for the development of products designed at improving household hygiene.

The Pasteur Institute is best
known for its research on infectious diseases and as a representative
of Illinois Animal Action put it, “This [agreement] means more animal
tests.”

Last week I reported on
the British Prime Minister Tony Blair once again taking up the cause against
fox hunting. The Labour Party previously tried to ban fox hunting, but
had to back down after huge demonstrations by supporters of the sport,
and some observers suspect Blair might pull back from his recent pronouncement.
The theory goes that Blair is using the fox hunting issue to court animal
rights groups, which are significant contributors to Labour, while also
trying to avoid excessively alienating sportsmen and their supporters.

After BlairÂ’s latest statements,
however, supporters of fox hunting point out that the anti-fox hunting
proposal is hypocritical since the British government itself funds the
hunting and killing of foxes in Scotland and Wales. The foxes are killed
as part of a pest control scheme, and all indications are that any ban
on fox hunting will contain a special exemption for the government-sponsored
culling of foxes.

Until the 1970s foxes in Scotland
and Wales were removed by the use of leg traps. The leg traps were banned
because they were alleged to be cruel and so the government
began subsidizing the hunting of the foxes. The animals are typically
tracked with hounds and then killed by rifle shot. Conservative and pro-hunt
member of parliament Paul Atkinson told the BBC that by banning fox hunting
by private individuals while simultaneously subsidizing fox hunting in
Scotland and Wales means “what they want to do is put people in prison
who ride around on horses with red coats,” alluding to the fact that
it is primarily the upper class that hunts foxes in Great Britain.

In its July 15 newsletter, Americans for Medical Progress reported a short but amusing tale of folly involving People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, which is worth
repeating verbatim:

This week, after putting out a tasteless news release announcing
that a “mad cow” was going to attack a federal building in Oklahoma, PETA’s
demonstration about mad cow disease was thwarted when an important prop
got lost in shipping. The protest called for a person in a cow suit to
hit a six foot foam rubber brain with a baseball bat. Only half the brain
arrived in Tulsa. No doubt AMP News readers will come up with a fitting
closing line to this tale…