ANIMAL LIBERATION MOVEMENTS

 

   

Animal (Scientific Procedure) Act 1986

Serious Organised Crime & Police Act 2005

Animal Welfare Act 2006

 

The animal liberation movement, sometimes called the animal rights movement, animal personhood, or animal advocacy movement, is a global movement with roughly three components: philosophical debate, legal development, and direct action. The movement seeks an end to the rigid moral and legal distinction drawn between human and non-human beings, an end to the status of animals as property, and an end to their use in the research, food, clothing, and entertainment industries.

The movement espouses a number of approaches, and is bitterly divided on the issue of direct action and violence, with very few activists or writers publicly advocating the latter tactic as a justified method to use. Most groups reject violence against persons, intimidation, threats, and the destruction of property: for example, the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection (BUAV) and Animal Aid. These groups concentrate on education and research, including carrying out undercover investigations of animal-testing facilities. There is some evidence of cooperation between the BUAV and the ALF: for example, the BUAV used to donate office space for the use of the ALF in London in the early 1980s.

Other groups do not condemn the destruction of property, or intimidation, but do not themselves engage in those activities, concentrating instead on education, research, media campaigns, and undercover investigations: for example, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA).

A third category of activists operates using the leaderless resistance model, working in covert cells consisting of small numbers of trusted friends, or of one individual acting alone. These cells engage in direct action: for example by carrying out raids to release animals from laboratories and farms, using names like the Animal Liberation Front (ALF); or by boycotting and targeting anyone or any business associated with the controversial animal testing lab, Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS), using a campaign name like Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC).

Activists who have carried out or threatened acts of physical violence have operated using the names; Hunt Retribution Squad (HRS), Animal Rights Militia (ARM), Justice Department and the Revolutionary Cells--Animal Liberation brigade (RCALB).

Extreme Activist Groups

ANIMAL LIBERATION FRONT (ALF)

HUNT RETRIBUTION SQUAD

ANIMAL RIGHTS MILITIA (ARM)

JUSTICE DEPARTMENT

REVOLUTIONARY CELLS - ANIMAL LIBERATION BRIGADE (RCALB)

STOP HUNTINGDON ANIMAL CRUELTY (SHAC)

A November 13, 2003 edition of CBS News' 60 Minutes charged that "eco-terrorists," a term used by the United States government to refer to the Animal Liberation Front and Earth Liberation Front, are considered by the FBI to be "the country’s biggest domestic terrorist threat."  John Lewis, a Deputy Assistant Director for Counterterrorism at the FBI, stated in a 60 Minutes interview that these groups "have caused over $100 million worth of damage nationwide", and that "there are more than 150 investigations of eco-terrorist crimes underway".  In September 2006, the U.S. Senate unanimously passed the "Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act", legislation which would allow federal authorities to "help prevent, better investigate, and prosecute individuals who seek to halt biomedical research through acts of intimidation, harassment, and violence." Many of the ideas used by those who engage in direct action were developed by British activists.

Some activists have attempted blackmail and other illegal activities, such as the intimidation campaign to close Darley Oaks farm, which involved hate mail, malicious phonecalls, hoax bombs, arson attacks and property destruction, climaxing in the theft of Gladys Hammond's body, the owners' mother-in-law, from a Staffordshire grave. Over a thousand ALF attacks in one year in the UK alone caused £2.6m of damage to property, prompting some experts to state that animal rights now tops the list of causes that prompt violence in the UK.

There are also a growing number of "open rescues," in which liberationists enter businesses to remove animals without trying to hide their identities. Open rescues tend to be carried out by committed individuals willing to go to jail if prosecuted, but so far no farmer has been willing to press charges

Animal Enterprise Act 2006 (American Legislation)

 

 Copyright(C) 2007 - 2020. All rights reserved.

 

    PROBATION HOME