They are ghouls. But it is the season for it.
Posted on 10/29/2005 12:25:42 PM PDT by TWohlford
OXALL, England—Gladys Hammond's desecrated grave lies in the cemetery of a 17th-century Anglican church, where rows of thin grey tombstones stand tilted by the weight of time.
The 82-year-old woman had been dead seven years when police believe her remains became the target of an increasingly radical and effective campaign for animal rights in Britain.
Her bones were dug up and stolen in the middle of the night.
Letters then arrived at the home of her son-in-law, Chris Hall, demanding that he stop breeding thousands of guinea pigs for medical research in return for Hammond's remains.
To the Halls, the grave robbery was the horrifying climax in a six-year campaign of harassment and intimidation to shut down their 30-year-old family business north of Birmingham, in central England.
In August, they capitulated. The Halls announced the closure of their Darley Oaks guinea pig farm by the end of the year and pleaded for the return of Hammond's remains.
"It was a terrifying and despicable act," said Margaret Hall, Hammond's daughter. "We always felt we were not going to give in to them, but everyone has an Achilles heel. You feel they'll never leave you alone until you close." This month, four animal rights activists were charged with conspiring to blackmail the Halls regarding the desecrated grave. The remains, robbed a year ago, have not been recovered.
Britain's biomedical research industry, worth $7 billion a year, is the focus of an escalating war of attrition that targets anyone connected to animal research — from the banks that finance the companies to the friends and relatives of employees.
Animal rights activists have been so effective in financially damaging companies that in July the government made economic sabotage a criminal offence with a five-year jail sentence.
This week, Home Secretary Charles Clarke went further. He announced that the new anti-terrorism bill, with provisions to hold suspects without charge for 90 days, will be used against people who glorify or commit "violent acts of terror" to promote the cause of animal rights.
The industry says drugs to combat cancer and other deadly illnesses wouldn't exist without tests on animals. Activists see the tests as unreliable and a brutal form of mass murder.
Animal rights groups have already pushed Cambridge University to scrap plans for a primate research centre, forced the main contractor to pull out of building an animal research laboratory at Oxford University, and led British Airways to stop transporting animals bound for research. But no company has felt the heat more than Huntingdon Life Sciences, Britain's largest animal research lab with $120 million (U.S.) yearly sales.
It conducts tests for drugs, food products and agricultural chemicals on 65,000 animals each year, most of them rats and mice. They end up being killed in the most humane way possible, company officials say.
Huntingdon's employees say they've received threatening phone calls, had their property damaged or been falsely accused of pedophilia by animal rights militants. Two of its senior executives, including managing director Brian Cass, were beaten by men with clubs.
The campaign then expanded to its suppliers and customers.
Phillips & Drew sold its 11 per cent stake in Huntingdon after its London offices were hit with a bomb scare in February 2000 and the home phone numbers of its directors were published on the website of the Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty group, also known as SHAC.
SHAC leader Greg Avery, his wife, and his ex-wife each served six months in jail in 2002 for conspiracy to incite criminal damage after that incident.
The Royal Bank of Scotland called in its $35 million (U.S.) loan to the company after it, too, became a target. Banks refused to give Huntingdon an account, forcing the government to step in and provide the company with the Bank of England's financial services.
Targeting by animal rights activists also saw Huntingdon lose its auditors, Deloitte and Touche, its gas supplier and its insurance broker, forcing the government to issue emergency coverage. Stockbrokers stopped trading Huntingdon shares, which plummeted, and the company fell off the London Stock Exchange early this year.
"These campaigns have been effective because of the very personal nature of them," Cass said. "They don't go specifically after a company per se, they go after individuals within that company. That has been their most effective tactic — taking their threat to someone's front door."
SHAC drove Huntingdon to incorporate a company in Maryland and apply to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange, where investors holding less than 5 per cent of a company's stock need not disclose their identities. But last month, on the morning when Huntingdon executives expected their company to be listed, the exchange failed to do so without explanation.
This week, a Huntingdon lawyer complained before a U.S. Senate committee investigating the behaviour of animal rights groups. Mark Bibby noted the exchange reopened for business only four days after Al Qaeda's attacks on the U.S. in 2001.
"Yet, apparently purely on the basis of a perceived threat from SHAC, the NYSE postponed plans to list our stock. A handful of animal extremists had succeeded where Osama bin Laden had failed," Bibby told the committee.
Avery, 37, blames the violence and threats on the shadowy Animal Liberation Front. SHAC's tactics, he insists, are restricted to protesting in front of the stately homes of company directors to expose what he calls "their dirty little secret." Avery says his members neither condone nor commit violence acts.
"These tactics work, but few groups have followed our line," he said. "I find it absurd that anti-globalization groups don't use the same tactics."
Avery is bankrupt and "asset free," which he said works to his advantage because there's nothing to confiscate when courts order him to pay the legal costs of cases against him. He says he earns $100 a week from funds sent in by ordinary Britons outraged that 2.6 million animals in the country each year are killed in testing.
"I'm not in this to make money. I'm in this to close places down," he said yesterday.
The campaign to close down the Halls' guinea pig farm began with their phone lines jammed by hundreds of calls and their home flooded with mail-order items they never ordered.
Employees who worked at the farm regularly had their electricity and telephone lines cut, their cars trashed and paint-filled light bulbs thrown at their homes. Many quit their jobs.
A civil servant working for the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency gave activists the home addresses for 13 drivers who visited the Halls. He was jailed for five months last year, but not before friends and relatives of the Halls became targets.
Companies that collected milk from the Halls' dairy cattle stopped coming and the family was forced to sell the cows. The local pub banned the family and the golf course threw the Halls out as members after it got trashed. And then Gladys Hammond's remains were robbed.
"It just got too much, really, in the end," said Margaret Hall.
Good Grief! These animal rights people are nuts. They prove it by their actions on almost a daily basis. Disgusting!
Animal rights activists are putting themselves at risk of becoming persona non-grata in their communities. They may find themselves to be the target of reciprical behavior--with no one willing to defend them.
Employees who worked at the farm regularly had their electricity and telephone lines cut, their cars trashed and paint-filled light bulbs thrown at their homes. Many quit their jobs.
A civil servant working for the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency gave activists the home addresses for 13 drivers who visited the Halls. He was jailed for five months last year, but not before friends and relatives of the Halls became targets.
Companies that collected milk from the Halls' dairy cattle stopped coming and the family was forced to sell the cows. The local pub banned the family and the golf course threw the Halls out as members after it got trashed. And then Gladys Hammond's remains were robbed.
This is what liberals mean when they say, 'get involved'.
Would it be wrong to find some pleasure in the death of one of these ALF freaks close family members from some hideous disease that could have been prevented through proper animal medical testing? I doubt they'd care about a family member before a lab rat anyway.
"Animal rights activists have been so effective in financially damaging companies that in July the government made economic sabotage a criminal offence with a five-year jail sentence."
It's a start!
Right after socialists, I loathe both EnviroWackos and Animal Rights Terrorists equally. Luckily, my loathing is efficient and not too time-consuming, as they're usually a trinity.
Liberalism once was considered only only a mental illness - indicative of immaturity or too long spent in academia......sheltered from the REAL WORLD.
Now, it's clear it's also a precursor to criminality.
Some of these bastards REALLY need to have their asses kicked hard enough to restart their brain functions.
Semper Fi
PETA's gone international!
They aren't really so much for raising animal rights as they are for lowering humans'.
That's all the environuts and animal "rights" people are, socialists. It's just socialism cloaked with a new set of words. The outcome is still the same, working toward forcing everyone to be equal, which at the hands of humans is equally destitute, equally enslaved, etc.
Anything done in moderation shows a lack of interest- Capt. Tom
These animal rights activists are obviously very interested in their cause.
Now lets see how much the community and the police are interested in stopping them. - tom
These people should be exiled from civilization and forced to live among their animal "brethren". It shouldn't bother them one bit.
This is outrageous. These people should pay for their criminal harrassment.
Wonder if this story would be the same if they could keep firearms for self-defense?
"Huntingdon's employees say they've received threatening phone calls, had their property damaged or been falsely accused of pedophilia by animal rights militants. Two of its senior executives, including managing director Brian Cass, were beaten by men with clubs."
Notice, of course, women didn't beat these guys with clubs. Good to know that in an all encompassing effiminate society, there's still a niche for us guys as thugs.
Looks like Britain's going down the sh*tter.
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