Animal Rights Ghouls

From Captain Ed, this story is horrific:

A family that breeds guinea pigs for medical research announced yesterday that it was to close its farm in a final attempt to get back the remains of a relative whose body was dug up by animal rights extremists.

David, John and Chris Hall said that Darley Oaks farm in Newchurch, Staffs, would close by the end of the year.

Their family, friends and business associates have been subjected to a six-year campaign of terror and intimidation that culminated last October in activists digging up and stealing the remains of Chris Hall’s 82-year-old mother-in-law, Gladys Hammond, from St Peter’s churchyard in Yoxall, Staffs.

Animal rights supporters celebrated the announcement but it was condemned by scientists as a triumph for mob rule that would hurt patients and damage an industry that employs 22,000 people and is worth ?3.6 billion a year to the British economy.

Appalling doesn’t cut it. This sort of behavior doesn’t win converts to one’s cause; in fact, I’m pretty certain that it turns otherwise sympathetic people away. It’s unlikely that Mr. and Mrs. Smedley of Devonshire, upon reading this story in the Telegraph over kippers and fried tomahtoes, are likely to say, “Good show, what? Give the old corpse what-for! Do it for the guinea pigs.”

That’s domestic terrorism. Here’s more of what such animal-rights activists do:

Over the last decade, the Animal Liberation Front has committed 700 criminal acts, according to the FBI. ALF activists recently broke into a car belonging to a pharmaceutical executive’s wife, stole her credit cards and charged $20,000 in charitable “donations.” At the University of Iowa, ALF members destroyed laboratory equipment, removed animals, ruined research papers and threatened school employees.

Slightly less extreme is Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC), which focuses only on the one company. Last month six SHAC members went on trial for allegedly vandalizing autos and homes and attacking computer and fax systems. The judge sealed the jurors’ names to prevent any harassment of them.

Why do they do it? Destroy homes, property, businesses? Because it works:

PETA President Ingrid Newkirk complained three years ago that nonviolence isn’t effective. In contrast, she noted, “someone makes a threat, and it works.” PETA’s number three official, Bruce Friedrich, told a 2001 animal-rights conference that “blowing stuff up and smashing windows” is “a great way to bring about animal liberation.”

To them, people and animals, even rodents, are equals. “Even if animal research resulted in a cure for AIDS, we’d be against it,” says Newkirk.

I’d hate to think what they’d do to the drivers of buses using BioDiesel.