ALF RAIDS KILL ANIMALS

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, August/September 1996:

Animal Liberation Front actions
reportedly caused the deaths at least 3,000
animals in the first half of 1996, including
2,000 pregnant mink who were roadkilled
or starved about six months before they
would have been pelted, after 3,000 were
released from the L.W. Bennett & Sons fur
farm near East Bloomfield, New York, on
April 4. Late snow cut their already slim
chances of finding adequate wild prey.
According to the Memphis-based
Coalition to Abolish the Fur Trade, which
claims to speak for the ALF, “more than
11,000 animals have been freed during the
past 10 months,” but except for the New
York action, most––almost all mink––were
recaptured on or near the fur farms.

In England, an estimated 1,000
young pheasants were killed by a late June
ALF raid on pens at Wherwall Estate,
Andover, where the birds were bred tobe
shot in the fall at the canned hunts of owner
Lord Camden. The immature birds starved,
suffered hypothermia, or suffocated while
huddling for warmth after the raiders
smashed the lighting and heating elements.
ALF literature asserts that it has
never hurt either people or animals, but
ALF is suspected of killing animals in previous
unclaimed actions occurring close to
claimed raids––notably the August 15,
1991 suffocation of 5,000 turkeys after
someone sabotaged the electrical system at
Nicholas Turkey Breeding Farms in
Lincoln, California, near Sacramento, a
longtime ALF hub.
A flurry of nearly 70 mailings of
razor blade devices to hunters, furriers,
scientists, and sometimes journalists
claimed by an ALF-like splinter group calling
itself The Justice Department apparently
ended coincidental with the February 29
arrest in Whitbourne, Newfoundland, of
David Francis Arnold, of Victoria, British
Columbia, for allegedly hauling firebombs
with intent to raze a seal processing plant.
However, Arnold has apparently not been
charged with Justice Department actions.
With no known background in animal rights
activism, Arnold has not been visibly
adopted, either, by ALF support groups.
A British ALF attack could have
killed a human on June 22 when drover
Michael Speechley, 42, arrived at work to
find two of his five trucks and his barn on
fire. He drove another truck to safety, only
later finding a dud firebomb on top of the
passenger side front wheel.
Such attacks can go two ways:
Wyandotte Animal Group secretary Jason
Alley, of Trenton, Michigan, told A N IMAL
PEOPLE that someone burned out
his mailbox with an explosive device on
July 5; he received a written threat pertaining
to his anti-bear hunting activism the following
day.