The FBI is checking out reports that members of the wacked-out Animal Liberation Front have perpetrated crimes against the pharmaceutical company, Forest Laboratories, because of Forest's ties to a British company that ALF alleges kills animals during testing. Forest makes drugs to treat depression, anxiety, Alzheimer's and hypertension. Newsday reports:

Jerry Vlasak, who operates a Web site in California that posts "communiques" from ALF, confirmed Thursday that the group has made claims in recent weeks that some of its members followed a Forest executive's wife to her job, entered her car, stole a credit card and bought $20,000 in traveler's checks that it then donated to four charities.

....Vlasak, who stated that he is not an ALF member - although he supports many animal welfare initiatives - said the group has also claimed responsibility for vandalizing a Forest plant in Inwood, on Long Island, last June.

It also claims it used a bullhorn at night for a week last October to harass a Forest Laboratories executive; glued the locks on the homes of other company executives in Nassau and Suffolk counties, and spray-painted their homes and cars with graffiti such as "puppy killer" and "murderer."

A recent internal Homeland Security document lists the Animal Liberation Front among groups that could potentially support al-Qaida as domestic terrorism threats.

Seems all too plausible. Meanwhile, ALF ally Vlasak has recently been under fire from a fellow member of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society for 2003 remarks he made, advocating the murders of vivisectionists.

Threats play big for the ALF. From England comes news of an ALF activist whose 14-year sentence for sabotage acts against the meat industry had been reduced. After his release, he was busted in raid on a laboratory, where he liberated hundreds of mice. His trial ended last week with a sentence for community service; but on the way out of the courtroom he threatened a lab employee's life. Court promptly reconvened, and he got six months in jail.

Animal rights activists suffer from debilitating moral equivalency. Animals were put on earth to serve humans. Mice are not men. Nor are seals, dogs, cats, or cattle, or...you name it. You'll have to excuse me now: Time to rustle up some steak and eggs.

Posted by Matt Rosenberg at May 2, 2005 07:48 AM

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