Where Are The Animal Rights Activists?

Almost three million animals have been slaughtered, innocent lambs have been caught in the crossfire and are floundering in the mud. The countryside is empty.

This should be the activists' war.

Pet goats are being massacred-in peacetime, the RSPCA would prosecute. We're not talking about a few hundred hunted foxes or thousands of mice and monkeys with shampoo in their eyes, but the sudden death of millions of cows and sheep that depend on us for survival.

We have let the disease spread. Masai elders are praying for the souls of our cows. Animal rights activists should be fighting to save animals' lives and halt the disease. They should be manning disinfectant points, calling for vaccination, or helping with the cull. They should be picketing Maff until officials get their act together. It is outrageous that ewes and lambs are allowed to die in the mud because it takes 10 days for a Maff movement licence to come through. They should be leading the debate on the future of animal husbandry; this is their chance to call for an end to battery chickens.

They would have the support of millions of animal lovers-thousands of people are switching from BLTs to tofu sandwiches, put off barbecues for life. The fanatics can finally throw off their balaclavas, defuse their bombs and become mainstream. They could send out leaflets on vegetarianism, rather than letter-bombs. They could be counselling distressed farmers, rather than sending a bomb to a pest-control agent, which was then opened by his six-year-old daughter. They could take in the border collies that have lost their jobs.

In early March, the animal revolutionaries made an appearance at Huntingdon Life Sciences with baseball bats, and attacked the managing director for drug-testing animals in the name of research. Their reasoning: "If the death of one rat could cure all human disease, it would still not be worthwhile."

But they have ignored the mass cull going on under their noses. The Animal Liberation Front says animal life is more precious than human life. I wouldn't sit back and watch two million adults and children being killed to wipe out a nasty bug. The Army, the slaughtermen, the vets, the farmers and vicars have all shown more compassion for our condemned herds than these activists.

The activists should be doing their best to help fight this enemy of animals: the pan-asiatic virus type O. Instead Ingrid Newkirk, president of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, speaking in America last week, said she hoped the virus would cross the Atlantic, because "it will bring economic harm only to those who profit from giving animals a concentration camp-like existence".

By doing nothing, animal rights activists have exposed themselves for what they really are: terrorists without a cause. They have proved that they don't care about animals; they just want to promote mindless class warfare against toffs and drugs conglomerates.

Source: The Telegraph, 20 April 2001