Animal Liberation Front

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Dogs "rescued" by ALF members.
The ALF that people actually like. He's ugly, but doesn't feel the need to wear a ski mask.

Animal Liberation Front (ALF) is an extremist international animal rights activist group. It is a decentralized, leaderless, militant "resistance" movement, with the goal of stopping what they have decided are crimes against animals. Technically, Animal Liberation Front is not an organization. Those involved with Animal Liberation Front are called volunteers instead of members. Anyone who adheres to ALF's principles (that is, "liberating" animals without bodily harm to any living thing) can be considered one.

ALF is active in thirty eight countries. Due to its participation in illegal activities and because of monitoring by government agencies, ALF operates covertly, though it has overt supporters. ALF advocates take "direct action" against individuals, businesses, and even the family and friends of people who are involved in a wide range of industries that rely on animal husbandry and testing. Tactics employed by ALF include sabotage of animal research facilities, through vandalism, arson, threatening people involved with this (or family members of theirs), and removal of test animals from laboratories. ALF has argued that if the Nazi concentration camps can be destroyed to save lives, animal research laboratories can also be destroyed to save lives. This argument has the strange property of, on the one hand, equating the loss of human life to animal life, and on the other, ignoring the millions of lives (both animal and human) saved due to animal research programs.

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[edit] Government monitoring

From its very beginning, ALF faced government monitoring. The UK and US governments labeled the group a terrorist organization.[1] Operation Backfire by the FBI did extreme harm to ALF.

[edit] Sources of criticism

The Animal Liberation Front is criticized by many individuals and organizations. Some of these organizations participating in or advocate animal testing, while others may agree with ALF's objectives but see their extreme activities as counter-productive. Of course, since the families of those who work for cosmetic companies are targets of violence (due to their involvement in animal "torture"), it kind of makes sense that they would be the ones to "slander" ALF (a movement which advocates abolition of animal "torture" through this human "torture"). Most rational humans feel that involving the families of people the ALF oppose is totally inappropriate.

ALF have released mink into the British countryside to the detriment of indigenous life.[2] Most of the captive-bred mink probably died before learning how to live in the wild; while those that survived damaged native wildlife. As mink are very efficient carnivores they both out-compete native carnivores and damage native prey populations. It then becomes the job of people truly concerned about the environment to track and kill the escaped animals.

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

[edit] Footnotes

  1. Rood, Justin. "Animal Rights Groups and Ecology Militants Make DHS Terrorist List, Right-Wing Vigilantes Omitted", Congressional Quarterly, March 25, 2005.
  2. Report of Mink released in England
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