Animal Liberation Front: Complete Diary of Actions, the First 30 Years

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The Animal Liberation Front is an animal rights group committed to ending the abuse of animals by carrying out direct action campaigns against the organizations they believe are the perpetrators of exploitation and cruelty. They believe that all animals have the right to live a life free of suffering and particularly target those who seek to exploit animals for financial gain. Throughout the 1980s, the Animal Liberation Front remained active on both sides of the Atlantic, but as the decade progressed, the ALF’s firm grip on non-violent action started to slip, and not all its activists seemed to adhere to its guiding principle.

The pigs’ suffering was not an aberration; it is what countless pigs around the world commonly endure before being turned into ham and bacon. Such media exposés reveal how far we have – and have not – come since Australian philosopher Peter Singer published the seminal book Animal Liberation nearly 50 years ago. The movement espouses a number of approaches, and is bitterly divided on the issue of direct action and violence, with very few activists or writers publicly advocating the latter tactic as a justified method to use. [47] Most groups reject violence against persons, intimidation, threats, and the destruction of property: for example, the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection (BUAV) and Animal Aid. These groups concentrate on education and research, including carrying out undercover investigations of animal-testing facilities. There is some evidence of cooperation between the BUAV and the ALF: for example, the BUAV used to donate office space for the use of the ALF in London in the early 1980s. [48] Every activist who attended an anti-fur demo this year pairing off and visiting a fur farm would guarantee there were no fur stores to protest next year. Every person who dined at a vegetarian restaurant today pairing off and visiting a slaughterhouse tonight would ensure every restaurant was vegetarian tomorrow. And every person who refused an animal tested product today striking a high-impact blow against animal experimentation tonight would guarantee a more hopeful future for all of vivisection’s victims. Since their formation in the early 1970s, the Animal Liberation Front has highlighted the unpalatable issue of animal exploitation, shining the light on the horrors of animal research and experimentation, the cruelty of factory and fur farming and the need for all animals to have protection and a life free of unnecessary suffering. Just some of ALF’s direct action campaigns include releasing a film made from undercover footage of animal experimentation at a University of Pennsylvania laboratory, a highly publicized release of minks from an Oregon fur farm and the Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty campaign.

Organized by year, “Animal Liberation Front: Complete Diary of Actions” chronicles every reported U.S. Animal Liberation Front (A.L.F.) action from the first documented animal liberation in 1977 until the present. In its early years, where they limited their activity to removing animals, damaging property and exposing cruelty, the Animal Liberation Front had garnered sympathy and support from the public, largely due to their non-violent stance. But as their actions became more militant and individual members started to choose more violent ways to achieve its objectives, the ALF started to become more isolated.

The tactics and ideology promoted by Vlasak have increasingly been put into practice by animal rights extremists targeting the UC system, and Vlasak blames targeted researchers for any harm done to them. There are also a growing number of " open rescues," in which liberationists enter businesses to remove animals without trying to hide their identities. Open rescues tend to be carried out by committed individuals willing to go to jail if prosecuted, but so far no farmer has been willing to press charges. [53] Targeting researchers [ edit ] Animal rights advocates believe that these basic interests confer moral rights of some kind on the animals, and/or ought to confer legal rights on them; [2] see, for example, the work of Tom Regan. Utilitarian liberationists, on the other hand, do not believe that animals possess moral rights, but argue, on utilitarian grounds — utilitarianism in its simplest form advocating that we base moral decisions on the greatest happiness of the greatest number — that, because animals have the ability to suffer, their suffering must be taken into account in any moral philosophy. To exclude animals from that consideration, they argue, is a form of discrimination that they call speciesism; see, for example, the work of Peter Singer. [3] The numbers of sentient animals – that is, those capable of feeling and suffering –killed in science and agriculture are mind-boggling: hundreds of millions in research and billions to trillions (when fish are counted) in agriculture. Such numbers, along with animals’ often dire living conditions, prompt historian Yuval Noah Harari, in a preface to the book, to declare industrial farming “responsible for more pain and misery than all the wars of history put together”. What Is Animal Liberation? Philosopher Peter Singer's Groundbreaking Work Turns 40 | A Message From PETA's President | All About PETA | About". PETA. 14 April 2015 . Retrieved 26 July 2015.

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Activist Ingrid Newkirk wrote of Animal Liberation, "It forever changed the conversation about our treatment of animals. It made people—myself included—change what we ate, what we wore, and how we perceived animals." [6] Other activists who claim that their attitudes to animals changed after reading the book include Peter Tatchell [7] and Matt Ball. [8]