As the animal rights movement has grown, its tactics and strategies have become more sophisticated and diverse. Access to plentiful resources - especially revenue - enables the activists to simultaneously engage on several frontlines against biomedical research.  

Litigation and legislation

Because of their finances, activists are able to promote animal rights-based litigation and legislation on the local, state and federal levels - the end result is often policy that hobbles biomedical research with restrictions that have little if anything to do with animal care. To help ensure legislators will be responsive to their interests, activists have established a well-endowed Political Action Committee that contributes to candidates' political campaigns. The activists have also concentrated attention on the legal profession.  Scores of law schools now offer animal rights courses. Many of these programs came about as the result of million-dollar grants paid to the schools by animal rights sympathizer and game show host Bob Barker. Animal rights lawyers are developing further strategies - even working to establish “legal standing” for animals in the courtroom - in order to build barriers to medical progress.

Eroding public support for research

Wealthy animal rights groups can afford to buy expensive print and television advertising while also employing slick PR counsel to use all types of popular culture to drive home their specious charges attacking the vital, humane, and beneficial nature of animal research. Classrooms - from elementary school to college - are flooded with propaganda pieces attractively packaged as "educational materials" designed to deter the best and the brightest of students from interest in the life sciences and to provide an introduction to the radical animal rights agenda.

Demonstrations and media stunts 

It's all about the show. Animal rights activists are skilled at maintaining a warm, friendly and fuzzy reputation with the news media.  They know how to catch a camera's eye with gimmicks, such as with the protest at a recent scientific conference pictured above, where demonstrators wore "bloodied' lab coats and masks.  PETA and the Humane Society of the United States have large media relations departments and often churn out several press releases in a day. Smaller animal rights groups are also quite aware of their media image - it is a rare organization that does not have at least one media specialist.  Activist conferences usually feature workshops to provide pointers on how to stage a "picture-rich" protests and write press releases designed to capture the attention of journalists.  Even the underground Animal Liberation Front feels the need to have an "Animal Liberation Press Office" staffed by militants who are willing to attempt to justify criminal activity.

Harassment, intimidation and violence

Activists who don't confine themselves to civic debate engage in a variety of illegal and potentially illegal tactics in futile attempts to strike fear through the research community. In addition to longstanding crimes of vandalism, break-ins and the theft of animals, research institutions now also can become targets of mass e-mail or phone campaigns and Internet 'denial of service' attacks.  The tactics have become increasingly more personal, singling out individuals for relentless public harassment and threats.  Activists also target family members and neighbors with equally frightening and intimidating tactics. They vandalize property, hold loud protests outside homes in the middle of the night, approach children at school, steal personal financial information, send unsolicited pornographic direct mail items to homes, and use other pressure tactics.  In the UK, matters became so serious that those who have been subjected to such treatment banded together in 2004 to form VARE - Victims of Animal Rights Extremism, to provide support for others facing threats.

“I don't think you would have to kill too many researchers.  I think for 5 lives, 10 lives, 15 human lives, we could save a million, 2 million, 10 million non-animal lives."  - Animal Liberation Press Officer Jerry Vlasak at the 2003 National Animal Rights Conference - Los Angeles

It's not just those who work directly with animals.  Staff in other areas of a research institution, or its vendors or business partners or clients can all become targets for these tactics.  As the number and intensity of personal attacks began to rise, an FBI official told a gathering of executives a few years ago that "You could become a target if you do animal research OR if you do any kind of business with any institution that does animal research."

Read testimony by the FBI, a research executive and a university president about the impact of animal rights violence.  The U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee held two hearings on the topic May 18, 2005 and October 25, 2005. (Scroll down and click on each date to view. Requires RealPlayer.)   In February 2006, the Foundation for Biomedical Research issued a summary of its 25 years of tracking illegal activity by animal rights and environmental extremists.  Its disturbing conclusion is that the number, severity and scope of the attacks are on the rise.
 

“All customers and their families are considered legitimate targets… You never know when your house, your car even, might go boom… Or maybe it will be a shot in the dark… We will now be doubling the size of every device we make. Today it is 10 pounds, tomorrow 20… until your buildings are nothing more than rubble.”  - An anonymous communiqué received by a research facility in 2003 following a series of attacks