Shifting Tactics

Write a response to this students essay. What do you have to add to the topic? Use at least one source.

For the discussion this week I found an article from the Huffington Post titled “Animal Rights Activist Shift Tactics, Targeting Individual Scientists and Businesses.” The article primarily discusses

how activists have shifted their tactics over the last decade and are now targeting individual researchers and the businesses that support them. The article then further discusses a report

released by the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology (FASEB). The report released by the FASEB is titled “The Threat of Extremism to Medical Research: Best Practices to

Mitigate Risk through Preparation and Communication” and was written to provide guidance to scientists and institutions around the world to deal with animal extremists. Specifically, the

report addresses how to handle situation where individuals and groups damage laboratories, send threatening e-mails and vandalize the graves of researchers relatives. Several incidents

resulted in the FASEB to release the article. The first incident was when the animal rights activist group Animal Liberation front broke into a psychology laboratory at the University of Iowa and

intentionally damaged equipment, spray painted walls and removed hundred of animals from the laboratory. The incident cost the school over 400,000 dollars in damage. Another incident that

occurred leading up to the releasing of the report was when animal rights extremists set fire to a car that belonged to a neuroscientist who worked at the University of California, Los Angeles.

According to the report the extremist were upset that neuroscientist worked on rats and monkeys. The final incident that the article discusses is when multiple researchers reported that animal

rights extremists have arrived at their homes in the middle of the night and made threats to the researchers and their families. According to the FASEB, the purpose of releasing the article was

to spread awareness to researchers and make them think about how animal rights activists have been using extreme protest methods to get their point across (Grimm, 2014).

The report also includes statistic of incidents that occurred involving animal rights extremists and the victims associated. In 1990 – 2012 there were 220 illegal incidents that occurred. From

1990 – 1999, 61 percent of those incidents affected universities and nine percent of those incidents affect individuals. However, from 2000 – 2012 universities were victims of 13 percent of the

incidents that occurred whereas individuals were involved in 46 percent of incidents that occurred involving animal rights extremists (Grimm, 2014).

Overall, the article expresses the importance to not tolerate “terrorism” from extreme animal rights activists. As wildlife management is advancing in its practices animal rights activists are

taking some extreme measures to discourage wildlife managers from executing their duties. I am sure the problem will become more problematic as time goes on, but the important thing for

animal researchers to focus on right now is to be aware of the situations they face and be prepared to act accordingly if a situation should arise. Despite the opposition, animal scientists must

continue to carry out their duties to ensure species have the opportunity to lie in suitable habitats across the world.

References

Grimm, D. (2014). Animal rights activist shift tactics, targeting individual scientists and businesses. The Huffington Post. Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/16/animals-

rights-activists-tactics_n_4965476.html

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