ANIMAL WARFARE
10 00 01
In the living room of this apartment in a Parisian suburb, a group of animal rights activists secretly prepares its attack.
Their sole weapon : nails to pierce the tires of the truck they’ll target later today. Their goal : liberate several baby goats on their way to their slaughterhouse.
10 00 41
Sound: People don’t really see the ‘animal’ when they eat meat. They only see a piece of red food in shrink wrap. What they don’t see is a piece of living flesh that didn’t want to die.
10 01 03
After only two hours of sleep, the commandos head south to a unknown destination in the Loire Valley.
The young members of the group range from age 18 to 33 ; most are beginners.
10 01 18
Sound: I’m nervous because its the first time I’ve ever done something like this. It took lot of planning. We will have their lives in our hands. It’s a big responsibility.
10 01 34
The activists hope to hijack a truck full of goats in the parking lot of the slaughterhouse. So far, everything is going according to plan.
10 01 43
Sound: We’re about the town where it should take place. When the truck passes us, we’ll follow.
After several minutes of anxious waiting, the truck in question finally arrives.
The chase begins/
10 02 03
Right now we’re following a truck—apparently this could last a few minutes.
10 02 07
For the next fifteen miles, the activists tail their target. Maybe a bit too closely.
Suddenly, the truck slips through their fingers.
Sound : what happened ?
Sound : He pretended to turn right, then did a quick u-turn to lose them.
Sound: We lost them—I’m beside myself. Two hundred meters from the slaughter-house, instead of turning, he kept going straight.
10 02 17
In a crisis meeting along the roadside, the group appears a bit lots. They decide to find a new target, any target…why not this small industrial farm.
They’re in luck. Three little pigs await their rescue.
10 02 58
Sound : Daddy is here, daddy is here.
Sound : how do you feel ?
Sound : there are no words to describe how I feel.
Sound : what did the future hold for these animals ?
Sound : These pigs were destined to see the same four walls for their entire lives, until the knife cut their throats.
10 03 20
Tonight, the three little pigs will sleep in the living room of this suburban apartment. It’s not easy to find a safe house for animals that could weigh more than 600 pounds a piece.
Sound : Hush, hush, why are you squealing ?
-----
10 03 39
The incident may seem humorous. But worldwide, animal rights extremists can be very dangerous.
In Holland in 1996, extremists set fire to five refrigerator trucks full of meat. The company suffered 1 million euros in damages.
In Minnesota in 1999, masked men broke into a university lab in the middle of the night, causing 2 million euros worth of damage.
Their tactics can be very destructive. As in the case of this American laboratory, where activists destroyed piles of research before liberating 400 rats.
Some activists will stop at nothing. To force a breeder of lab-destined guinea pigs to close his business, a group of militants stole a family member’s body in October of 2004.
Almost all Western countries have experienced violent acts at the hands of animal rights extremists. In the United States as well as the United Kingdom, they are officially considered the second-most important terrorist threat after Al Queda.
LONDON
Our investigation begins in England, 80 kilometers northeast of London, at this laboratory, Huntingdon Life Sciences, or HLS.
With over 220 employees, HLS is the largest vivisection lab in all of Europe. The company performs tests on animals for pharmaceutical and chemical company clients.
10 05 10
Sound: Good morning, sir. We’re the French TV crew. We have an interview with Brian Cass this morning.
Go on down there.
Not a problem, thanks very much.
10 05 20
Today, the site resembles a maximum security prison. Surveillance cameras are omnipresent, and all entries and exits are scrutinized by security personnel. HLS is a company constantly under pressure.
Their troubles began with this film….
In 1997, a British journalist went undercover as a technician at HLS. Wearing a hidden camera, she filmed the day-to-day lives of dogs used in experiments.
These pictures of abuse, aired on Channel 4 in the UK, sparked a public outcry.
10 05 42
Shit, can you find the vein ?
Oh shut up.
This wet lotion—he’s set back too far, he’s pissed everywhere.
You’ve had your shot so fucking sit still.
Let me help.
I haven’t got the patience today, I really haven’t.
Now settle down
Knock it out !!! I’m really getting fucking mad with you, every fucking time
Come here…..
10 06 35
Soon after the film aired, two HLS employees were fired and sentenced to community service for animal cruelty.
But HLS’s troubles were just beginning.
For security reasons, we are not able to film company staff during out visit.
Our sole authorized interview : the managing director himself, Brian Cass. Cass has spent the bulk of his career working in the vivisection industry.
Today, demonstrations by activists are banned at the lab’s gates. For good reason : for seven years, HLS has been at the heart of a relentless campaign.
10 07 00
Sound Cass: When the protests first began we could have, uh, 20, 30, 40, 50 people literally right here at the gates and they were trying to stop our employees or other visitors from actually getting into the facility or at the end of the day from getting out again and going to their homes.
10 07 07
In 1999, HLS’ detractors protested almost every day, sometimes day and night, filming their actions.
10 07 14
Archive Clip SHAC : its our mission to finish you off huntingdon and you filthy, scummy workers
10 07 31
Today, HLS spends nearly one million euros per year to protect its grounds and personnel. Cass proudly showed off the company’s most recent line of defense.
10 07 39
Sound Cass: Well this is, uh, another one of our security measures. We created this ditch, uh, in order to give us a further piece of protection so that even if people were able to get over that fence there, they would still have to get across this ditch before they’d actually get into the facility. Obviously we’re concerned about health and safety and uh, therefore if someone were to fall in, we need to have some means of helping them retrieve, hopefully on the other side.
10 08 01
But no security measures could discourage the most determined of activists. Barbed wire couldn’t protect employees once they left for the day and headed home. Certain extremists seized the opportunity.
10 08 22
Sound Cass: They were pretty quick to identify people who were our employees. They could perhaps check car registration numbers as they were leaving and then they would check an address and then see that vehicle parked there and say, right now we’ve identified an employee and they would perhaps call them in the middle of the night, they would write threatening letters to them.
10 08 43
These are just a few of the letters that HLS employees received at home.
How many more people have your address, Mr. Cameron ?
Look under your car.
You are going to die.
I hope you rot in hell
Your days are numbered, animal abusers.
10 08 56
As seen in these images from a surveillance camera, some employees had their cars vandalized in their driveways. Other vehicles were even set on fire.
But its the company’s managing director, Brian Cass, who paid the highest price. In February of 2001, Cass was attacked just steps from his front door.
10 09 14
Sound Cass: This was, uh, in 2001. I was getting out of my car and I heard running footsteps coming up behind me, quite heavy ones, and I turned round and there were three people, all dressed in black with ski masks on, so you could only see their eyes, they had, like baseball bats or something, and they literally had them raised above their head as I turned around. It was very very painful. I had cracked ribs, I had bruising all over my back and a serious head wound—as you can see I was pouring with blood.
Only one of Cass’ assailants was apprehended ; he is currently serving a five-year sentence.
But the campaign against HLS was not limited to the company’s employees.
In 1999, several animal rights activistes created the group Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty, or SHAC. Today, SHAC’s goal remains simple though ambitious : to shut down HLS entirely.
10 10 22
subtitle SHAC president: This is for anybody here whose got animals at home, you imagine your animal dying inside a cage in Huntington Life Sciences….
10 10 31
Sound Greg : You don’t want people outside your offices with clients from all over the world going in and out, you know, really important people, you know, a lot of these people pull out because they don’t want the embarrassment, they don’t want demonstrations, they don’t want to be linked to a company that was painful to beagle pups.
10 10 49
According to SHAC’s founder, shame is the main reason that companies decide to cut ties with HLS. But a visit to several former suppliers suggests that fear is the primary motivation.
Equipped with a hidden camera, we visit a construction materials company just minutes from HLS that dropped the lab in 2005.
10 11 01
Sound Huntingdon Plant Hire: We heard that other places had been yeah, kind of trashed, we just, you know, we just pulled out before everything like that started.
10 11 18
In a neighboring town, another supplier cut ties with HLS following a two-year collaboration.
10 11 24
Sound: Visit at Cater Fix: The worst was when they came here.
Lauren: So what happened that day?
Sound: All masked and everything, they just shout in your face and screamed at you burglars and all that sort of stuff.
Lauren: All masked men? And women?
Sound: Yeah, like monkey masks. Police caught the people who actually came here because they had no idea who they were and they got video of laptop evidence and pictures of me when they went round this guy’s house, everything was on there, photographs of me, photographs of my staff, photographs of my vans, all sorts.
10 11 56
Over the past seven years, more than one hundred businesses have terminated relationships with HLS. Among them, several multinational companies have yielded to pressure from animal rights extremists.
Like HSBC, the second-largest bank in the world, which cut ties with HLS in late 2000*********.
The bank did not wish to discuss the subject. But when contacted by telephone, HSBC’s press office confirmed that pressure from extremists motivated their decision.
10 12 19
Sound, telephone ringing: I don’t know the specifics of it but there was a threat to staff, that led to, you know, them deciding maybe it was best to stop, you know, what we were doing. Probability is that something would happen, it’s a risk, you know, a difficult risk to try to control.
10 12 36
One month later, banking leader Citigroup severed its links with the laboratory.
But the worst was yet to come : Royal Bank of Scotland, HLS’s personal bank and the loan holder for its 40 million euros of corporate debt, left HLS in 2001.
SHAC had won an important battle, a victory they celebrated with this newsletter to supporters.
Seemingly, HLS’ banking problems remain a sore point for the company’s director, Brian Cass.
10 13 08
Lauren: Royal bank of Scotland and a huge multinational bank was afraid of little old SHAC?
Sound Brian Cass: Please don’t go down this road. Just don’t do it. If you, if you continue, then all bets are off. That is the thing that will make this company normal again is having a normal relationship with the banking industry in this country. So we are trying as individuals and through the government to get all of the banks to give us a bank account, OK? Including the Royal Bank of Scotland.
10 13 44
Following the departure of RBS, all British banks have refused to collaborate with HLS. It’s the Bank of England, under government orders, who now manages the lab’s checking accounts.
But Britain’s financial community is not the only group wary of animal rights extremists.
Even the police who specialize in them seem particularly prudent.
We scheduled an interview with NECTU, a special force created in 2004 to coordinate the policing of animal rights extremists in the UK.
Considered the second most-important terrorist threat behind Islamists, animal right extremists arouse caution even within the ranks of the police.
10 14 20
Lauren: Why is NECTU in a secret location?
Police: It’s not a secret location. We’re just discreet about where we are because we’re dealing with animal rights activists who’ve been shown to target anyone who’s connected with any of this.
Lauren: That makes sense. Are we allowed to say what town it is?
Police: Nope, but you can say Cambridgeshire.
Lauren: Cambridgeshire, that’s vague.
Police: Yet, we like vague.
10 14 43
The address doesn’t look anything like a police station. We are not permitted to film the exterior or the officers. We ARE able to interview the head of NECTU, but only after
the premises have been secured.
10 14 56
Sound Jim: Mind if I close the drapes?
Sound Pearl: The hardcore extremists number under a hundred but they are actually set up now in a quasi-terrorist cell structure and they don’t really know any boundaries as to where they will go to achieve, to target companies and individuals.
$END$
SWEDEN
SUEDE
10 15 15
The alleged terrorist group? The Animal Liberation Front, or ALF, a loosely knit network of extremists who are behind the vast majority of criminal incidents related to animal rights. Born in the UK in the 1970s, ALF has claimed hundred of actions in the name of animal rights since its creation.
By necessity, ALF activists are entirely underground. As we would soon learn, its not easy to meet the ALF.
Over several weeks, we tried to get in contact with an active ALF cell.
After dozens of telephone calls, as many emails, and a handful of face-to-face meeting in the UK and in France, we succeeded in arranging a meeting with several ALF activists.
We were headed for Sweden.
10 15 49
Translate téléphone
10 15 58
The meeting was scheduled in Goteburg, the second largest city in the country. First at our hotel. ..then a change to the central train stain.
A nine PM, we meet a young man and five young women, each around twenty years of age. One works in a nursery school, another cares for the elderly. All wish to remain anonymous.
Tonight, the group plans to liberate several farm animals from a secret location an hour or so from Goteburg. The activists offer to let us tag along.
At 11PM, the group heads east.
10 16 39
Lauren: Is there a typical profile of an AFL activist in Sweden?
Jessica: It can be anyone—everybody. In all ages and all class, in all, everyone can be animal rights activists in Sweden.
Lauren: What type of, uh, operations has your group of the AFL participated in?
Jessica: I don’t want to go into detail about this. If the police catch us tonight we don’t want to have it on tape.
Lauren: Are you concerned you might be identified?
Jessica: Yes, exactly.
10 17 03
This isn’t the first time for any member of the group. Their methods to avoid detection by the police even suggest seasoned criminals.
The group steals a set of license plates to avoid tracing, and then don a kind of uniform which begins with a ski mask.
10 17 53
Sound David: What are you doing?
Sound third lady: I’m putting socks over my shoes so they won’t give my prints, my shoe prints.
Sound Lauren: Are you willing to go to jail?
Sound Lady: There’s no question.
10 17 48
At two in the morning, we arrive at our destination, a collection of buildings in what appears to be a factory farm.
Under the pressure of a crowbar, the door opens easily.
Inside, we discover a room full of battery chickens, nearly 20,000 according to the activists. According to this ALF cell,
This battery farm was chosen because it does not respect Swedish law on the size and conditions of the cage.
The raid lasts less than fifteen minutes. Several dozen hens are taken from their cages.
As always, the activists end their operation with their signature.
The operation continues into the early morning hours. Though their actions last night were indeed illegal, the activists did not use any aggressive methods. This cell’s philosophy is non-violence.
10 19 11
Lauren : What do you think about the fact that you’re labeled a terrorist for what you guys have done tonight ?
Sound terrorist : When you see an animal finally taking their first steps of freedom I think people could call you whatever they want, there’s no terrorism. It’s a big freedom fight and I think it’s the only right thing to do.
10 19 02
These battery hens have a nice future ahead. Soon they will be transferred to foster families, who promise to take care of them until the natural end of their lives.
10 19 11
Lauren: And is this a place that’s been used by the ALF in the past?
ALF: Um, I don’t really want to comment on that because I’m the safeguard here.
Lauren: Who can claim an action on behalf of ALF?
ALF: First of all, all of them are vegetarians or vegans, and then as long as you inflict economic sabotage or anyone who liberates an animal or if your opposed to cruelty that’s going on in these places, then that’s an ALF faction, then you can say that’s an ALF faction.
10 19 49
Back in England, we meet an ALF activist who agrees to be identified. A multiple felon and supporter of violence : Keith Mann. We find Mann in Dorset in the south of England, where is collecting signatures for a petition against vivisection.
10 20 06
Sound Keith: Can I give you this as well? Thanks? If you know anyone who wears furs, show them that. Sign our petition against animal cruelty please.
Sound woman: No, what I’d like you people to do is stop hounding medical science.
Sound Keith: But all we’re doing is giving out information about what people are doing to animals. If you want to talk about it I’m quite willing.
Sound woman: What about what you people are doing to the people who work for these companies?
Sound Keith: Well do you know any people who are dying because drugs are failing in animal tests? Are you concerned about that?
Sound woman: No
Sound Keith: Didn’t think you would be. Oh, you got a pen? Thanks. There’s always one every day, or two.
10 20 38
Mann’s first arrest for animal rights related activity made headlines in the early 1990’s.
10 21 40
BBC REPORT: Keith Mann was arrested after a lengthy police investigation. This slaughter-house in Grougton near Olden was the object of one attack carried out by Mann in June 1990 in which lorries belonging to the firm were vandalized costing the company 6000 pounds. He was later arrested after being seen planting fire bombs at a battery hen farm in Kent. While on remand at Walton prison in Liverpool, Mann tried to smuggle out a pamphlet. In it he urged the group to step up its attacks and incited others to kill people working in the meat industry. But while being transferred back to prison, he escaped.
10 21 40
Lauren: Cause everyone thinks you’re one of the ringleaders of the ALF.
Keith: Yeah, well I don’t deny that, I never have, I’ve spent a lot of time breaking into places and breaking the law.
10 21 40
Keith Mann spent more than 8 years in prison for several ALF actions. Most recently, he was sentenced to a one-year sentence after liberating 600 lab mice.
10 21 40
Sound Keith : Well I’m monitored, I wear a tag, I wear an electronic tan around my ankle.
Lauren : May we see your tag ?
Keith : It’s there.
Lauren : And how much longer do you have to wear that ?
Keith : For another four weeks now, I’ve had it on for eight weeks, I’ve got three months altogether—three months I would have spent inside but because the prisons are so full, you know, they’re apt to turn people out on electronic tags, and I was luck to get one.
10 22 01
At 7PM, like every day, Mann returns home as stipulated by the conditions of his release.
It seems the radical animal rights lifestyle starts wtih the fridge.
10 22 17
Fridge sequence:
Keith: Here we have a fridge. We’ve got “cheating” chicken and a little ham—we’ve got non-dairy cheeses—a lot of people got problems with dairy anyone cause they allergic.
Lauren: Do the animals suffer when you milk them?
Keith: Oh absolutely—one of the worst abuses in farming is the dairy industry because the worst thing you can do to any female is to take its baby away and what they do with dairy cows is send the baby away two or three days old so that we can take the milk.
10 22 41
Mann agrees to shows us some souvenir photos, some are which are a bit ambiguous.
10 22 47
Lauren : Are you in that photograph ?
Keith : No, no, no.
Lauren : Are you sure ?
Keith : (laughs) No, I’m not in any of them, ever. Here’s one. Free Keith. That’s what they did when I was in prison last time.
10 23 08
Today, Mann’s says he’s retired from any underground activity. If that’s the case, his radical philosophy remains intact.
10 23 14
Sound: It might be worth asking the authorities what do you expect to achieve by containing these people to such an extent that they’ve got no democratic voice anymore. If things are controlled and if we’re not allowed to protest legitimately, people are going to go to more extreme actions and probably kill some of them.
OXFORD
10 23 33
The largest target of animal rights activists is Oxford University, and in particular, this construction site under heavy police guard.
The future building will house a laboratory which will conduct experiments on animals in areas such as human brain research. The University has made its completion a top priority.
But two years after the start of construction, the building remains a skeleton of cement and steel. Partially protected from the view of outsiders with metal sheeting, work appears to be at a near standstill.
Even before the foundation was laid, the story of this future laboratory has been nothing less than chaotic.
The initial contractors dropped the project after only a few months. For the next 18 months, work stopped entirely. Just a few weeks ago in the fall of 2005, a new unknown contractor agreed to take on the project.
On one condition : that the company’s name as well as those of its employees be kept secret. On the day we visited the construction site, two security guards surrounded three employees.
Encounter Balaclavas:
10 24 39
Good afternoon. We work with French television. Can you tell us why you’re wearing masks? Can you tell us who you work for please? Are you afraid to work here? What do you risk in coming to work every day?
10 24 52
What explains such intensive security ? The initials contractors left as a result of threats, intimidation, and destruction of property which culminated in this 2004 attack.
In these pictures filmed by the activists themselves, ALF attacks several trucks belonging to a cement company that supplied the building site.
And to show their determination, the opponents of the lab project attacked one of the very symbols of Oxford University itself : the sport of rowing.
Photo ALF boathouse fire
10 25 26
In July of 2005, an unknown group of activists set fire to this boathouse, causing 800,000 euros worth of damage. Again, the action was claimed by the ALF.
10 25 46
Sound Lauren: We were just wondering if anyone—do you know anything about the fire the animal rights disturbers set in July?
Rob Hall: They planted two incendiary devices in here and all this bay was completely gutted—all the boats just absolutely melted.
10 26 17
Rob Hall: I think they are bad people. I don’t agree with animals being used for cosmetic purposes but everyone knows the benefit we’ve got out of it for medical research.
10 26 35
Tipu Aziz is among the professors who adamantly supports the lab project. The neuroscientist may transfer part of research to the new building.
10 26 47
Sound Lauren: Tell me the kind of research that will go on in this building if it is completed.
Sound Aziz: Well, everything that’s spread out over the laboratories, the neurosciences, cardiovascular, cellular structure, using animals varying from worms, fish, rats and to a very small degree primates.
10 27 01
Construction delays could also mean delays in research into Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease, part of which is conducted on primates. Professor Aziz demonstrates the before and after of a recent method of surgery.
10 27 21
Sound Aziz: Let me show you this video.
Lauren: Explain to me what’s happening in the top box, the first row box?
Aziz: Oh, that’s a monkey made Parkinsonian. He’s totally unable to move.
Lauren: And the one on the bottom?
Aziz: That’s just after we lesioned an area in the brain called a sub-cellamic nucleus. No one knows every connection in the brain. You have to test it on a living creature cause we don’t know all the connections of each cell.
10 27 43
During surgery, electrodes are implanted in the brains of Parkinson patients. The technique was first tested on primates and then on humans. As in the case of this woman, results can be spectacular.
10 27 54
Sound Aziz: She’s virtually unable to walk, her hands are shaking, she keeps freezing. And then we put electrodes in her. After surgery, she is able to walk again.
10 28 05
Tens of thousands of Parkinson patients have already benefited from this technique. According to Professor Aziz, primate experiments are and will remain an essential part of neurological research.
10 28 17
Sound Aziz: Only primates mimic the human condition because they use their arms and hands as we do, they can walk on their legs, their brain’s wired the same way.
10 28 27
The notion that animal research is essential is one that enrages the opponents of the Oxford lab.
Month after month, they gather to protect the University’s project. A mixture of life-long activists, punks, and grandmothers, each demonstration by the group SPEAK is closely monitored by the police, whose numbers nearly match the demonstrators.
A leur tete, Mel Broughton, un ancien jardinier, un ancien clandestin d’ALF aussi.
SPEAKS leader, Mel Broughton, a former garden and also a former ALF activist.
10 28 49
Sound Mel : We’re going to start in about a few minutes. Normally at this point you’ll hear me call for discipline demonstration. I’m not going to do that today. I’m not going to call for anything except this—anger, absolute anger and fury for what they’re trying to do down there—you can stuff your discipline, you can stuff it, I’ve had enough of them, I stood down there waiting weeks, not any more, not any more discipline, no more being nice, this is about anger, pure bloody fury—and you’re going to feel it, Oxford University, you’re going to feel it as you never have felt it before. The war starts here !!
Sound Angry Mum : Would you like to see the hate ? Would you like it, would you fucking like it ?
10 29 39
At the end of the demonstration, 8 protesters are arrested. But it will take more than a few jail sentences to discourage SPEAK’s leader, Mel Broughton.
Sound Mel Broughton: We’re going to be back here, tomorrow, next week, the month after that, the month after that, the year after that, Oxford University has taken I think probably the most far-reaching campaign in their whole history. They’ve never had this before.
10 30 00
In contrast to the activists’ frequent protests, Oxford University and its supporters remained silent regarding the lab project for nearly two years. Until February 25th, 2006.
Man: Save the Oxford Lab
For the first time, several hundred students, professors, and advocates publicly voice their support for the new lab.
No more threats
No more fear
Animal testing wanted here.
10 30 32
Sound student : But in fact they’ve already blown up one of the boat houses and these things have nothing to do with the testing and they’re just intimidation tactics.
What do we want ? Testing up.
When do we want it ? Now.
Sound worker : I work for the university and I’m just fed up with having disruption—they’ve got a right to protest, so, but we support the lab.
Sound John Stein : Imagine yourself as a mother with a drowsy whimpering three-year-old with meningitis. Fifty years ago, that child would have died. Would you stop her getting penicillin just because it had been tested on twenty rats ?
10 31 15
Though the University welcomed the very public display of support for the lab, the future of the lab project remains uncertain.
Animal rights activists in the United Kingdom already have several victories under their belts.
In 2003, the last mink and fox farms closed their doors, following a law passed in part under pressure from animal rights activists.
Similarly, since 1998, animal testing for cosmetic products has been banned in the UK.
Finally, in 2004,the United Kingdom renounced an age-old tradition, hunting with dogs, again after an intensive campaign at the hands of activists.
PETA
10 32 01
From blood-laden public demonstrations to crashing fashion shows, one animal rights groups knows best how to catch the public’s and media’s attention
Peta, or People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, likely the most popular animal rights group in the world.
Our story takes us to PETA’s U.S-based headquarters in Norfork, Virginia.
With more than 100 employees and a 25 million dollar annual budget, PETA boasts more than 800,000 contributors around the world. President Ingrid Newkik explains the philosophy behind the group.
10 32 38
Sound Ingrid : Today you really have to have people take off their clothes or jump onto the runway holding up their bloodied hands, you have to do something theatrical and something sensational before you get attention.
10 32 51
PETA’s greatest strength : star power. The group’s 25th anniversary party was packed with A-list celebrities, like the basketball player Dennis Rodman, singer Pink, Paul McCartney, and actress Jamie Lee Curtis.
10 33 39
By far, PETA’s largest supporter is former Baywatch star, Pamela Anderson.
10 33 43
Sound Pamela Anderson: Congratulations, PETA, the world is a better place because of you.
Sound Tracy: Of course Pamela Anderson is our biggest and best supporter and, um, as a vegetarian and has been very involved in the KOC campaign and has done other wonderful things such as wearing our lettuce bikini—there are plenty of magazines who are willing to run advertisements with Pamela for free.
At PETA, even the employees are called to action.
10 33 43
Sound Lauren: Have you ever gone naked for PETA?
Sound Dan: Oh yes. I was arrested in Paris with Jenny completely naked. They put us in a police van in Paris with no clothes and there was all these gendarmes sitting there on their bench in the van and they put us in there completely naked, like, hey guys!!
10 34 05
The message and the environment seem harmless at first glance, but during our visit we discover that other PETA campaigns are not so light-hearted.
10 34 18
Sound: This is our youth outreach department and this is our hope—young people in droves are very interested in animal rights.
ANIMALS ARE NOT OURS TO EAT.
10 34 49
Youth are among PETA’s top priority. In their campaign against fishing, a favorite US pastime, PETA prepared this cartoon brochure for school-age children. The pictures are shocking, the message is aggressive. It counsels children to be wary of their fishing fathers.
Until your daddy learns that it’s not fun to kill, keep your doggies and kitties away from him. He’s so hooked on killing defenseless animals that they could be next.
Sound: Once kids learn about that, they change, and sometimes you have to do shocking things, interesting things, colorful things to really get their attention.
10 35 08
From chickens to fish to livestock, one of PETA’s greatest priorities today is the treatment of animals by the fast-food industry, whom PETA has accused of animal cruelty.
For example in 2001, PETA organized this « sit-in » in a restaurant of the fast food chain Wendys. Dozens of supporters turned out , accusing Wendys of cruelty to animals.
You probably recognize the activist in the red hat : it’s actor James Cromwell, best known of late for his role as the kind farmer in the film ‘Babe ‘.
The actor is arrested and media attention is high, another successful protest for PETA.
10 35 58
Sound Tracey: McDonald’s of course made, was the first fast food company to make some real improvement in the way that animals are treated—there’s still obviously a lot to do there but they definitely took some action after a vigorous PETA campaign.
Do you want fries with that?
McDonald’s, cruelty to go.
Sound Lauren: Would your ideal be that McDonald’s take meat off its menu entirely?
Sound Tracey: Ultimately that is our goal. I mean we would love to see an entirely vegetarian world.
10 36 22
Following intensive PETA campaigns, McDonalds, Burger King and Wendys promised to improve their policies on the treatment of their animals
But for the fast-food industry, radical animal rights activists pose a constant threat they cannot ignore.
Washington : for the past several years, the restaurant industry and their allies have been banking on lobbying to prepare a sophisticated counterattack.
Welcome to the Center for Consumer Freedom, or CCF. CCF was founded in 1997 to defend the tobacco industry against a restaurant smoking ban. Today, it wants consumers to have free choice in what to put on their plates.
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Sequence Martosko: We’re based on the idea that people ought to be able to eat and drink what they want, free from intimidation, from activists of all sorts, whether it’s the people that like to sue McDonald’s in their spare time or animal rights activists that think you shouldn’t be allowed to eat a steak or a foie gras or to have cheese with your supper.
CCF is evasive about its contributors.
Sound Lauren: McDonald’s is one of your contributors?
Sound David: We don’t talk about who the contributors are, ever, because we don’t want to paint a target on anyone’s back whether it’s McDonald’s or anybody else.
We recovered this document, showing that Wendy’s, the restaurant chain targeted by PETA, is among CCF’s contributors, having donated 200,000 in 2001.
CCF is less discreet, however, about its adversaries. These television advertisements attacking PETA aired on major networks in the United States.
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Excerpt film clip: I’m concerned about a radical group called PETA—they take animal rights to extremes.
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To weaken PETA’s hold on public opinion, CCF attacked the group on its most controversial stance : a total refusal of animal research under any circumstances.
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Sound Martosko: We run this advertisement in the subway system in Washington and we actually use PETA’s own words against them. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals’ president went on record saying that even if animal research led to a cure for AIDS, she would oppose it. So we ask the public—what’s more important—the lab rat, or this sick boy?
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But PETA’s philosophy is not the only thing under fire. The lobbyists at CCF also denounce PETA’s ties to a violent arsonist who set fire to research lab.
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Sound Martosko: PETA last year took in $29 million from Americans who I believe think wrongly that PETA spends that money actually caring for animals in need.
Second extract film clip: PETA gave $70,000 to defend this man after he firebombed a university research lab. PETA’s president calls him a fine young man. If you give money to PETA, ask yourself—why?
Sound PETA: We paid for his defense lawyer because I believe that he deserved the rights to legal counsel. He didn’t hurt any living being man or mouse and that is more than you can say for what happened in the lab that he allegedly burned down or may have been convicted for burning down.