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The Other World Cup Meat Controversy

The controversy over dog meat in South Korea has garnered a fair bit of attention ahead of the start of the 2002 World Cup, but there is another meat controversy involving the other country that will host the Cup, Japan. In this case, it is animal rights activists trying to pressure British football players into signing a pledge not to eat any whale meat while they are in Japan.

Japan kills more than 600 whales annually for what it claims are research purposes, but most of the whales end up being served in Japanese restaurants (and Japan has made no secret of its desire to outright resume commercial whaling). In fact, although it still lacks the votes on the International WHaling Commission to push through a resumption of commercial whaling, Japan did recently announce that it will start hunting sei whales this year after a 26 year hiatus.

The International Fund for Animal Welfare recently issued a press release calling for British athletes not to eat whale meat while they are in Japan. In the press release, IFAW UK director Phyllis Campbell-McRae said,

We’re asking for their assurance that they won’t eat whale meat during their stay in Japan. Each player is invited to sign and return a form pledging ‘I won’t be eating whale at the World Cup’ in support of IFAW’s campaign against Japan’s killing of hundreds of whales each year.

Sources:

Nations Condemn Japan Whaling Plans. Associated Press, May 7, 2002.

England team urged to ‘stay on side’ for the whales during the 2002 FIFA World Cup. International Fund for Animal Welfare, Press Release, May 7, 2002.

More Details Emerge about Animal Rights Activist Who Allegedly Murdered Pim Fortuyn

Details emerging in the ongoing investigation of the murder of Netherlands politicians Pim Fortuyn are making the extent of his killer’s animal rights fanaticism more clear as well as suggesting possible links to other crimes.

The Sunday Times (London) reports that while in his teens, accused killer Volkert van der Graaf, 32, founded the Zeeland Animal Liberation Front which committed acts of vandalism that primarily targeted restaurants.

Van der Graaf was involved with anti-medical research and environmental groups until 1992 when he founded Environment Offensive which was opposed to all animal agriculture. Van der Graaf and others in Environment Offensive earned the enmity of farmers by relentlessly challenging applications to expand animal farms.

How Environment Offensive was funded is raising a lot of questions. It received 100,000 Pounds from the state lottery, but farmers claim that it also acted as a sort of shakedown scheme whereby farmers willing to pay enough money via a third party broker could buy off the group and avoid the legal hassles.

One such farmer, Pieter Van der Camp, claimed that he paid 20,000 pounds to just such a broker and had no more problems with Environment Offensive. The Sunday Times reported that the environmental group refused to comment on the allegations.

Van der Graaf is now a suspect in an earlier 1996 murder, and there is also evidence linking him to other animal rights-related crimes.

On December 22, 1996, somebody shot environmental officer Chris Van de Werken while he was out for a jog near his home. Van de Werken and van der Graaf had clashed before, with Van der Graaf believing that the environmental officer was far too accommodating to farmers in the area.

Moreover, the killing of Van de Werken closely resembles that of Fortuyn’s. Van de Werken was shot multiple times at very close range. The bullets police recovered from Van de Werken’s body were 9mm silver-tip hollow-point bullets — a type of ammunition that is rare in the Netherlands and just happens to be the same type of ammunition used in the Fortuyn killing.

Van der Graaf was apparently questioned about the murder at the time, but the case was closed as unsolved in 1997. It has now been reopened.

The Sunday Times also reported that documents and computer records seized from van der Graaf’s home also provide a possible link between van der Graaf and a 1999 arson attack on a plant that produced feed for mink and a series of 1995 incidents at a poultry farm.

Source:

Fortuyn killer linked to earlier death. Peter Conradi, Sunday Times (London), May 12, 2002.

Don't Pet the Animal Rights Movement

After the world learned that it was not an immigrant or a Muslim but an animal rights activist that murdered Netherlands political candidate Pim Fortuyn, there was something of a sigh of relief that the assassination would not further perturb relations between Muslims and non-Muslims in Europe. The Daily Telegraph’s Alice Thomson thinks that sort of reaction is way off the mark. Thomson writes,

Thank God he’s not a Muslim, said the commentators, but they’re wrong to be relieved. Animal rights activist may not be Al-Qa’eda, but they include terrorists, too. At worst, the fundamentalists have warped the concept of the humane care of animals into a form of human hating. As [alleged assassin Volkert] van der Graaf’s neighbour said: “He didn’t care about humans at all.”

In Britain, after the IRA and its splinter groups, fundamentalist animal rights activists have committed the worst atrocities on the mainland: the letter-bomb that injured a pest controller’s child, firebombs for doctors, hounding staff at Huntingdon Life Sciences.

Carla Lane, the television playwright who founded Protesters’ Animal Information Network, recently wrote to Tony Blair to warn of an increase by extreme animal rights activists because they were becoming disillusion with trying to achieve change democratically.

And yet, as Thomson points out, Blair’s government continues to play a game of cat and mouse with the animal rights movement, alternately saying that it will crack down on the extremism only to then turn around and try to deliver legislation to achieve the movement’s goals. This month, for example, the Labor government floated an absurd Bill of Rights for pets.

Thomson warns that this is a dangerous game to play. “Mr. Blair may think the animal rights groups are cute and containable,” she writes, “but they’ve got savage teeth and shouldn’t be petted.”

Source:

Blair could be bitten by the hands that feed him. Alice Thomson, The Daily Telegraph (London), May 10, 2002.

PETA Child Watch: Portsmouth Mayor Not Impressed by PETA's Targeting of Schoolchildren

In March 2002, Ingrid Newkirk appeared on CNN’s Crossfire and denied Tucker Carlson’s accusation that People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals crossed a line by targeting children. According to Newkirk, “… everything we do is based at adults. We’re asking adults [to] be responsible.”

The fact that PETA does not target children did not stop the group from showing up at Portsmouth Middle School in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, earlier this month to show a video depicting the slaughtering of pigs.

PETA showed up on a sidewalk outside the school with a large television monitor. The monitor showed a videotape of pigs beings slaughtered while two members of the group talked with students about the alleged cruelty involved in raising pigs.

POrtsmouth Mayor Evelyn Sirrell was livid at the PETA video showing, writing a letter to PETA asking,

Has your campaign failed so miserably among adults — those who actually make the food-choice purchases in homes across our city — that you must target children as young as 11 to try to make your case? Was this ethical treatment of young people, or simply a publicity stunt in poor taste?

Of course, as the New Hampshire Union Leader pointed out, it is precisely because PETA’s argument has failed that it is forced to resort to this “publicity at any costs” approach. As the Union Leader put it in an editorial,

Indeed. PETA has a history of using uncivil, even violent tactics to get its point across. Showing gory videos to children is just the latest low point for the group.

In these times of extremist politics, when many consider tolerance for other points of view unacceptable, uncivil behavior is often seen as a justified way of promoting a cause. Animal rights groups show shocking videos to kids and toss blood onto people, pro-life activists stand outside abortion clinics with grotesque posters of aborted babies, radical environmentalists burn and blow up buildings, and anti-technology wackos put bombs in mail boxes.

Frustration breeds this ill-mannered, tactless behavior. All of the activists mentioned above have lost their larger political battles, but have refused to give up the fight. Not that they should give up the fight. But in continuing their struggle, they shouldnÂ’t let their frustration get the better of them. Using extremely rude tactics is not only very bad manners, it also has the opposite of the intended effect. It just makes people more resolved in their opposition.

Aside from the error attributing violent acts to PETA, this is a pretty spot on analysis of the current state of the animal rights movement. It is in a Catch-22 of its own making in that individuals in leadership positions of groups such as PETA explicitly decided in the 1980s and 1990s to play to the media with high profile protests and claims.

This was a pretty effective strategy for awhile, but the problem is that after awhile this becomes old hat and PETA and other groups have been forced to find new ways to be shocking. Those methods, however, alienate precisely the sort of people that the animal rights movement would have to recruit in order to ever become anything more than a fringe movement.

This is why, I suspect, Newkirk lied on Crossfire about whether or not PETA targets children or adults. She’s caught in a trap of her own making where PETA has to pull stunts like this to get in the papers, but the very act of doing so alienates people who otherwise might be receptive to a discussion about the welfare of pigs slaughtered for food.

Sources:

Portsmouth mayor blasts PETA for showing kids grisly video. Jody Record, The Union Leader (New Hampshire), May 9, 2002.

Unethical treatment of people: PETA goes too far in Portsmouth. The Union Leader (New Hampshire), May 10, 2002.

Lawsuits Against PETA to Proceed in Virginia

A judge this week ruled that two lawsuits brought by former animal shelter workers against People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals could proceed.

The lawsuit involves a undercover operation carried out in 1999 by then-PETA employee Bryan Monell. Monell took at job at an animal shelter run by the Portsmouth Humane Society in Portsmouth, Virginia, in order to secretly tape activities at the shelter.

PETA later turned the videotapes over to police and both Keith Jeter and Holly King were charged by prosecutors with animal cruelty. In separate trials, both were acquitted.

They in turn have filed lawsuits seeking $1.5 million apiece in compensatory damages from PETA.

Source:

Judge allows two lawsuits against PETA to proceed. Amy Jeter, The Virginian-Pilot, May 9, 2002.

Animal Rights Activist "Meticulously Planned" Fortuyn Assassination

Contrary to early speculation that the assassination of Netherlands political candidate Pim Fortuyn was an opportunity killing, animal rights activist and suspected killer Volkert van der Graaf meticulously planned the murder at the relatively high-security radio and television complex.

When police searched van der Graaf’s home, they found detailed maps of the complex which van der Graaf allegedly used to plan his crime. He apparently used an unguarded door in the rear of the complex to avoid numerous security checkpoints.

Meanwhile, more information about potential motives and even a possible link to an unsolved 1996 murder emerged in media reports about van der Graaf.

Leading the speculation is the possibility that Fortuyn was murdered over a dispute van der Graaf had with a pig farmer. Van der Graaf had repeatedly squared off in court against pig farmer Wien van den Brink. Van der Graaf accused van den Brink of violating Dutch animal welfare laws. Van den Brink was also happened to be a supporter of Fortuyn.

Dutch police are also investigating van der Graaf’s possible involvement in an unsolved 1996 murder. In that case, an environmental officer who worked closely with farmers was shot multiple times and his body dumped in a nearby ditch.

Farmers who were used to lining up against van der Graaf in court described him as fanatical. Van derBrink was quoted as saying, “I thought he was a real fundamentalist. I actually wanted nothing to do with him. He was as closed as a box and convinced he was right.”

Van der Graaf spent two years fighting Peter Olofson’s application to raise cattle. Olofson described van der Graaf as a fanatic,

It was animals, animals, animals.

…

Most farmers around here know him. His mission was to destroy all our farms.

Even so, Olofson said he was shocked that van der Graaf was the prime suspect in the Fortuyn murder. “I couldn’t believe it,” Olofson told The Times of London. “He was a fanatic, but I can’t believe he murdered a person.”

Sources:

Animal activists ‘meticulously planned killing’. David Graves, The Daily Telegraph, May 9, 2002.

Activist charged with killing Fortuyn. Ian Bickerton, The Financial Times (London), May 9, 2002.

Activist remanded for Fortuyn murder: Mystery surrounds ‘quiet, hardworking’ animal rights campaigner. Ian Black, The Guardian (London), May 9, 2002.

Accused vegan was ‘a fanatic who cared only for animals’. Martin Fletcher, The Times (London), May 9, 2002.