Their objective is simple: Bring about an end to the meat industry.
by Ken Krizner, senior editor
John Cummins Jr. couldn't understand why an animal rights group would pick on his second-generation family meat plant. The San Diego Meat Co., a processor of beef and pork products, was the victim of two fires in three days in January 1994, totaling about $75,000 in damages.
The letters FARM, an acronym for Farm Animal Revenge Militia, and the slogan, "Meat is Murder," were spray-painted on a building wall leading authorities to conclude that animal rights activists were responsible. The perpetrators were never caught.
"We are a small processor that hardly had any contact with animal rights groups before the fires," Cummins says. "It's odd that somebody would attack us."
He adds: "One thing is for sure; it scared the pants off of us."
Cummins' statements can be interpreted as an anthem for all meat processors. They cannot understand why animal rights groups protest their industry, but they are scared that the same thing that happened to San Diego Meat Co. can happen to them.
The agenda of animal rights groups is simple: bring an end to the meat industry. There are peaceful ways of achieving that objective, such as the recent phenomena of manure dumping at AMI and National Cattlemen's Association conventions by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.
There are also violent ways such as the arson at San Diego Meat Co., vandalism and various other criminal tactics.
No one has died yet as a result of an attack, according to the Animal Industry Foundation, a group representing animal agricultural interests, including livestock and poultry producers. AIF has coordinated responses to the media, "myths and facts" of animal agriculture, and a national advertising campaign in an effort to educate consumers on the benefits of animal agriculture.
Meat packers and processors are covered under the federal facility protection law. Federal authorities are called in to investigate when damages exceed $10,000.
Many processors believe people who join the animal rights' movement are nothing more than ultra-liberals who cannot-or will not-get a job. So they join hopeless causes. Worse yet, all they want to do is bring down capitalism.
But it's a mistake to underestimate animal rights activists, which is the current trend in the meat industry, says Steve Kopperud, Animal Industry Foundation president. Animal rights groups are staffed by clever, intelligent people who are savvy in the art of public relations.
These intelligent people have succeeded in intimidating meat processors to the point that they do not report vandalism and other criminal acts that can be attributed to animal rights groups, Kopperud believes.
The intimidation factor is working.
Meat Marketing & Technology contacted several processors who have been victims of animals rights group attacks. Most declined to talk, fearing any publicity would bring back the vandals.
One processor whose plant in Michigan was vandalized by animal rights activists says: "I'm completely paranoid. I would rather not take the chance and talk about these people and get them mad at me."
However, Janet Riley, AMI director of public affairs, disagrees with the notion that animal rights activists have intimidated the industry.
"But we take their threat seriously and we advise any processor to contact the authorities if there has been trouble," she stresses. "The best thing to do is let the authorities handle it."
AMI learned the hard way about animal rights activists when a group of demonstrators managed to bamboozle their way into its 1991 convention and disrupt a speech being delivered by former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop.
"It was a wake up call," Riley admits. Since then, AMI has increased security at its general sessions and on the show floor, and keeps a list of known activists to cross-check when sign up times come.
It seems to have worked. Subsequently, the only demonstrations by activists have been the manure dumpings-outside the convention halls.
Since 1981, the Foundation for Biomedical Research has tracked 122 attacks of animal rights groups against the animal industry, nine of which have been targeted at meat packers and processors.
But Kopperud warns that is not a fair benchmark because "most attacks by animal rights groups go unreported."
"There is a mind-set that exists whether it is a 'mom and pop' operation or the nation's biggest companies that criminal acts should not be reported because it attracts negative publicity," Kopperud notes. "There is paranoia that if processors report incidents, they will be targeted a second time.
"These people [targets of animal rights' criminal acts] are victims and they have victim rights like anybody else," Kopperud adds. "If a person walks into a supermarket and spray paints a window, you can bet that person will go to jail. It should be the same way with animal rights activists."
Of course, any type of impairment to meat processors-psychological or financial-is fine by activists.
"Anything that furthers the cause of ending the meat industry is fine," points out Tracy Reiman, PETA's vegetarian campaign coordinator. "Anything that makes the meat industry look bad helps the animals in the long run."
That includes outbreaks of food-borne illnesses.
"As tragic as it is for people, anytime there is an outbreak of salmonella or E. coli, it helps the animals," she stresses. "People are beginning to realize that not only is eating meat cruel, it is detrimental to their health. It's not just an animal rights issue, it's also a human rights issue."
PETA's main thrust to persuade Americans that eating meat is cruel involves a vegetarian campaign that aims to convince children and teen-agers.
-- When Oscar Mayer Foods Corp. took its "Wienermobile" around the country last summer, PETA protesters were there to tell children that "eating the leftover parts of diseased and disabled pigs is nothing to be glorified in a compassionate society." Part of the protest was the appearance of a giant pig, which was arrested at several sites.
-- A larger-than-life vegetable-Chris P. Carrot-tells schoolchildren "to eat your veggies, not your friends." Two years ago, when Chris P. Carrot and other PETA demonstrators were not allowed in a suburban Kansas City, Mo., elementary school, they waited until after school and distributed leaflets to students through school bus windows.
"The meat trade has programs in elementary schools; we decided children needed to hear the animals' side of the story," Reiman reasons.
PETA claims that 7 percent of Americans are vegetarians. That number is somewhat supported by HealthFocus Inc., a Chicago-based marketing and consulting firm specializing in consumer health trends. It conducted a nationwide survey about a year ago and found that 7 percent of consumers usually eat vegetarian, but only 3 percent consider themselves strict vegetarians.
Alex Hershaft, president of Farm Animal Reform Movement (FARM), says the movement toward vegetarianism is well on its way. (Hershaft denies any connection between his organization and the FARM group that was responsible for the arson at San Diego Meat Co. Both FARM and PETA claim to be non-violent organizations.)
"There is already general acceptance that a vegetarian diet is healthier for a person," Hershaft says. "People eat meat out of habit. Consumers who eat meat end up with chronic afflictions such as heart disease and strokes. Consumers who eat a vegetarian diet live a longer, happier and healthier life."
Reiman notes: "We are planting seeds in people's heads. For example, one out of four teen-agers consider themselves vegetarian. We are seeing the young generation thinking more about the ethics of meat-eating and the health benefits of a vegetarian diet."
While he does not believe society is about to turn vegetarian, Kopperud does believe that the meat industry does not take this talk seriously enough.
"Animal rights groups are as much a threat to the meat industry [in 1996] as the no-fat diet was 20 years ago," he warns. "[The meat industry] ignored that trend until it was almost too late.
"The corporate mind-set is to ignore the problem and it will go away, or give animal rights groups millions of dollars for research and they'll go away," Kopperud adds. "It won't work. The more sophisticated the corporation, the less prepared it is to fight these groups. To ignore this problem is just sticking your head in the sand.
"The issue is not production; the issue is eating meat," he points out. "Once you can get people to stop eating meat, there is no need to raise animals."
And if people stop eating meat, the meat industry will cease to exist-putting thousands of people out of work.
Hershaft understands this and sympathizes with the employees. He has a plan to re-educate them.
"Every social progress puts people out of work," he asserts. "Our goal is for government to provide a safety net for those people who lose their jobs. We want the federal government to enact a 'sin tax' on meat with money going toward retraining industry employees into socially useful jobs."
Hershaft says socially useful jobs are "growing and producing vegetables" for the day when meat is no longer part of the diet.
It is this type of talk that has led AMI to adopt a no-debate policy with animal rights groups.
"Activists are irrational; to debate them would be stooping down to their level," Riley cautions. "It gives them credibility they don't deserve."
While Reiman believes that everyone has a right to make money, she points out that if one industry closes down, another will open up. For example, where once meat was processed, soybeans could be cultivated in the future.
She also points to consolidation, notably in the hog industry, as further proof that the meat industry is in an economic downturn.
"Family hog farms are going out of business because of huge vertical integration plants," she says. "It is not just vegetarians that are putting the industry out of business, it's their own competition."
Hershaft trusts that the vast majority of society will be vegetarians within a generation. He looks at it is a step-by-step process: Livestock producers ruin the land, which ruins the environment, which leads to a rise in meat prices, which leads to vegetarianism.
Reiman believes the meat industry is too set in its ways to learn.
"[The industry] looks at animals as only a way to make money," Reiman points out. "They don't look at the animals as feeling beings even though they know animals can feel.
"There are 7.7 billion animals cruelly raised and killed each year to feed a meat addiction in the United States," she warns. "We want to see that end."
ASSOCIATED ARTICLE:
FARM's letter campaign misfires badly
Animal rights groups try to turn the intense heat of media scrutiny on animal agriculture in an attempt to expose its perceived shortcomings.
One group found the media spotlight turned on itself last year after a letter-to-the-editor campaign to some newspapers backfired, leaving itself embarrassed.
Farm Animal Reform Movement, in an effort to spread its anti-meat message, distributed letters to the editor to more than 60 newspapers, most signed with bogus names and addresses. The letters came from FARM's Bethesda, Md., headquarters and came with FARM member's names, but with local addresses.
FARM President Alex Hershaft tells Meat Marketing & Technology that the episode was unintended, and that it has provoked a discussion inside the organization to ensure it does not happen again.
"It was embarrassing; we weren't trying to deceive anyone," he says.
The mix-up occurred when FARM obtained information attributed to the U.S. government and medical research indicating a rise in the number of obese children.
Hershaft then wrote a sample letter to the editor to the organization's 12,000 members, encouraging them to write their own similar letters to local newspapers.
"The problem came when [members] sent the sample to the newspaper instead of writing their own," Hershaft points out.
The National Cattlemen's Association spotted the letters' campaign and retaliated. It urged editors to use better verification methods to prove authorship of letters that "use scare tactics and emphasize emotion over science and logic when dealing with technical subjects."
NCA noticed that letters to the editor in different newspapers in different parts of the country contained the same author's name.
NCA also said the incident proved that FARM was not concerned neighbors as it tries to portray itself, but rather are "radical activists."
The newspapers involved, which included the New York Times, San Francisco Examiner and Los Angeles Times, insisted they were unaware that they were being used, according to Editor & Publisher, a trade magazine that covers the newspaper industry. Several informed their readers in print that they had been duped and apologized.
Despite assurances by Hershaft that the episode will never be repeated, the damage may have already been done.
David B. Cooper, associate editor of the Akron Beacon Journal, told Editor & Publisher that FARM's tactics damaged its cause. Today, he views the group's claims "with a large grain of salt."
Kevin Hyland, editorial writer of the Syracuse Herald-Journal, agreed. "I am extremely more skeptical now of any animal rights letters," he told Editor & Publisher.
ASSOCIATED ARTICLE:
The philosophy of animal rights
On comparing the meat industry to serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer: "What Dahmer did is basically what the meat industry does every day. He dragged his victims, he killed them, he cut their body parts off, and he put them in a refrigerator to eat later. That is exactly what happens in the meat industry."-Tracy Reiman, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals
On the meat industry: "The meat industry is not evil, but it has painted itself into a corner economically. To provide cheap meat products, farmers cannot treat animals humanely."-Alex Hershaft, Farm Animal Reform Movement
On using the media: "It makes it easier to reach larger groups of people. When we dumped manure [at the NCA convention] in Nashville, there was only a few people there. But it was broadcast on three television stations and both newspapers ran stories about it. The Associated Press ran the photos on its wire so it was picked up by hundreds of newspapers. It may have been a small photo with a short caption, but a picture is worth a thousand words."-Reiman
On using violence to get the message across: "We are a non-violent organization. However, we don't believe that violence includes destroying equipment that creates violence."-Reiman
On animals and humans co-existing on Earth: "Animals have a central nervous system just like human beings. They have the ability to feel pain and pleasure just like human beings. And they should be able to live free from suffering just like human beings."-Reiman