Guarding your farm against the threat of animal R terrorists

[Animal 0]

Encore une mise en garde pour les éleveurs contre les "terroristes" de la défense animale...
Ça fait sûrement suite aux photos qui ont été prises récemment par un jeune étudiant dans un élevage de poules pondeuses en Ontario....
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Thu Nov 10, 2005

Guarding your farm against the threat of animal rights 'terrorism'

From www.betterfarming.com

Guarding your farm against the threat of animal rights 'terrorism'
With extremist acts becoming more common, farmers need to take some practical
measures to secure their livestock operations against animal rights terrorists

by DON STONEMAN

Ontario agriculture is growing increasingly concerned about attacks by extreme
animal rights movements upon livestock farms.
The Ontario Farm Animal Council (OFAC) is aware of three separate incidents of
vandalism on Ontario livestock farms since mid-August, says its executive
director, Crystal Mackay. In all of 2004, she received reports of only two
incidents.

Early last month, OFAC sponsored a conference on agri-terrorism in London for
agri-food company leaders. Attendance at the conference was by invitation only
and it was closed to the public and the media, but some of the speakers spoke to
Better Farming.

Leslie Ballentine, former executive director of OFAC and now a freelance
strategic communications specialist, says farmers need to take some practical
measures to secure their livestock operations against animal rights terrorists,
as well as vandals and disgruntled employees.

Most of the measures are necessary anyway to maintain good biosecurity and
involve locking barn doors and offices. Clear areas around barns and bright
lights at night are a deterrent, as is a dog that will bark if there is an
intruder, but video surveillance cameras aren't necessary. It is very important
that the farm operator report a spray paint attack or a barn intrusion to the
police, as well as to OFAC, Ballentine says.

Attacks by an animal rights cell tend to more violent and destructive and
records of incidents help police to spot the patterns of the crimes. The victim
should acquire his or her own copy of the police report. The report number and
the attending officer's name are critical. "You want a paper trail," Ballentine
asserts. Don't clean up the scene until police have collected forensic evidence,
she adds.

Farmers should watch out for suspicious activity around the farm, get the
license numbers of cars that turn around in lane ways and take down descriptions
of anyone who asks unusual questions. Rights activists always perform
surveillance, checking for barn routines and for unlocked doors before they
perform what they call "an action," Ballentine says, and extreme environmental
activist groups have been known to use small airplanes to scout a site.

In the United States, there is a national task force devoted to extreme acts by
environmental and animal rights groups and they are treated as a form of
terrorism. But Ballentine says there is no parallel in Ontario or in Canada.
"Since 9/11 we have a definition of 'terrorism,' which we didn't have before and
we have legislation," says Ballentine, but it has been used only once, in regard
to someone linked to a Middle-Eastern terrorist group, and it is unlikely to
ever be used against animal rights activism.

Animal rights activists sometimes strike from inside a packing plant or a farm.
American agri-business security specialist Gerald Kinard of Learn Inc. USA,
based in College Station, Tex., says employers should screen employees to keep
out interlopers. Learn Inc. works with companies to develop personality profiles
of successful employees so that job applicants who vary from that personality
profile can be weeded out before they get through the door.

"If you've got a college educated, 23-year-old male willing to stand and hang
chickens (in a kill plant), you've got something wrong," he says. "If they don't
look like they belong, they probably don't."

Company secrets are as likely to be stolen by somebody who talks their way into
the confidence of someone at the front desk of a business as by someone who
breaks into the building and steals files at night, he says. While employees
need to be polite when responding to inquiries from the public, they also need
to consider if the inquiries are appropriate. "Is it appropriate for someone to
be asking about our ammonia chiller? Is it appropriate for someone to be asking
about our shift changes for security people?"

Farm operators must know who is coming and going on their farms, says Kinard.
"You have to have sign-in and sign-out procedures, even if (visitors and
contractors) have to come and knock on your door." At the same time, employees
need to know that it's all right to ask questions of strangers around the farm.

Kinard says animal rights terrorists are like predators, picking the weakest
animal in the herd. "If you put a strong face forward and are competent at what
you are doing, they will go down the road and find someone who is weaker," he
says.

Ironically, farms and small food companies that are privately owned are better
able to deal with animal rights actions than are big companies with shareholders
such as McDonald's and Burger King, which have buckled in the face of bad
publicity, Kinard says.

Kentucky Fried Chicken, however, has fought against attempts by People For the
Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) to change how the chickens they use in
Canada are produced. Ballentine hopes that is the beginning of a trend.

[animo-aequoanimo 0]

Et pourtant, les vrais terroristes, ce sont eux, ces éleveurs...

[Animal 0]

C'est sûr !
Ils tâchent pas tous les moyens de se trouver des prétextes pour garder les animaux bien enfermés, loin du regard des curieux et dans l'fond, ça doit bien faire leurs affaires qu'il y ait des menaces d'épidémie de grippe aviaire...