Animal-Righters SHAC Attack

SHAC Attack

To celebrate Earth Week, nine animal rights activists decided to do some damage. Sunday, April 21, instead of sponsoring a recycling drive or making a compost heap, members of the group SHAC, or Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty, demonstrated outside of 840 Park Ave. Rowdiness ensued, the group smashed windows and got into the lobby, overturning some tables and breaking some vases. All were arrested for criminal mischief, unlawful assembly, inciting riot and riot.

At first it looked like a random attack, part of the general antiglobalization, antiwealth movement that's started to cohere in the last few years. After all, as Earl Nemser, president of the 840 Park co-op board, said, "We are a very animal-friendly building." But the incident seems to have been sadder and more ridiculous than the typical animal rights demonstration.

Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS) is Europe's largest contract animal-testing company. Although animal rights activists have been after it for years, attention was focused on the company more intensely after 1997, when a PETA investigator got a job there and shot a secret videotape displaying vivisectionists violating rules and protocols, and essentially torturing animals.

The company became, in England, probably the most potent symbol of the animal rights movement, spawning its own dedicated protest group, SHAC. Eventually, in 2001, the Royal Bank of Scotland canceled HLS' credit line. Since in England the law allows the public access to shareholder records, facilitating direct protests, HLS was persuaded to relist its stock on Nasdaq, whose shareholder records remain mostly secret. So, while still headquartered in England, HLS now is traded in the U.S. Due to more protests, they were dropped by their original insurer, and picked up by an unknown insurer in a deal brokered by Marsh Inc., a risk and insurance services firm.

SHAC has been extremely successful in targeting HLS' periphery, such as its customers and insurers. One of the ways they have done this has been to intimidate their affiliates at home. And that's where 840 Park Ave. comes in.

According to Frank Hampton, a representative of SHAC, 840 Park Ave. is the residence of Leonard P. Kline, an executive of Marsh Inc. So, to bring the pain home, the activists decided to demonstrate in front of his apartment building, presumably causing him extreme embarrassment in front of his neighbors.

The only problem with this rationale, according to Nemser, is that Kline doesn't live there. "Apparently, 10 years ago we had a person named L. Patton Kline who owned an insurance company and sold it to Marsh, and he stayed with Marsh for a few years. But he is long gone."

Lauren James, a member of SHAC who was at the protest, though not arrested, was surprised to hear the news?if not contrite. "Really? Well, I'm not the person who organized the protest, but I'll clearly look into it." She went on to say, referring to Nemser, that sometimes people have motives to mislead SHAC.