A shadowy group of anonymous animal rights radicals says it was behind an arson attack early Sunday that burned more than a dozen trucks at a cattle feedlot in Fresno County, Calif.
A statement from the Animal Liberation Front, published by the Fresno Bee, describes how the fire, which heavily damaged 14 tractors and several cattle-hauling trailers, was set. “Despite guards, a constant worker presence and razor wire fence,” the statement read, “the enemy is still vulnerable.”
“[T]here is a lot of stuff that needs to be destroyed,” the statement added, “and we can’t count on spontaneous combustion and careless welders to do all the work.”
Harris Farms CEO and Chairman John Harris said Tuesday in an email to the Bee that he and his employees are “appalled by this senseless, but very alarming attack.”
“I had suspected Animal Liberation Front may have been involved and now they are in fact claiming responsibility for it with multiple details,” Harris wrote, calling the arson a terrorist action.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation, too, considers the loose-knit Animal Liberation Front a terrorist group. Testifying before Congress in 2005, then-FBI deputy assistant director John Lewis called it, along with other “eco-terror” organizations, “one of today’s most serious domestic terrorism threats.”
Three of the seven fugitives in the “domestic terror” category of the FBI’s Most Wanted list are affiliated with the Animal Liberaton Front.
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