Before reading this book I wasn’t really sure who the Animal Liberation Front was, why they did what they did, or what the point of it all was. I just assumed that their actions were the result of the usual sexually repressed macho violence that hangs around in “radical” political movements stinking up the place.

Well, gentle reader, how wrong could I be? This book suggests that many involved in the ALF are probably women, operating from a position of love rather than hate, and that the ALF have never intentionally harmed another living being in the very many of their activities carried out around the world from the late 1960s.

Threaded into the book are a number of fascinating philosophical positions about the Rights of Animals and how they should be respected. Bookending the volume are two essays about the use of the label “terrorist” and its impact on the Animal Rights and other dissenting movements in Western Democratic states.

The net result of the many stimulating essays is to really make you question what you think about human society’s treatment of other species, and in turn, human treatment of other humans.

The book is controversial, for example in its discussion of the Holocaust and how it served as a model for animal abuse in factory farming units. What you can’t get away from is the sheer scale of the killing:

Each year in the US alone

over 10 billion farmed animals are killed for food consumption
17-70 million animals are killed for testing and experimentation
Over 100 million animals are killed in hunting; and
7-8 million animals are trapped or raised in confinement for their fur.

This book tells you what you can do about it.

(figures taken from the years 1999-2000 – fur figures vary greatly according to demand. Hunting numbers have been steadily dropping as factory farmed animal deaths continue to rise)