http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/earticle/1463/
Brendan O’Neill
" Statistics reveal that it consists of rare and mostly minor incidents carried out by a handful of losers. So why is everyone so obsessed with it? For all the present handwringing over animal rights extremism and terrorism, the heyday of such activities was in the mid-Eighties to the mid-Nineties. It’s notoriously difficult to get facts and figures about the number and size of violent actions by animal rights activists over the past 20 years; such things only started to be seriously measured, by the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry, in 2002. However, it is broadly accepted that the ‘high point’ for animal rights extremism - certainly in terms of violence and media stunts - occurred between 1985 and 1995. Since then, animal rights groups have largely engaged in small protests outside individuals’ homes or workplaces and in occasional acts of arson or intimidation. "
