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Ducks Stolen From Long
Island Lab - FBI Called In
From Patricia Doyle
5-4-1

Hello Jeff - Actually, I almost concur with saving the animals. The thing about this story is the ease in which these people were able to enter labs and remove animals. The site that the ducs were stolen from is a stone's through from the Plum. What if "some group" decides to steal infected animals from Plum Island and then release them into the wild. This problem is why I do not think the Plum should be a level 4 facility.
 
These people who are entering labs are teenagers with the thought of helping animals. What if a hardened terrorist group wants to enter a lab? It seems that these labs are easy to enter.
 
 
Ducks Stolen From Long Island Lab - FBI Called In
By Al Baker 4-30-1
 
 
ARDEN CITY, N.Y., April 30 ,Äî Nearly 250 ducklings were stolen over the weekend from a remote research laboratory on eastern Long Island, and the authorities said today that they suspected an underground animal-rights group that has claimed responsibility for other crimes in the area.
 
The Southampton town police and the Federal Bureau of Investigation are investigating the theft of 247 Pekin ducklings from the Cornell University Duck Research Laboratory, in Eastport, sometime early Sunday morning.
 
They said their investigation was focusing on the Animal Liberation Front, or ALF, a loosely organized group with ties to a similar environmental group known as the Earth Liberation Front. ELF claimed responsibility for a campaign of arson and vandalism in Suffolk County last fall and winter; three teenagers have pleaded guilty in some of those incidents.
 
In the theft of the ducks, graffiti messages were spray-painted on barn walls and doors near two unlocked outdoor pens where the birds were kept: "Saved from torture by the ALF," "No more animal tests," and "Liberated," among other things, said Detective Sgt. Robert C. Flood of the Southampton police.
 
When a McDonald's corporate headquarters in Hauppauge was vandalized last December, anti-meat graffiti and the word ALF were scrawled on the walls. Also, the three teenagers who admitted to arson and vandalism for ELF on Long Island said they had conspired to burn down a duck farm in Center Moriches, although those plans were never carried out, according to court papers.
 
"There have been acts in the past where actions have been jointly claimed by both organizations," said an ALF spokesman, David Barbarash, in Courtenay, British Columbia. "ALF has been involved on Long Island for a long time. I think there are probably several cells of activities on Long Island."
 
Mr. Barbarash, who said he passed anonymous messages from various ALF cells to the news media, said he had received no official communication about the theft of the ducks, but he noted that it came at the end of World Week for Animals in Laboratories, a series of protests by animal rights activists around North America that began in the early 1980's. Mr. Barbarash also said that 14 beagles were released from a New Jersey animal research lab on April 1, though ALF did not claim a role.
 
The stolen ducklings were 3 to 4 weeks old and were being carefully protected from disease so they could be used in vaccine tests designed to protect ducks raised by commercial farmers, said H. Roger Segelken, a spokesman for the Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine, in Ithaca, N.Y., which oversees the Eastport laboratory. A statement released by lab director Tirath S. Sandhu also expressed concern for the ducks' survival because their immune systems have not had a chance to build up resistance to diseases.
 
In addition, about 500 other ducks at the laboratory may have had their immune systems disrupted by the intruders. "If they aquire an infection that compromises their health or their ability to perform reliably in a vaccine trial, then they would have to be euthanized," Mr. Segelken said.
 
Joseph A. Valiquette, a spokesman for the F.B.I.'s office in New York, said the Joint Terrorist Task Force was investigating the theft.


 
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