Biotech research and fur farms are the latest targets of fringe groups on the far left. And if some lawmakers around the country have their way, these radical environmental outlaws will be treated like the Mafia - as racketeers. Instead, it's resorting to arson and other attacks on property. Moreover, the target list has expanded beyond businesses deemed to exploit animals and wilderness.
Organizations involved in genetic engineering are also at risk of attack.
Ore. Then, last week in British Columbia, a group calling itself the Ministry of Forest Defense destroyed 1,600 test trees at a provincial seed orchard. ELF took responsibility for the Michigan State fire, as well as a February attack on a genetic-engineering project at the University of Minnesota. A frequent target of such groups are mink ranches and companies that manufacture food for caged animals en route to becoming fashion statements. In federal court in Salt Lake City last week, two brothers were sentenced to five and six years in prison for a 1997 pipe bomb attack on the Fur Breeders Cooperative in Sandy, Utah. Neither ALF nor ELF has a public leader, but each communicates through a spokesman who claims to obtain information via anonymous e-mails.