Difference Animal Freedom and the Animal Liberation Front
As far as their organizations are concerned, AF and
ALF have nothing in common, but their basic statements
are similar.
Both Animal Freedom and the ALF declare that animals
have a right to freedom, while the ALF thinks that
some animals should be literally liberated.
AF says
that this should be done on a basis of legal actions
to end the industrial keeping of farm animals; the
ALF says that animals, that are now kept in deplorable
circumstances, should be freed immediately, even
if that means using illegal methods. The ALF's main
concern are laboratory animals and animals kept
for their fur; AF's primary concern are factory
animals kept in industrialized animal husbandry
methods (factory farming).
Another way to express the difference is that AF's
main interest is passively mistreated animals
while the ALF mainly deals with actively mistreated animals. That is why the people of the
ALF sometimes are in somewhat more of a hurry.
The reason for AF to stress the fact that Animal
Freedom wants to use only legal methods, has
to do with the following expectations.
Activists exchanging ideas and working together
can develop many legal methods.
Once that factory farming is banned, a gradual
put to a stop can be organized in less than
a year; our aim is not to set farm animals free,
but to lower their number and to improve the
circumstances of the remaining livestock.
The chances of factory farming becoming banned
become greater when there is more public support.
Animal Freedom thinks that its considerations and actions are honorable and are shared
by many people, and can therefore best be made public.
We exchange effective ideas about legal
actions for animal rights and against factory farming;
we advocate ecological farming; realistic (higher)
prices of animal products with all reasonable costs
included; the ending of the export of meat and poultry
produced in factory farms and the export of living
animals; founding animal rights on the same grounds
as human rights (i.e. freedom);
restoring the natural balance in nature and we organize
cookinglessons for meatless dishes.
We support the Party
for the Animals.
The Party for the Animals is a Dutch political party that aims to improve the position of animals in our society.
The party was founded to promote an awareness of the way in which humans treat animals and to emphasise that this needs to change - in the interest of not only the animals themselves, but also humans and the environment in which we all live.
