Pushing The Envelope Of Bad Taste -- Some Animal Rights Activists Intent On Beating A Dead Horse

Animal rights activists have been feeling their oats, so to speak.

The London Zoo, Europe's oldest and England's most renowned, may be forced to close next year after 166 years, in large part because of concerns over the rights of animals. Attendance at the zoo has fallen dramatically since the 1950s and government support has dwindled while complaints from animal activists have soared.

Closer to home, three animal rights groups have sued the New England Aquarium in Boston - twice - for mistreating the fish. Zoos are also under fire. A group called People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals in August ran a stomach-turning newspaper ad comparing accused mass murderer Jeffrey Dahmer to the meat industry. That was PETA's benighted way of saying: go vegetarian.

Last week, PETA launched a campaign aimed at the nation's tender-hearted students. It declared October national "Cut Out Dissection" month.

"We believe that dissection is so indefensible and so archaic that the time has come to ban it completely," said Sue Brebner, a registered nurse who is PETA's education director.

If the animal rights movement seems to be all over the place and gaining strength, though, so too are its critics. For years, animal activists have been getting something of a free ride as their targets tended to ignore them in hopes they would disappear. No more. Today, a backlash is developing.

With support from government health officials, universities

involved in animal medical research have taken a more aggressive role in refuting cruelty charges and explaining the need for animals in research.

Last month, the aquariums and zoos joined the battle. When the animal rights groups had claimed, among other things, that New England Aquarium lacked the proper paperwork four years ago to transfer a dolphin named Kama to a Navy training program, the aquarium and others said enough is enough.

The New England Aquarium filed a $5 million counter-suit claiming defamation and harassment against Citizens to End Animal Suffering and Exploitation, the Animal Legal Defense Fund and the Progressive Animal Welfare Society. The action is believed to be the first by an aquarium or zoo against animal rights activists.

"We're fed up and we're not going to take their lies anymore," a director of the New England Aquarium was quoted as saying.

In August, PETA drafted a full-page ad citing the atrocities in Milwaukee and urging people to turn vegetarian. The Des Moines Register ran the ad, and, not surprisingly, a furor arose from the meatpacking industry and from others who found the ad in dreadful taste. Several other newspapers flatly refused to run it.

That should have sent a message to animal rights groups that there is a limit to how far they can push the envelope of bad taste. But PETA apparently didn't get it.

The group's news conference unveiling the anti-dissection campaign last week started with orange juice but quickly moved into a videotape of live cats being embalmed. The video, shot with a hidden camera at a North Carolina animal supply house, showed the firm's workers blithely smoking cigarettes and listening to the radio while they purportedly injected cats with formaldehyde. The cats had been gassed but some were still moving.

Some of the awful pictures apparently were broadcast on television last year and prompted the Agriculture Department to cite the firm for violations of the Animal Welfare Act.

The PETA group trotted out a young student who had said no to dissection, a biology teacher at a Catholic school who hasn't required his charges to dissect anything in five years, and a gynecological surgeon who proudly explained that she had dissected one human cadaver - and nothing more - during her entire educational career. It seemed a little like beating a dead cat.

Even the activists concede that dissection is losing favor in the schools. Animals for dissection are expensive and disposal is troublesome now that computers, models and other methods provide alternatives.

Dissection is an easy target and a clever way for the animal movement to win friends among the young.

Perhaps that's why PETA, which also opposes using animals for medical research, is pulling out all the stops in fighting a practice that's dying anyway.

The anti-dissection forces are petitioning school boards. This month, they're tying green ribbons at schools and putting cards on school cafeteria tables. The cards have pictures of dead cats and the slogan "Dissection: It's Enough to Make You Lose Your Lunch."

Right.