For Immediate Release
June 2, 2005
Future Primate Facility Scuttled After Animal Liberation Front Attack
Quakertown, PA: Less than one week after the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) visited a Pennsylvania plant nursery whose owner was planning to convert it into a primate importing center, plans for the conversion were scuttled. Owner Michael Hsu said he’s pulling his application to open the kennel because of site limitations he discovered in an engineering report. He said the building needed for the facility is simply too large for the property available.
”We’re not intimidated by the vandals, and if we would have been allowed to go through the proper channels, we would have come to this conclusion anyway,” Hsu said Wednesday.
“Right. As long as Hsu is no longer going to sell hundreds of non-human primates into a life of misery at the hands of animal experimenters, I don’t care what reason he gives publicly for abandoning his ill-devised scheme.” stated Dr. Jerry Vlasak, a former animal researcher who now criticises the use of animals by institutions who use them to gain additional funding.
Linda Howard, a spokeswoman for the Allied Effort to Save Other Primates in San Antonio, Texas, said she was pleased with Hsu’s decision. ”I am happy because regardless of why they’re doing this, it’s a good thing for primates of the world,” Howard said.
Last week activists had overturned and destroyed about 1,000 peonies, including some rare breeds, poured paint stripper on two vehicles and spray-painted graffiti on buildings and greenhouses at Peonyland, 475 Church Road, Richland Township. They wrote phrases — such as ”Fuck with primates, get fucked by us. ALF”; ”the ALF is watching”; and ”this will just be the start” — on greenhouses and storage garages at the business owned by the Hsu family.
The kennel supposedly would have housed up to 500 monkeys until they were shipped to medical research laboratories, where they would be subjected to painful experiments before being killed, usually years or decades later. The monkeys would have been shipped from a supply company in Beijing, also owned by the co-applicants that include Hsu and his parents, Chao and Susan Hsu.
There is no information yet on who may have vandalized the nursery, said Jerri Williams, a spokeswoman for the FBI’s Philadelphia branch. ”We have no leads to indicate that it’s any particular person, or who may be responsible for this,” Williams said Wednesday.