The area’s peaceful and pastoral way of life is being shaken by a new threat, say agricultural officials. They call it agroterrorism.


It involves “radical animal rights groups which impose violence, threats of violence and other forms of terrorism to disrupt the agriculture and agri-business communities,” says Gary Willier, agriculture services manager for The Lancaster Chamber of Commerce & Industry.


The chamber plans a briefing on the issue at 9:15 a.m. Tuesday in Lancaster City Council chambers in Southern Market Center, 100 S. Queen St.


The activists are more than annoying, he says; they are dangerous.


“These are not your father’s PETA people.”


PETA, or People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, is a household acronym that invokes images of people throwing blood-colored paint on mink coats.


But Willier says the animal-rights activists he’s talking about seek to cripple livestock operations through trespass, vandalism and harassment.


The threat, say officials, is the contamination of livestock and crops, which could shut down large segments of one of Lancaster County’s top industries.


The incidents are so extreme, the FBI has a special department assigned to deal with the movement. A counter-terrorism agent from the Philadelphia office will speak at Tuesday’s briefing.


Two county farm enterprises will be involved in district court hearings this week involving activitists. In one case, activists are charged with trespassing; in the other, a farmer is charged with abusing animals.


Local farmers are hesitant to be quoted or photographed for news stories out of fear they’ll become a target. Even if they run a clean operation, the legal costs of fighting animal-cruelty charges would put them under, says one farmer who asked to remain anonymous.


Another producer says, on an emotional level, it’s difficult to come to terms with the prospect of having your farm and workers intruded upon. “We feel violated,” he says.




Three targeted




In the past two years, at least three local agribusinesses have been affected by subversive tactics.


One, says Willier, was an e-mail and phone call blitz made to Wenger Feeds. It shut down the business operations for days by overloading phone and computer lines.


The other two cases, involving Kreider Farms and Esbenshade Egg Farms, which go before magisterial district judges this week, show that activists can be successful in their goal to call attention to the treatment of farm animals.


In the Esbenshade case, two people face 35 counts of animal cruelty stemming from a video made by an undercover activist inside a chicken house.


In January, a member of Compassion Over Killing of Washington, D.C., got a job in Esbenshade’s egg-laying facility in Mount Joy, where he shot the video.


He showed his footage to Johnna L. Seeton, a Humane Society police officer with the Pennsylvania Legislative Animal Network, Harrisburg, and she subsequently charged owner Glenn Esbenshade and manager Jay Musser with abuse.


Their case goes before Magisterial District Judge Jayne F. Duncan in Elizabethtown at 1 p.m. Tuesday. The summary charges could result in fines.


Erica Meier, executive director of the nonprofit group, Compassion Over Killing, would not comment on the case, but said the group aims to highlight cases such as Esbenshade’s “as a way of reducing animal cruelty.” She referred questions to the group’s Lancaster lawyer, Christopher P. Lyden, who did not return calls.


The Kreider Farms case, which will be reviewed in a preliminary hearing scheduled for 10 a.m. Wednesday at Magisterial District Judge William Reuter’s office in Mount Joy, is different in that the company is seen as the victim.


Christopher Price, 25, and Lisa Levinson, 38, both of Philadelphia, are charged with criminal trespass and conspiracy to commit criminal trespass in connection with a series of break-ins at three of Kreider Farms’ chicken houses.


Levinson, who says she is a representative for Hugs for Puppies, an animal rights group in Philadelphia, and Price are accused to sneaking into the chicken houses during the night and videotaping the conditions. The incidents happened between November 2004 and September 2005, police say.


The Hugs for Puppies Web site documents what they taped and tells their story. But Lt. Ed Haugh, of Susquehanna Regional police, says the break-ins are felonies, and the pair face some serious consequences.


Haugh has been a police officer for 28 years, and this is the department’s first case of agroterrorism, he says. Haugh says his investigation took nine months.


The suspects, he says, seriously jeopardized Kreider’s egg-laying operation by traveling from one chicken house to another, thereby exposing the flocks to the threat of contamination and the public to the threat of disease. Kreider has 3.5 million egg-layers, says Tom Beachler, vice president of operations. “I want to make sure there is a clear message to anyone who enters farm buildings or destroys crops,” he says. “It’s illegal, pure and simple.”


As part of his investigation, Haugh said, he visited various poultry farms in the county. At each site, he was made to wear sterile coveralls, a hair net and a hat. After a tour through the chicken houses, he had to throw out his clothing and wash up.


It’s been a learning experience, he says.


But he believes the case is an omen for law enforcement in Lancaster County. “Let’s face it,” he says.


Agroterrorism “is something we’re going to have to deal with.”




Growing power




Lest local farmers believe activist groups don’t have any power, consider that last year, the Humane Society of the United States exercised enough influence to make it illegal for Florida pig farmers to use gestation cages, contraptions that prevent a sow from rolling onto her piglets during feeding times.


In September, a group called Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty in Trenton, N.J., campaigned hard enough to keep the stock listing of Life Sciences Research, a company that uses animals for testing, off the New York Stock Exchange, according to the Wall Street Journal.


One of Hugs for Puppies’ tactics is to publish personal information about drug company executives and their families on brochures that feature maps to the executives’ homes, reported the Journal.


Last April, members of both Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty and Hugs for Puppies were sued for harassing Teva Pharmaceutical executives, their spouses and children at their homes, churches and schools.


“There’s been no other movement that has brought as much violence and destruction and vandalism” as animal-rights and environmental rights activists, says John Lewis an FBI counter-terrorism agent in the Journal’s article.


On the local level, a campaign against puppy mills in Pennsylvania has resulted in Gov. Ed Rendell agreeing to amend state dog laws. Many dog breeding sites are operated by farmers seeking an alternative way to earn a living, especially in the Plain community.




County in spotlight




The activism has called new attention to Lancaster County by animal welfare groups, officials here say.


“For those who disagree whether animals should be part of the agriculture industry, Lancaster County is in the bull’s eye,” says Leon Ressler, executive director of the local cooperative extension office.


“We are an animal-based economy,” he says. If activists make it difficult to have animals in the farming industry, it could “destroy Lancaster’s economic base,” he says.


The county’s egg-laying production is valued at $109 million, and the dairy production is valued at $350 million, according to the state Department of Agriculture. David Filson, emergency preparedness and response coordinator for Penn State University’s extension service, says although it may seem as if the ranks of extremists are growing, the definition of a terrorist has widened dramatically since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, to include a variety of acts.


People who would have been annoying farm vandals five years ago, are now categorized by the federal government as agro- or domestic terrorists, he says. In today’s world, someone who would break into a chicken house is ranked as dangerous as someone who would poison a crop.


“A lot of things are defined differently today,” he says, “but that doesn’t minimize the impact an extremist can have on a farming operation.”


Because many activists are young, Willier said, it’s easy to “write off farm vandalism as a prank,” without seeing it for what it really is, a dangerous threat to the nation’s food supply.


The local agriculture extension office reports 60 percent of the nation’s population lives within a six-hour drive from Lancaster County, and it’s important to protect the industry from terrorist activity.


Filson says Lancaster County is one of the 25 top farming counties in the nation, and is definitely on the radar screen for both security agencies and agroterrorists.


The trend can have negative impacts on Lancaster County’s way of life, Filson says. Farmers will become more guarded and not allow tours of their properties, walling off the public to what used to be an open industry.


This would allow farmers to operate unseen, and perhaps not care for their animals as well as they would if someone were watching, Filson says. “Someone gaining access to a farm under false pretenses doesn’t minimize the producer’s obligation to use sound animal management practices,” he says.


Penn State has beefed up its monitoring of farming practices as well as naturally occurring dangers such as viruses and intentional acts of terrorism, Filson says.


Chris Herr, vice president of PennAg Industries, an agricultural trade association in Harrisburg, says the activists’ agenda is to “put a stop to modern agriculture.”

Lancaster County has its share of small farms, but Herr says the trend is toward larger farms that mass produce.


Agricultural science has allowed farmers to take better care of their animals, he says. A highly competitive industry, food production demands well-managed, well-cared-for animals, he says. In other words, happy cows give more milk and healthy chickens lay more eggs.


Ressler says events such as the chamber’s briefing Tuesday can help farmers learn to protect their businesses through increased vigilance and training.


The eventual security costs can be an economic burden, Ressler says, but “farmers need to approach the issue of security much more seriously than before.”


Guarding against nighttime intruders, as well as better screening of new workers and visitors are steps agri-businesses need to consider, he says.


Ressler says the extension office plans to hold workshops and one-on-one sessions with farmers soon on the security issue.


Beachler at Kreider Farms says his staff has a heightened sense of awareness since the breaking and entering. “The threat is real.” blog comments powered by Disqus