ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, May 23, 1996 TAG: 9605230089
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-2 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: CHESAPEAKE
SOURCE: JUNE ARNEY LANDMARK NEWS SERVICE
Graffiti artists claiming to be with the underground Animal Liberation Front returned to Central Meat Packing Tuesday night or Wednesday morning, days after causing an estimated $60,000 in damage.
This time, they wrote in red, white and black spray paint: ``Meat is murder'' and ``Anyone who kills animals is a murderer.'' Again they signed the letters ALF, this time fashioned into a triangle.
``You wouldn't believe how bad it is,'' Earl Edmondson, founder of Central Meat, said Wednesday. ``You can see it from the road. They wrote it as big as my sign.''
Edmondson said a refrigeration worker was there until about 9 p.m. Tuesday, so the graffiti must have been done after that. Police had not pinpointed the time of the vandalism.
No additional damage was done to the slaughterhouse in the most recent incident, said Elizabeth Jones, a Chesapeake Police Department spokeswoman.
``Why pick Chesapeake out of Norfolk, Virginia Beach and all the other areas?'' asked Lt. K.R. Kumm, in criminal investigations. ``I don't know.''
He said he knew of nothing that would bring Central Meat to the forefront. Detectives still are trying to determine whether the underground group actually is responsible.
``We may never know,'' he said. ``There's nothing that definitely says they did it.''
Little is known about the ALF's membership or location, according to a spokesman for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. But PETA sometimes speaks for the ALF, which contacts PETA anonymously. A PETA fact sheet says PETA has an Activist Defense Fund that helps pay legal fees of individuals accused of liberation-related activities.
In the past 15 months ALF has claimed responsibility for about a dozen incidents at the Chesapeake packing plant.
But over the weekend the campaign escalated when refrigeration equipment was damaged, spoiling meat. Intruders cut freon lines, electrical lines and two natural gas lines, Edmondson and police said.
The group had last vandalized two weeks ago, after being quiet for nearly a year, Edmondson said. In the incident two weeks ago, they left the message ``ALF is back.''
``We're going to do what we can to eliminate it,'' he said. ``But when you're down and you get hit again before you can get up, it makes it hard.''
Edmondson's theory is the group will focus its attention on slaughterhouses in the area.
Benjamin Brooke, one of the owners of Southern Packing Corp., is watching closely.
``They haven't bothered us,'' he said. ``But I'm not saying what could happen tomorrow. You have to be concerned. You just don't know what these people have in mind.''
Brooke said that unlike Edmondson he has security around the clock. He has an alarm system but still plans to beef up security with more people.
``We're prepared to prosecute if we have a problem,'' he said. ``If they come on private property with these shenanigans, it's time to take a stand.''
Brooke, 68, said his operation is similar to Central Meat's. His plant slaughters 300 to 400 animals a week and supplies area restaurants with veal, beef and pork.
The company has operated about 65 years, relocating from Norfolk to Chesapeake in 1971, he said.
Smithfield Foods, where 70,000 pigs are slaughtered a day, has tight security in place.
But slaughterhouses are not the only targets of groups like ALF.
Hugh Vaughan, president of Lowenthal Furriers in Virginia Beach, said ALF signed its name in graffiti in one of four incidents at his store. With it were the words ``If you don't stop, we will stop you.''
The most recent incident was in March, when windows were broken with cinder blocks and what police told him were wrist rockets that shoot marbles, Vaughan said. A week later, the store received a phone call in which someone shouted expletives, then said, ``ALF broke your windows.''
Vaughan said he suspects that might have been a failed break-in attempt for which ALF took credit.
He also said authorities have told him about vandalism near Easter at two ham stores in Virginia Beach and one in Chesapeake, and another at a Virginia Beach McDonald's in which ALF is suspected. That information could not immediately be confirmed.
``I think they are taking advantage of the fact that PETA is moving their headquarters to Norfolk,'' Vaughan said.
Evidence of the anti-meat sentiment also was evident shortly after a Golden Corral restaurant opened in Chesapeake.
A restaurant manager confirmed the building was spray-painted about two years ago.
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