5 December 2005

Animal rights website closed down after legal threats from bacon company

A bacon company has taken legal action to close down an animal rights website that criticises their farming methods.

This week the Wellington Animal Rights Network had registered www.premierbacon.co.nz and set up a website criticising the Carterton based Premier Bacon Company and factory pig farming. The site contained photos of pigs in crates from farms that supply Premier Bacon. WARN says factory farming is inhumane and should be abolished.

On Thursday, members of Wellington Animal Rights Network ambushed a Premier Bacon delivery truck in central Wellington and chained themselves to it. Three protesters were arrested.

WARN spokesperson and owner of the domain name, Mark Eden, says he is not surprised that Premier Bacon would try and shut down the website.

"The more information we put out about factory farming, the more companies involved in it will lose money, because most people are appalled at the way pigs are treated on factory farms. Premier Bacon is afraid of debate because they know they can't win, and that is why they are resorting to bully boy tactics to shut down our website" he said.

Technical contact Rochelle Rees says, "Premier Bacon hired a company called IT Law to have the website shut down. They not only tried to shut the website down, they also threatened legal action against our website provider if they did not cut off the link to the server. We responded by putting the site out of reach on a server in the United States.

"Unfortunately they had also contacted the domain registrar who as a result shut the site down temporarily awaiting a review. We have modified the content on the site and hope to have it back up by Monday."

ENDS

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