Four legs good, two legs bad.

The article focuses on the controversy involving animal rights activists and the Hall family of Darley Oaks Farm in Straffordshire, England. Around 30 years ago, the Hall family diversified from dairy and sheep farming into breeding guinea pigs for use in research laboratories. Six years ago, they became the target of animal rights activists. They have been abandoned by frightened suppliers and employees and lost their entire dairy herd, which was slaughtered when their tormentors made it impossible for the milk to be collected. The nadir came last year, when activists stole the body of Gladys Hammond, mother-in-law of one of the Hall brothers, from its grave in the churchyard at Yoxall in Staffordshire. This week, the family gave up its struggle, saying that by the end of 2005 they would stop breeding guinea pigs at Darley Oaks Farm. They hope this will at last lead to the return of Hammond's remains. The brutality of the Halls' treatment at the hands of animal rights campaigners would never be suffered by one of their animals inside a British laboratory. Live animal research is more tightly regulated in Britain than anywhere else in the world. A 20-year-old law covering vertebrate animals (plus one species of octopus) determines that animal breeders and researchers must be licensed and are inspected by government officials on average ten times a year, often unannounced.