Bite Back Magazine #12. The front cover features one of the twenty-two broiler chickens taken from Lloyds Animal Feeds in Wiltshire, England, with an ALF activist on November 3rd 2006.[1]
Bite Back is a Malaysian-registered website and magazine that promotes the cause of the animal liberation movement, and specifically the Animal Liberation Front (ALF).[2] According to The Sunday Times, the name is inspired by an arson campaign targeting the American fur industry throughout the 1990s.[3]
Its founder and editor, Nicolas Atwood, has said that Bite Back's mission is to "support animal rights prisoners of conscience and report on current events in the struggle."[4]
Bite Back was set up in 2001 by Atwood, an animal rights activist in West Palm Beach, Florida.[6] In March 2005, Atwood set up a Florida-based company, Bite Back Inc, to operate the site and magazine sales.[3]
Magazine
As of February 2021, the magazine's website notes that the magazine is being published on an irregular schedule and no new subscriptions are being accepted.
Bite Back acts as a forum for ALF activists, and a place they can leave claims of responsibility for direct action taken in pursuit of animal liberation.[7] In 2006, it was used to encourage attacks against Oxford University, publishing personal details of academics and calling on supporters to "do whatever it takes" to "blow these fucking monsters off the planet".[4]
In 2007, when incendiary devices were found at Templeton College, Oxford, Bite Back reported a claim of responsibility on behalf of the Animal Liberation Front: "This latest action is part of an ongoing fight against the University of Oxford and its continued reign of terror over the unseen victims inside its animal labs."[8]
In 2005, Bite Back published a "Direct Action Report," listing action carried out by activists on a global scale. It writes that, in 2004, 17,262 animals were liberated, and 554 acts of sabotage, vandalism and arson were carried out.[2]
