TRANSCRIPT:

Any social movement is going to have a wide range of motion. Because you associate yourself with a cause doesn't mean that you agree with everybody else on strategy or tactics or ideology. We think we occupy the mainstream of American thought, and we're trying to appeal to people and move them along incrementally, because that's how most change happens.

I think that the groups that are more strident or radical, they obviously have their place in really highlighting a lot of these problems and being out on the edge, in the margins, in talking about things that many people might otherwise not want to discuss. The danger comes with their being so strident that people shut down or turn off, or get a view of the whole cause that is unflattering. That's what you don't want.

There are just a handful of cases, truly a handful, in the history of the animal welfare movement where people have been very menacing or threatening or actually committed violence. Fortunately, no person has ever been harmed, and that's as it should be. The idea that someone would pursue a strategy of violence to advance a cause built on nonviolence and kindness and compassion is so at odds with what it's about that it should not be classed or categorized as part of this movement. We absolutely, unalterably denounce anyone who espouses such thinking. It is not part of the same movement that I'm a part of. From a tactical perspective, it retards our progress -- separate from being morally wrong, which is ultimately the most important piece. As a strategy, it just hands our opponents a strategic opportunity to lay claim to the moral high ground when it's exactly the opposite. If our political adversaries are making victims of animals, if they are engaging in daily violence to them, there's no reason for us to revert to their level and also engage in violence.