The world of professional bunny huggers never ceases to amaze and startle us, but a few recent events underscore just how twisted and bizarre the whole movement has become.

Yesterday arson and terrorism investigators in Los Angeles were called to the home of UCLA researcher Edythe London after it was set on fire. Police suspect that the arson was the work of animal activists. London, whose work with animals focuses on uncovering the causes of addiction and substance abuse, was also targeted in October by criminals from the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) who broke a window and used a garden hose to flood her home.

At the time, the ALF released an anonymous statement warning London that “It would have been just as easy to burn your house down.” The same group tried to torch the home of another UCLA scientist in 2006, but hit the wrong house—leaving a deadly Molotov cocktail on the front porch of a 70-year-old retiree.

Eight time zones away, animal rights activists in Great Britain are criticizing a grocery-store chain for making chicken more affordable. Tesco, the UK’s largest supermarket company, had announced that it would double its stock of more expensive “free range” birds while slashing prices on conventional chickens by 60 percent, so everyone could have at least one affordable option.

Setting aside the fact that “free range” chicken production isn’t always the most “humane” (click here and here for details), what’s wrong with having the freedom to choose? Plenty, if you believe in legal “rights” for animals. If a chicken were to have rights, the very first one would be the right to not be eaten—regardless of how comfortably it was kept.

Ultimately, complaints about cheaper poultry, and PETA’s recent call for a special environmental tax on meat, amount to the same thing: Animal activists would love see choices they don’t think we should have gradually priced out of our reach. And as a lunatic arsonist in Los Angeles demonstrated yesterday, they also don’t want us to have access to scientific discoveries that promise to improve our lives.