The Modesto Bee
News in brief from California's North Coast
The Associated Press
August 15, 2003

SONOMA, Calif. (AP) - Animal rights activists vandalized a new restaurant and damaged two adjacent businesses on this town's central plaza, police said. The break-in at Sonoma Saveurs this week followed attacks last month at the homes of two of the restaurant's three owners. The activists apparently object to the owners' connection to a producer of the goose liver delicacy known as foie gras. The initial attacks targeted the homes of co-owners Laurent Manrique and Didier Jaubert. Guillermo Gonzalez, the third partner, is the only producer of foie gras in the West. The company, Sonoma Foie Gras, was based in the Sonoma Valley but moved a few years ago to Stockton. The vandals broke through the wall to enter the restaurant - then spray-painted walls, fixtures and electrical outlets and poured dry concrete down the drains before leaving the water running, flooding the restaurant and two adjacent businesses. Police said the damage to all three businesses could reach $50,000. The Animal Liberation Front has been implicated in other acts of vandalism around Sonoma County, including arson fires at a Santa Rosa chicken processing plant and a meatpacking plant and an egg farm in Petaluma, as well as a burglary at the Farm Bureau during the past several years. "It's very, very disturbing," Jaubert said. "Everybody has an opinion. You can disagree with whatever. But there is a certain point where you should be concerned about what you are doing to other people."