LEWIS Booton, an innocent farmer, is this morning faced with a bill running into several thousands of pounds for damaged fencing carried out by animal rights extremists.

His crime? He happens to farm 300 acres next door to a wild boar farm in North Yorkshire targeted by the Animal Liberation Front.

Only days before Mr Booton's farm was attacked, animal rights activists launched a new offensive. They targeted shareholders of GlaxoSmithKline, Europe's biggest drugs company and a customer of Huntington Life Sciences, the controversial Cambridgeshire medical research group.

Investors - including several in the North-East and North Yorkshire - have been sent letters giving them 14 days to sell their shares or have their personal details published on a website.

This sounds innocent enough until you remember that three members of a "lunatic fringe" animal rights group were jailed last week for their role in a terror campaign, during which the body of an 82-year-old woman was stolen from her grave.

No one would like to see their personal details available to people like that.

So far, in the case of GlaxoSmith-Kline the attack appears to have backfired. The extremists hoped their action would send the company's share price into a downward spiral, but the ultimatum appears to have had a negligible impact.

The animal rights extremists just look mean and cruel for picking a fight with small shareholders.

Nor will the animal rights cause have been helped by an attack on an innocent farmer in North Yorkshire.

Already people who support the use of animals in medical research have started a campaign to take the fight to the extremists. Their online petition received a boost at the weekend when Tony Blair announced he would be signing it.

Mr Blair is also considering legislation to provide additional protection for the targets of animal rights extremists. If firmer measures are needed, he has promised to provide them.

No doubt militants who take the law into their own hands will justify the damage they do and the misery they cause as a means to an end.

But the damage they are doing to the cause of legitimate animal rights campaigners is far worse.