Minks set free from barns in 3 Ontario break-ins
Are they liberators or terrorists?
Militant activists who free farmed animals have struck in Canada before, and there’s speculation they could be behind three recent break-ins at mink farms in Southwestern Ontario.
Anonymous activists have claimed responsibility for one of the Southwestern Ontario raids through a California-based organization, the North American Animal Liberation Press Office, that says it supports and encourages the Animal Liberation Front, an underground activist movement.
“We did get a communiqué about one of the liberations and we have not received anything for the subsequent two liberations, but that doesn’t mean it is not the work of animal liberators,” Jerry Vlasak of the North American Animal Liberation Press Office said Wednesday.
“Of course, we support their actions,” Vlasak said. “We support anything that inflicts economic sabotage on the people who profit from animal suffering.”
Ontario Provincial Police in Wellington and Perth counties, where the three recent mink farm raids occurred, are working together to determine if they’re connected, said OPP Const. Kees Wijnands.
“We’re looking at everything with the big picture in mind,” Wijnands said.
He said police don’t know if the Animal Liberation Front is responsible for the recent attacks.
“That’s what everyone is saying, but we’re not saying anything like that,” he said.
The Animal Liberation Front, Vlasak said, is “an underground animal liberation movement.”
But those targeted by that group, or other animal rights activists who break into farms and open cages to free fox and mink, have a different name for it.
“This has been going on for years and years. They’re a kind of terrorist organization,” said Dave Bosma, a fur auctioneer for the last 35 years who works for North Bay, Ont.-based Fur Harvester’s Auction. “They release those animals and most of them get killed anyway.”
Mink, which can fetch as much as $150 per pelt at auction, depending on quality, are often targeted for “liberation” because activists say the animals can learn to survive on their own.
“The animals are capable of surviving in the wild and even if they won’t, they at least have a chance of survival,” said Vlasak. “In captivity, they have no chance of survival. They’ll be taken out of their cages and anally electrocuted.”
But farmers say the mink actually can’t survive on their own at all.
“Most of them don’t go anywhere. The young have no clue what to do, so they just stand there or group together,” said Gary Hazelwood, executive director of the Canadian Mink Breeders Association. “The assumption that the mink will go frolic in the woods and live happily ever after is false.”
In fact, those farmers who have had mink let out of cages often just have to turn on the feed machine and the animals will come back in anticipation of dinner.
Hazelwood has had his own close encounter with animal liberators.
In 1997, five Michigan people broke into a mink farm near Blenheim, releasing 1,500 pregnant mink. Many of the small, furbearing animals were recovered, but aborted their young and almost 500 others died.