Animal activists aren’t known to take laws into their own hands when advocating for their cause as it doesn’t align with their fundamental principles. Instead, they would typically invest in creating awareness and engaging the relevant authorities to handle animal abuse. That is why it’s difficult to come to terms with the fact that there’s an animal rights group that has now become an eco-terrorist organization, as critics call it.
The group, named the Animal Liberation Front (ALF), is a decentralized socio-political organization without a leader. According to the FBI, they are a “loosely organized extremist movement committed to ending the abuse and exploitation of animals.”
They’re popular for their radicalism which largely involves raiding farms and laboratories to release animals. One of their most recent activities happened on August 11 when they reportedly released 3000 minks from a farm in Wisconsin during a late-night operation.
According to reports from The Star Tribune, the animal rights activists broke into the Olsen Fur Farm between late night and the wee hours of the morning by cutting through a chain link fence. The perpetrators then opened the cages and let the animals run wild. It wasn’t until the next morning that the owners realized that their farm had been raided.
ALF accepted responsibility for the heist in an anonymous message released by their North American Animal Liberation Press Office. “It’s operational for now, but maybe releasing several hundred mink has a chance to close it for good. We hope many of the mink enjoy their freedom in the wild and that this farm will be unable to breed thousands upon thousands of them in future years,” the statement read. The group also admitted that they had raided the same farm in 1997 and released 800 minks.
However, the president of the Fur Commission USA, Challis Hobbs, has stated that the group’s action is counterintuitive to their cause. In his words, the released minks “basically just die because there’s nothing to eat, and they don’t have burrows to find security from predator attacks. It messes with the ecosystem.” Fortunately, law enforcement has confirmed that about 90% of the animals have been recovered.
Minks are small carnivorous animals from the weasel family whose existence is mostly threatened by fur farms. These farms breed them for their furs which serve as quality raw materials for the fashion industry.
Since it takes about 60 minks to produce one fur coat, minks are killed in large numbers to satisfy the high demand for them. As you can imagine, this news is every animal rights activist’s worst nightmare, even though the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) classifies them as “least concern.”
While animal rights activism is a laudable cause, it remains counterproductive and illegal to use extreme measures to pass the point across.
To that end, law enforcement agencies are trying to close in on perpetrators of this crime and bring them to book.
Individuals with information about any unusual nocturnal activities on August 11 in the State Road 121 area are encouraged to come forward.
