Fur farm raiding season begins: 2,400 mink freed from Idaho farm

Posted by Peter | 20 comments

Anonymous activists raid fur farm owned by Fur Commission USA board member.

Update: In media reports, the number of mink released now ranges from 3,600 to 4,800.

In a detailed communique received by Bite Back, “friends of wildlife” took credit for the second significant animal liberation in one week: releasing the entire breeding stock from the Burley, Idaho mink farm owned by Fur Commission USA board member Cindy Moyle. The communique stated that on the night of July 28th, approximately 2,400 animals were released.

This action is the first fur farm raid of what is unofficially known as “fur farm raiding season”. Starting in June, mink start to become mature enough to survive without their mothers, and mink on fur farms start to be killed in late-November. So historically, the Animal Liberation Front has struck almost entirely inside this window.

Damages estimated at nearly $1 million

Update: A press release from the Fur Commission dispute’s the police figure of animals released, and puts the number at “under 4,000.”

Local media is reporting the mink on the Moyle farm are valued at $100 each, but that the breeding stock are “more valuable.” Police have stated the number of mink released is 4,800, twice the communique’s estimate of 2,400.

We can reach a dollar-amount estimate of what this raid will cost Cindy Moyle based on these assumptions:

• The breeding stock must be pelted out entirely, and will be a total loss because the farmer cannot tell which mink is which.
• The breeders are very conservatively worth $200 each.
• 4,800 mink were released (as stated by police).

By these figures, this raid will conservatively cost the fur farmer $960,000, or  just under $1 million.

The weak link: Breeding stock targeted

In a highly strategic move, the activists bypassed the majority of the mink on the farm and specifically released the breeding stock. Breeders represent a lynchpin for any farm. The quality of a mink’s pelt, and thus the price it can command at fur auctions, is most heavily defined by the farm’s specific breeding stock.

When breeders are released, they mix together and the farmer is unable to link each mink to its specific breeding records. Whatever animals are recaptured no longer have any breeding value, and must be pelted out. Breeding stock can be extremely valuable, sometimes worth over $1,000 each.

To quote Cindy Moyle, who spoke the the media after the raid:

“There is no way to connect the breeding history with the females now.”

What’s more, a farm’s breeding stock can represent a lifetime of work. There is unlikely to be any “genetic backup” for lost breeding stock, and a farm is forced to start it’s entire breeding program from scratch – a blow that can set a farm back decades.

Fur Commission’s security guidelines put to the test

As a board member of the Fur Commission USA, Cindy Moyle should be expected to adhere to security guidelines advised by her own group. However as the communique suggested, FCUSA board members apparently either don’t follow their own advice, or the recommended security is easily circumvented.

The communique stated the Moyle mink farm was chosen, in part, to “test out the efficacy of FCUSA’s new emphasis on farm security.” This refers to the Fur Commission USA recently shifting its focus from public relations to farm security, a move which indicates in part that fur farmers feel the Animal Liberation Front represents the biggest threat to their survival.

This shift in focus was marked in part by the publication of a security guide: “Site Security: Strategies and Protocols” The Fur Commission manual, which was alluded to in this communique for Moyle raid, gives instructions on how fur farmers can protect their farms from the Animal Liberation Front. (This guide has been obtained by Animal Liberation Frontline, and can be read here.)\

Challenging fur industry lies, preemptively

The lengthy communique also addresses several of the most common falsehoods repeated by the fur industry in the wake of mink releases. Among them, the survivability of farm-raised mink in the wild, and the labeling of animal liberators as “terrorists.”

There is one fur industry claim the authors don’t refute. From the communique:

“They will say that our raid may inspire copycat actions. We say that it undoubtedly will. It is a glorious thing that we live in a world where individuals regularly demonstrate the ultimate act of compassion – risking their freedom for the freedom of others.”

Summer is heating up

In the last week, pheasants were freed from a California farm, a horse slaughterhouse was set on fire, and now a large-scale mink liberation. With this surge in activity, this summer is on the fast-track to the ALF’s most prolific in years.

Full communique for Cindy Moyle mink release

“On the evening of July 28, 2013, friends of wildlife entered the Burley, Idaho, mink farm of Fur Commission USA Board Member Cindy Moyle, compromised the perimeter fencing, and set up roving surveillance of the on-site night watchman. We then liberated the entirety of her breeding stock into the wild, emptying over twenty-five percent of this wildlife prison.

Illuminated in the moonlight, 2400 of these wild creatures climbed out of the cages where they had passed their entire lives in isolated darkness, to feel the grass under their feet for the first time. Their initial timidity quickly became a
cacophony of gleeful squealing, playing, cavorting, and swimming in the creek that runs directly behind the Moyle property. They will live out their new lives along the Snake River watershed.

Cindy Moyle is a current Board Member, and former Treasurer, of the Fur Commission USA. After the recent leadership shuffling in FCUSA, we felt that the Moyle Mink Ranch would be perfect to test out the efficacy of FCUSA’s new emphasis on farm security.The Moyles are a mink dynasty in Idaho, operating up to eight farms, their own in-house feed operation, and a tannery. Those doubtful of our resourcefulness and guile have in the past called the Moyle farms impenetrable. Indeed, this is the first time that anyone has attempted action against one of them.

Having now had the pleasure of testing them ourselves, we wholeheartedly approve of the new FCUSA security guidelines. We are happy to see FCUSA members increasing their overhead on security – it means they are only that much closer to bankruptcy when we raid their farms. In the case of the Moyles, the breeding records we destroyed represent over thirty years of painstaking
genetic selection. There will be no recovering these genetic lines.

Aside from their operations harming helpless animals, the Moyles have also been federally investigated for exploiting undocumented workers and trafficking endangered species. Mike Moyle, ex-mink farmer and the current Idaho House Majority Leader, has used his political position to block Idaho neighborhoods from being able to declare his family’s foul and fly- infested prisons to be public nuisances.

The fur industry will no doubt propagate falsehoods regarding this act of kindness.

They will claim that we are terrorists. We say that if peacefully opening cages is an act of terrorism, then the word has no meaning. It is appropriately applied to the mass imprisonment and killing of wild animals.

They will claim that these mink are domesticated animals and will starve. Documentation on the success of farm-bred mink in the wild is extensive, so we will add only our experience watching these naturally aquatic animals, who had spent their entire lives in cages, head instinctively for water and begin to swim and hunt.

They will claim that conditions on mink farms are humane. We ask why, then, they try only to hide those farms from the public, pushing for legislation to criminalize the taking of photographs. The mink that we freed from the Moyles lived in intensive confinement in their own waste. Their suffering was plain to the eye, and their yearning for freedom plain to the soul.

They will say that our raid may inspire copycat actions. We say that it undoubtedly will. It is a glorious thing that we live in a world where individuals regularly demonstrate the ultimate act of compassion – risking their freedom for the freedom of others.

They will say that we will not stop short of the complete and total end of the killing of animals for their fur. On this point we are in total agreement.

We act with love in our hearts.”