The Story of the 18 Rabbits Liberated from Portland Meat Collective
In a strange development, a rabbit rescue is forced to return 17 rabbits liberated from a Portland butchery school.
PDX Meat Collective butchers reclaim "stolen" rabbits
Then, in a tragic development Friday, January 13th, news came that the rabbits had been located and returned to the school to be killed.
The story so far…
At 4am on January 8th, the same night rabbits vanished from the meat school, 17 rabbits were dropped off anonymously at the doorstep of a rabbit rescue called “Rabbit Advocates”.
The rescue had no knowledge that the rabbits may have been liberated from the Portland Meat Collective. Over the next few days, every rabbit was found a home.
What happened next is not clear, but somewhere along the way, one of the parties involved (either Rabbit Advocates, the PDX Meat Collective, or one of the guardians of the rehomed rabbits) made the connection between the missing meat-school rabbits, and the rabbits dropped off at Rabbit Advocates.
News that the rescued rabbits had been given to Rabbit Advocates reached the butchery school. Lawyers got involved, and the negotiation process with Rabbit Advocates began, to have all 17 rabbits returned to the Portland Meat Collective to be killed in their self-butchery meat classes.
On Saturday, January 13th, at noon, members of the Portland Meat Collective went to the office of the lawyer for Rabbit Advocates to pick up the 17 rabbits and return them to the school. According to the Portland Meat Collective website, others also showed up at the lawyers office: including a police detective assigned to the case, a reporter from the channel 2 news, and 8 people who took in the rabbits to protest the rabbits’ return.
Butchers respond
The Portland Meat Collective made this statement (to fully appreciate how sick and schizophrenic this is, keep in mind as you read – they operate a school that will kill these rabbits in classes to train people how to kill animals for food):
We appreciate that the Rabbit Advocates were willing to return the animals to their rightful owner. We also appreciate that the Rabbit Advocates members, so far as we can tell, very much took care of the rabbits while they were gone from Levi’s property…. We also appreciate their concern for the rabbits, and want to assure them that while their owners raise them for different purposes than Rabbit Advocate foster homes do, they always have been and will be very well cared for.
The good news
The only good news to come from this development is that one of the rabbits has not been returned to the school. The person the rabbit was re-homed to is, so far, refusing to return the rabbit.
In either a public-relations move, or just something akin to a serial killer taunting and humiliating a kidnapped victim before death, the Portland Meat Collective has named the rabbit “Roger”.
The person who is currently in custody of the rabbit has a lawyer, and is in discussions with the PDX Meat Collective.
Hipster-ism gone mad: the self-butchery meat trend
Backyard self-butchering is a growing trend among neuvo-bohemian “progressives” of the Michael Pollan school, who wish to cultivate an image of being “sustainable” in the most amoral and pretentious way possible. This is one of several species-oppressive fashions that come to mind which originated in anarchist-based subcultures, before percolating up to mainline liberals and the leisure class.
The school says they have moved the reclaimed rabbits to “an undisclosed location”.
The hope for a re-liberation
While there has been no claim of responsibility made by the ALF or anyone else, there is a precedent for the Animal Liberation Front locating and re-liberating animals that have been returned to their abusers after rescues.
In 1985, rabbits liberated from the City of Hope were found by police and placed temporarily in an animal shelter while they awaited return to the lab. The ALF broke in shortly after and re-liberated the rabbits.
And in 2001, after a mink farmer boasted he had recaptured most of the mink released from his farm, the Animal Liberation Front returned to they farm they had raided 5 nights prior, and re-liberated every recaptured mink. The farm shut down.
We can only hope rescuers locate the new location of the rabbits, and deliver them to freedom for the second time.
– Peter Young
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Hi Peter this is indeed a sad story, & I think emphasises the caution needed in above ground actions to home liberated animals anonymously as the property status of animals & the piss off factor are more than likely to result in this sort of outcome. I was interested in your comment:
‘This is one of several species-oppressive fashions that come to mind which originated in anarchist-based subcultures, before percolating up to mainline liberals and the leisure class’.
particularly in relation to anarchist-based subcultures…. as a vegan anarchist who regularly rails against the Pollen/Salatin crap, can I respectfully suggest that the subculture you identified are more than likely not anarchist but just wankers! cheers jj 🙂
I am amazed at the way you push your values on other people! People that eat meat do not push it on others..but you vegans think you are right. Why can’t you just accept that not everyone..actually most people…don’t think like you. And for people to step up and want to beable to produce their own food is not a bad thing. There is not a country in the world where killing and eating animals is wrong..Although some countries do hold some animals sacred. I am proud to say that I can kill an animal to feed my family…and rabbits are yummy. We are not the fanatics..you are!
Rabbits are cute. This action was cute.
I was a little bit torn on this one too – because my politics are a little bit different than (I think) Young’s are.
I’m pretty-much vegan (but I don’t sweat it so much if I accidentally eat an egg-noodle or some white-bread so I don’t call myself vegan) – I think that large-scale, corporate animal abusers should be shut down – if they kill unnecessarily, for profit (huge profit). I want to see those guys go away – the Harris ranches and the Huntingdon Life Sciences. Those cats gotta go.
But when it’s individual meat-eaters – whose motives aren’t purely capitalist – I don’t really care… I can’t judge people because they eat meat. My mom eats meat (way too much.) My best friends eat meat – I don’t really care what they do.
And I (personally) don’t really care what these rabbit murderer people do.
But I do understand the impulse to save individual animals. I recently got kicked out my apartment for letting a cat out of a cat-trap. It wasn’t even really logical – they don’t kill cats at the Portland HSUS (for one – or that’s what everybody tells me at least) and having stray cats is bad for the eco-system (if anything really remains of it) – they kill the birds or whatever, right? but that cat – that individual cat… was so cute… and she really didn’t want to be in that cage…
I live in my van now because of that stupid cat (not on the lease). And it didn’t do anybody any good – that cat probably killed 4000 birds…
But I think it’s a moral IMPULSE. And it’s pretty cute really – who wouldn’t want to save bunnies?
I don’t know how you could OPPOSE this action – I don’t know how strategic it was – but… who’m I to talk? I saved a cat from nothing and probably damaged the neighborhood and now I sleep in my van… talk about strategy, right?
I just question how tactically relevant this is. Nobody’s trying to force veganism on everybody (right?) – I think they were just trying to save a couple of individual rabbits because they’re cute… I side with the rabbits and the kids who let them go – but other than that, these meat-collective people… kinda weird, but… *shrug*
This quote from pattrice jones popped into my mind when I read Karen’s comment:
“Eating meat is something you do to someone else’s body without their consent.” pattrice jones
but really I don’t expect Karen to get it, & really, we vegans, don’t think we are right, we KNOW we are right!
Thanks for your words against Michael Pollan and all that. It seems like more and more folks — including anarchists — are falling for the lie of sustainable/humane meat.
And most importantly, thanks to the folks who did this action!
I heard that there were nine rabbit kittens at the Portland Meat Collective that died because their mother was taken and the kittens were not taken. Why did this happen and why did you not write about it?
On every post on this guy’s page there’s an anti-ALF propagandist that has to chime in – you gettin paid for that?
dude, because I need a job :oP
The thing I find so disheartening about this whole affair is that this is about Liberal on Liberal violence. Both sides respect the animals in their own ways. I am against the industrialized incarceration and torture of meat animals – I couldn’t care less about some hipsters who need a new outfit for every purchased experience in their hollow existence; hell after killing a few animals, most of them are going to become vegetarian if not vegan anyway.
The thing I never understand is why conservatives can band together and put aside seemingly big differences to affect change for the worse. But we liberals quibble over 18 freakin’ rabbits. What are we doing about cows standing belly deep in shit? Cage after cage of beak-less chickens? Livestock packed into semis and hauled miles to their slaughter? 18 rabbits, really?
Kevin, your first mistake is assuming some or all parties involved in this discussion are “liberal,” and you also don’t even define liberal. Your second mistake is trivializing the lives of eighteen rabbits. Each life counts, just like the lives of eighteen people in a comfortable death camp would count.
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There’s another Indymedia article about these rabbits BTW, readers:
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2012/01/413684.shtml
I’m all for vegans. Herbivore meat tastes great.