Sheriff’s deputies in two Iowa counties are now investigating apparent incidents by animal-rights activists Farmers say a year earlier, vandals freed thousands of mink and hundreds of domestic birds from farms in Iowa. David Barbarash is a spokesman for the Animal Liberation Front. Speaking from British Columbia he said members are willing to trespass and break laws to free animals kept by humans for food, fur or medical experiments.
He says some deaths of mink will happen, from predators, cars or other accidents but death happens in nature and no human should interfere. Janice Golka says her ducks and geese were in aviaries, large pens where they can fly around, but intruders cut the netting one night this week.
She’d found them dead on the road and killed by predators, the humane lifestyle she says animal-rights protestors prefer. Golka and her husband raise ducks and geese for their hobby farm and pigeons to sell to labs across the country, but she won’t say where for fear the protestors would target those. Barbarash won’t say whether the people behind this week’s release of animals are Iowans, and says they won’t comment.
The Mills County Sheriff’s department says someone released pigeons, ducks and other birds from a farm near Glenwood this week. Sheriff Mac Taylor says a person or people went onto the farm sometime after midnight and released the birds.
He says they caused considerable damage to about seven aviary pens and released about 200 pigeons and waterfowl. Taylor says about a year ago, someone released birds from the same farm.
Hawks and predatory birds got some of the pigeons, and some just couldn’t fly very far. Taylor says authorities are taking it more seriously than a simple trespassing case.
He calls it a type of domestic terrorism, questions whether they’d hurt a farmer or officer if they’re caught in the act, and says FBI and other agencies are on the case.
