A spokesman for the trade group called Fur Commission U.S.A. says someone illegally entered a mink farm in southwest Iowa near Woodbine Monday night.
Spokesman Challis Hobbs says a farmer, his son and grandson raise more than 1,000 mink and found the perimeter fence torn down. “That’s what they woke up to, a lot of the pens had been opened…like the nest box…where it’s warm…where the mink stay,” he says. “The people who came in…destroyed those.”
Hobbs says about half of the mink stayed around and they’ve been working to find the others as they are domesticated and don’t do well in the wild. “What we see time and time again is like within 24 to 48 hours, if the farmer can’t recover them, the majority of them die,” Hobbs says.
The mink might survive for awhile eating any birds or chickens they can find, according to Hobbs, but released minks often die or are hit on a roadway and killed.
Hobbs says there have been recent attacks on fur farms in Ohio and Pennsylvania. “Everyone who’s been caught doing this has been activists. It’s very organized,” Hobbs says. “It’s organized crime. It really is.”
He says local law enforcement and the FBI are investigating the Woodbine case. “These crimes do fall under the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act,” Hobbs says. “…The government does see this as domestic terrorism because they’re intentionally going on these farms and trying to basically shut them down and put these put these farming families out of business.”
Hobbs says two people caught in the Pennsylvania face multiple charges. Hobbs says the animals’ pelts cost around $45 each, but it can cost the farmer much more in losing animals for breeding.