AR-News: Seattle Times Editorial: That touch of mink, that's also a crime

[jim robertson]

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http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/editorialsopinion/2001679022_minked31.html


That touch of mink, that's also a crime

The Animal Liberation Front deserves no sympathy for its attack Monday on 
the Roesler Brothers Fur Farm, in which political zealots set loose 10,000 
mink.
The attack was not just about fur coats. The ALF, which already this year 
has firebombed an Arby's in New Mexico, burglarized a medical laboratory in 
Maryland and burned down a meat store in Illinois, has a radical agenda. It 
wants to stop all of us from using animals for fur, oils, food, medical 
experiments or anything.

And that is not a position that Americans can accept.

Most of us eat meat. We don't have to, but clearly we are evolved to. Most 
of us also use skin from domesticated animals for shoes, purses, belts and 
other items, which is morally no different from using the fur of a 
domesticated animal for a coat.

Almost all the animals we use for these things would not survive in the 
wild.

Many of us also enjoy pets, most of which would not survive in the wild.

And many of us rely upon advances in medical science that depend on the 
sacrifice of mice, monkeys and other animals that would not survive in the 
wild (at least not around here).

Mink are farm animals. While some might survive in the wild, clearly, 10,000 
of them could not be sustainable around Sultan. There is not enough for them 
to eat, and the things they would eat are already being relied upon by some 
other species.

Indeed, those mink that were not immediately recaptured or flattened by cars 
on Highway 2 have been surviving by killing chickens, geese and house cats.

How all this mayhem makes the Earth better is a mystery. It certainly 
terrorizes the mink farmers and the people around them.

The ALF calls it a "nonviolent campaign." It is not. It is malevolent and 
nasty.

And also a crime.


Copyright © 2003 The Seattle Times Company

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