About five weeks after animal rights activists liberated 10’000 minks from a fur farm in Ohio, they got what they had wished for: the mink farm will be closed.
However, this does not mean that no more animals will be exploited or killed on the premises.
Largest mink farm in North America shuts down
On 20 December 2022, the local newspaper The Delphos Herald from Ohio reported that the mink farm Lion Farms in Van Wert County, Ohio, is being closed. The reason for this appears to be the recent escape of thousands of minks from the farm.
Eddie Meyer, the operations manager of Lion Farms, the largest mink farm in North America, confirmed the news to the newspaper.
According to Meyer, the owner of Lion Farms, Rien Leeijen, informed employees on Monday, 19 December, that he is selling the business and that their last working day will be on Friday, 23 December.
Meyer believes that Leeijen is in talks with Cooper Farms, a turkey farming company in the region, about selling the farm to the company.
«Cooper Farms has no idea about minks, but they know their way around turkeys, so maybe that will be the next big turkey barn. I don’t know,» Meyer told the Delphos Herald.
All minks culled and disposed of
What will happen to the animals at the Van Wert mink farm? Unfortunately, the fate of the minks at Lion Farms has already been sealed.
Meyer confirmed to the Delphos Herald that all minks were “culled,” meaning they were slaughtered and then disposed of, rather than slaughtered and used for the purpose for which they were bred, which in this case is fur.
"Normally, we would keep the breeding animals for the next year," Meyer explained. "We breed ourselves, but this year the original plan was to close the farm, kill all the mink, cull them, and then completely disinfect the farm, because the mink were returning to the farm." The farm then intended to purchase a "breeding stock" of new mink and start operations from scratch.
However, the farmers were concerned that the mink returning to the farm after the outbreak might have brought diseases with them – and as we learned during the COVID-19 pandemic, diseases can spread on mink farms rapidly. Therefore, Lion Farms decided to simply close the farm.
Animal Liberation Front as Mastermind
As a reminder: it all began on November 15, 2022, when a group of animal rights activists allegedly tore down the fencing of Lion Farms, freed approximately 10’000 mink from their cages, and released them from the farm. According to local news station WANE 15, after the action, "ALF" and "we’ll be back" were sprayed on the wall of Lion Farms, suggesting that the animal rights group Animal Liberation Front (ALF) was responsible.
The ALF claims that mink raised on farms retain their wild instincts and often fare well when released into the wild – or at least better than they would have been destined for slaughter in their cages at Lion Farms.
The ALF has specialized in the "economic sabotage" of businesses that exploit animals, with the goal of making "the trade in the lives of innocent, sentient beings" more costly and "abolishing the exploitation, imprisonment, torture and killing of all innocent, non-human animals."
Although the ALF's mink action was certainly controversial, it is clear that "extreme" actions can be effective, as this one was, leading to the closure of Lion Farms. Commercial animal farming – whether for fur, meat, or other products – has immense environmental impacts, and as governments and industry leaders refuse to take meaningful action on climate change, activists are compelled to be creative and take risks.
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