2400 Captive Mink Freed from Farm of Fur Commission Board Member Cindy Moyle
Received Anonymously
July 30, 2013
On the evening of July 28, 2013, friends of wildlife entered the Burley, Idaho, mink farm of Fur Commission USA Board Member Cindy Moyle, compromised the perimeter fencing, and set up roving surveillance of the on-site night watchman. We then liberated the entirety of her breeding stock into the wild, emptying over twenty-five percent of this wildlife prison.
Illuminated in the moonlight, 2400 of these wild creatures climbed out of the cages where they had passed their entire lives in isolated darkness, to feel the grass under their feet for the first time. Their initial timidity quickly became a cacophony of gleeful squealing, playing, cavorting, and swimming in the creek that runs directly behind the Moyle property. They will live out their new lives along the Snake River watershed.
Cindy Moyle is a current Board Member, and former Treasurer, of the Fur Commission USA. After the recent leadership shuffling in FCUSA, we felt that the Moyle Mink Ranch would be perfect to test out the efficacy of FCUSA’s new emphasis on farm security.The Moyles are a mink dynasty in Idaho, operating up to eight farms, their own in-house feed operation, and a tannery. Those doubtful of our resourcefulness and guile have in the past called the Moyle farms impenetrable. Indeed, this is the first time that anyone has attempted action against one of them.
Having now had the pleasure of testing them ourselves, we wholeheartedly approve of the new FCUSA security guidelines. We are happy to see FCUSA members increasing their overhead on security – it means they are only that much closer to bankruptcy when we raid their farms. In the case of the Moyles, the breeding records we destroyed represent over thirty years of painstaking genetic selection. There will be no recovering these genetic lines.
Aside from their operations harming helpless animals, the Moyles have also been federally investigated for exploiting undocumented workers and trafficking endangered species. Mike Moyle, ex-mink farmer and the current Idaho House Majority Leader, has used his political position to block Idaho neighborhoods from being able to declare his family’s foul and fly- infested prisons to be public nuisances.
The fur industry will no doubt propagate falsehoods regarding this act of kindness.
They will claim that we are terrorists. We say that if peacefully opening cages is an act of terrorism, then the word has no meaning. It is appropriately applied to the mass imprisonment and killing of wild animals.
They will claim that these mink are domesticated animals and will starve. Documentation on the success of farm-bred mink in the wild is extensive, so we will add only our experience watching these naturally aquatic animals, who had spent their entire lives in cages, head instinctively for water and begin to swim and hunt.
They will claim that conditions on mink farms are humane. We ask why, then, they try only to hide those farms from the public, pushing for legislation to criminalize the taking of photographs. The mink that we freed from the Moyles lived in intensive confinement in their own waste. Their suffering was plain to the eye, and their yearning for freedom plain to the soul.
They will say that our raid may inspire copycat actions. We say that it undoubtedly will. It is a glorious thing that we live in a world where individuals regularly demonstrate the ultimate act of compassion – risking their freedom for the freedom of others.
They will say that we will not stop short of the complete and total end of the killing of animals for their fur. On this point we are in total agreement.
We act with love in our hearts.
[Press Office note: In the 93 fur farm raids since 1996, over 130,000 animals have been liberated with only a handful of arrests. Imprisoned in cages for life, or mercilessly trapped with painful leghold traps in the wild, fur-bearing animals killed to make unnecessary fashion statements are forced to endure intensive confinement, compared to the miles of territory these still-wild animals would enjoy in their natural state. The natural instincts of these captive animals are completely frustrated; self-mutilation, sickness, infection, poor sanitation and the sheer stress of confinement lead animals in captivity to premature death. When they survive, animals of sufficient size are killed by anal electrocution or gassing, then skinned. In addition to liberating the wild animals destined for a certain, painful and agonizing death, another goal of liberationists is to cause economic damage to fur retailers and farms; dozens of stores and fur farming operations have seen economic ruin since “Operation Bite Back” began by the Animal Liberation Front in the 1990s.
With the information contained in The Final Nail, two people with a car and $20 in tools can rescue thousands of animals in one hour.
The Final Nail #4 can be reviewed or downloaded at the following link: https://finalnail.wordpress.com/
Anyone so inclined can utilize economic sabotage in addition to the direct liberation of animals from conditions of abuse and imprisonment to halt needless animal suffering. By making it more expensive to trade in the lives of innocent, sentient beings, we maintain the atrocities against our brothers and sisters are likely to occur in smaller numbers; our goal is to abolish the exploitation, imprisonment, torture and killing of innocent, non-human animals.]