Another year has passed and because we apparently enjoy spending hours doing the maths, we have a list of the 2023 reported animal liberation actions by country, type and target!
It is worth mentioning, as always, that this list is in no way exhaustive as many people might decide to take action and not report it and because we keep an eye on platforms that use English, Spanish, Italian and German as their main languages, but we might’ve missed many other actions published in other platforms or by other countries!
The total of reported animal liberation actions in 2023 is 99. Of those, 58 are sabotages, 30 are liberations and 11 are arsons.
Surprisingly and unlike other years, action against the flesh industry and sabotage against hunting infrastructure have equalised, with 40 reported actions against the meat industry and 41 against hunting. This is notable as in previous years we have seen a huge disparity in the numbers, with hunting infrastructure reported a lot more times than any other kind of target.
We’ve seen two reported actions against vivisection (both attacks against infrastructure, not liberations), we’ve received ten reports against fur farming (mostly coming from the USA as the campaign to free as many fur farmed animals as possible has continued) and six reports against animals used for entertainment, be it zoos, circus or the pet industry.
It is noteworthy on the action against fur farming that as well as seeing lots of farm releases in the USA, 2023 saw an arson at Saga Furs in Finland.
By country, this is the list of reported actions:
United Kingdom: 22
Germany: 15
USA: 13
Italy: 12
France: 6
Sweden: 5
Belgium: 4
Chile: 4
Denmark: 3
Greece: 3
Ireland: 3
Spain: 3
Czech Republic: 2
Finland: 2
Australia: 1
Netherlands: 1
Italy and Germany as it has become the norm compete for the country with most reported anti-hunting actions, whilst the UK placed 1st on number of reported liberations, with almost 90% of the reported actions being liberations from flesh farms.
This year also saw Denmark kicking hard, with a lobster liberation report ending in a great pressure campaign that would force a supermarket to stop selling live lobsters, and with a report from a hatchery that mentioned 20k fertilised eggs had been destroyed before they could start being incubated.
The USA reminded us that targeted campaigning works, with multiple fur farms reported shut (via NAALPO), but it was Sweden that really celebrated the closure of a fur farm, as Niclas Peterson’s mink farm in Falkenberg was shut for good after an incredibly strong campaign.
We also reported over 50 actions related to the ECO struggle, a vast majority of them coming from the Atlanta Forest and the Mountain Valley Pipeline campaigns in the USA, but also a good chunk from Germany, which seems to have sprouted “Switch off!”, who are really leading the way in insurrectionary eco struggle in Europe.
In the prisoner support corner, it was great too hear that all folks arrested and charged because of T&S campaign related actions had been freed without sentences, but most importantly it’s been incredible to know that Eric King is finally free!
See you in the new year, and until then, please go to a prison near you and make a fuck load of noise this evening, so that the people locked up know someone is celebrating with them!
FIGHT BACK!