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Comment by jerojero | Hacker News Reader

This sort of activism, if it was that, is really not a good thing. Not because animals don't deserve to be free but because usually these animals can destroy the local ecosystems.

I remember one time people tried to free rat labs from the immunology lab at my university, not only these rats are not capable of surviving in the wild but also they actually carry lots of dangerous genes and diseases that should absolutely not be out there in the wild, because, well that's exactly what is being researched.

There's definitely space for bigger conversations but we should be much more careful with the way we do activism.

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> these animals can destroy the local ecosystems.

Mink are native to Ohio and all of N. America. Fur farms are more harmful to local ecosystems than mink could ever be. The local impact of fur farms leads to the degradation of land, rural life, property values and economic activities. Plus, waste runoff seeps into soil and waterways, causing severe damage to local ecosystems. The concern here is only their threat to livestock, not the ecosystem. Humans are the problem, as always, not the mink. And the search for civilization continues.

Not really activism, rather ecology/bioterrorism as this will have a disastrous impact on the ecosystem.

Minks eat frogs, fish, crayfish, mice, voles, muskrats, shrew, moles, freshwater mussels, turtles, snakes, birds, birdeggs, insects.. And with 10k released on the spot, well it's not hard to figure out what will happen.

Minks also have 6-10 babies per year.

In the 1980s something a bit similar happened here in the same suburb where Microsoft is headquartered. Mink breeding was a hobby farming fad that didn’t pay off, so the farmers just released them. Now they’re a predator that can wriggle expertly through chicken wire and take out your hens. Heartbreaking when it happens.

chickens are profoundly stupid, basically dirty habits, and there are endless numbers of them, mostly in ugly captivity. Yet humans are so competitive to any other meat eaters that 'zero tolerance use of deadly force' is accepted at face-value in a thousand casual conversations. Is it any wonder that more than half of all other large mammals are now gone forever?

I think you’re largely right. Except somehow many of us fall in love with chickens once we care for them. And mine sure aren’t in ugly captivity.

I say these things mostly in support of your point, because my attitude is profoundly irrational. OTOH I have no problem with farming animals humanely.

I had happy chickens myself for years; they had a great time in their dirty chicken way, and I ate some eggs too. I distinctly recall thinking about predators at the time, and I totally stand by my comment..

Is it more heartbreaking when a couple thousand minks kill a couple thousand chicken so that they can survive or when a couple million chickens get slaughtered industrially to make nuggets so industrial nobody should deserve to eat? In the same kind of line: is it more heartbreaking that cats (that we feed and reproduce) kill 500 bird a year each or that suburban expansion, car noise and dangerous highways kills and displaces whole populations? Once again: is it more heartbreaking that poor black people put their tens of kilo of trash out in the street or in a random freestyle dump or that rich white dudes release literal tons of co2 and high-tech trash around the world by flying all the time and buying/discarding useless stuff all the time?

Widen your lens and check the context. You'll see the pollution/exploitation/.. is always in fine done in the name of the people that matter. (the flip side of this being: you can be a zero-waste green-everything aficionado all you want, if you live in the western world, you will have a negative impact globally just because you're living off of stuff that is done in this way) Malcom Ferdinand has popped off mainstream recently writing about these subjects.

People living outside of the Western world also have a negative impact globally. In many cases a much worse one.

> People living outside of the Western world also have a negative impact globally.

Yes we live in a globalized society, everything is linked. Now what?

> In many cases a much worse one.

This is wrong. You seem pretty shallowly convinced so i will just negate you and provide just as much evidence. As far as i'm concerned, i will be happy if this conversation made you actually look up some evidence (to support your point). I'd bet a lot that you will be surprised by what you will find, but hey, everybody deserves to believe what they want when they don't know. Respect (honest). Now i'm out of this thread, it's starting to get out of hand.

Idk if you've ever been to a third world country, but turns out no one outside of the first world gives a ruling fuck about the environment. Trash cans in public aren't a thing. Chemicals are dumped into drinking water sources. Smoke is pumped into the air at staggering rates. First world countries are objectively way more environmentally friendly. Not saying that makes anyone better or worse ( lord knows I've contributed nothing on this front) just stating facts

Sorry I didn't provide any references but they're only a google search away.

https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/story/air-pollution-hu...

https://www.cgdev.org/media/developing-countries-are-respons...

https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/press-release/one-thre...

I'm sure you could argue that their pollution is worse due to all of the trade with wealthier countries, fair enough, but currently the only solution to that would deprive them of the vast majority of their income and would set those countries back decades if not centuries given that trade is a major driver of development within any country.

That’s why it helps to have a guard dog close to where the hens spend the night. Of course, that would mean for the dog to spend the night outside, not inside, as a pet.

> There's definitely space for bigger conversations but we should be much more careful with the way we do activism.

Where is that space and who is occupying it? What conversation do you think belongs there? I’m just not sure what this last paragraph is intended to convey.

At the heart of all this I feel sorry for the minks, and sorry even more for the psychological damage that humans, usually poor, have to endure to feed an absolutely horrific industry.

Having said that, if the perpetrators of this vandalism are caught, I’ll contribute to their legal fund. Love me some ALF chaos.

> I remember one time people tried to free rat labs from the immunology lab at my university, not only these rats are not capable of surviving in the wild but also they actually carry lots of dangerous genes and diseases that should absolutely not be out there in the wild, because, well that's exactly what is being researched.

Entire zombie movies have this as a starting premise:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/28_Days_Later

Also, you know, 2019-2022.

If we're going to start slinging blame, let's start where it's most appropriate: these farms should never have existed in the first place. Other countries have banned them, and the US should as well.

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