From: Tom Mohoric, President, FCUSA

From: Tom Mohoric, President, FCUSA
June 18, 1998
House Judiciary Committee
Subcommittee on Crime
Washington, DC 20515
Thank you for holding the long-overdue June 9 hearing on eco-terror. We greatly appreciate the efforts of Congressmen McCollum and Riggs in this regard and ask that you expand the hearings to the full committee and work to extend hearings to the Senate.
Please add the following comments to the official record of the June 9 hearing. The Fur Commission is a non-profit trade association representing over 600 U.S.-based fur farmers. Like so many in resource-based industries, fur farmers have endured acts of sabotage and had thousands of domesticated animals released from their cages to certain death and injury. Timber workers are experiencing the impacts of a coordinated campaign against their industries with incidents of sabotage against logging equipment and the Unabomber letter bomb killing of California Forestry Association’s Gil Murray. Ranchers tell of vandalism on their lands, including cattle killings and bombings. Animal research scientists at universities are well aware of the personal risks associated with curing society’s ills. And the list goes on and on.
Many groups around the country are keeping records of incidents of violence against their particular industry but a shocking snapshot of eco-terror crimes is found on the Animal Liberation Front’s website at http://envirolink.org/ALF/index.html. Ron Arnold’s Eco-Terror: The Violent Agenda To Save Nature, which has been distributed to every office on Capitol Hill, details the escalating level of violence directed against resource providers. Additionally, for the record, we are including a report listing several hundred incidents against the fur industry.
We in animal and resource-based industries believe we need a national discussion of why violence against resource providers is happening. Perhaps it is time to analyze the recent urbanization of America, the urban/rural split, the increasing incidents of violence against rural producers. What causes this violent symptom and is there a cure? What causes the consumers in industrial societies to attack the producers who feed, clothe and shelter them?
We agree that RICO may be an option for prosecuting those engaged in sophisticated, violent, organized campaigns against resource providers. Also, we believe the Animal Enterprise Protection Act, a law fur farmers aggressively worked to pass, could be expanded to include other resource providers.
At the minimum, non-profit status should be withdrawn from groups involved in “direct action.” We should be subsidizing educational activities, not intimidation, hate propaganda and violence.
Please consider our comments and we stand by with expert witnesses available to participate in this debate.
Thank you for your time and consideration,
Tom Mohoric, President
cc:
Senator Orrin Hatch, Chair, Senate Judiciary Committee
Cong. Riggs, California
Cong. McCollum, Chair, Subcommittee on Crime, House Judiciary Committee
Cong. Henry Hyde, Chair, House Judiciary Committee
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For further information contact Fur Commission USA.
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