Town shuts down ‘rabbit mill’ Bunny farm on Race Point Road draws accusations of animal cruelty, unpermitted activity By Erik Borg BANNER CORRESPONDENT PROVINCETOWN — A local man’s rabbit breeding business on the outskirts of Provincetown is being forced to shut down after triggering accusations of animal cruelty and unpermitted commercial activity. Ken Abert was found raising as many as 50 rabbits for their meat and fur at Nelson Stables last month after neighbors complained to police about poor living conditions for the animals. Abert had been keeping the rabbits in cages inside two horse stalls at the stables, which he subleased from the facility’s primary tenant, Flying Changes Farm. The property, located at 43 Race Point Road, is owned by Ted Malone. An inspection from the Mass. Division of Animal Health earlier this month found no major violations, but the town is following through with a shut-down order based on a violation of the town’s zoning bylaw restriction on commercial livestock. The town’s building commissioner issued a notice Oct. 15 ordering the activity to cease at the site within seven days. Malone, who is the president of Community Resources Inc., said he was previously unaware of the full scale of the rabbit operation at his property. He believed the rabbits were housed as someone’s pets and that the owner made yarn from their fur, he wrote by e-mail earlier this week. It wasn’t until recently that he became aware that they were being raised for their meat, he added. Kerry Castle, who runs the horse farm that subleased the two stables to Abert, could not be reached for comment. Malone discussed the matter last week with town officials, who informed him that the operation was not encompassed under the property’s special permit to operate as a horse stable. In light of the zoning violation, Malone has ordered Abert to remove the rabbits and vacate the property by Oct. 22, he said. Accounts of poor conditions at the stables began to circulate heavily online last week, prompting mounting calls for the town to intervene. Animal Welfare Committee chair Carol MacDonald visited the cages earlier this month and reported a “disturbing” and “inhumane” scene. “I was astonished to see that many rabbits jammed into not really enough cages,” she said. She estimated that as many as 50 rabbits, many of them very young, were stacked on top of one another so that the bottom cages did not receive light. In many cases, the cages were not lined with a bottom so that rabbits were exposed to the mesh wiring and they would defecate onto the rabbits below them, she said. “It was a terrible thing, like a puppy mill, but it was a rabbit mill,” she said. The Animal Welfare Committee initially discussed plans to raise funds to buy the animals from Abert and redistribute them as pets, but scrapped the plans once Abert made it clear he would not sell, MacDonald said. Abert said Monday that he intends to comply with the town’s shut-down order but hopes to find a new location on the Outer Cape to raise his rabbits. He maintains that he has been unfairly targeted by neighbors who are simply opposed to his legitimate form of animal agriculture in Provincetown. “The last few days have been one of the most difficult periods of my life. I have been raising rabbits for the past 20 years and I feel I have been personally attacked and subjected to a vicious social media campaign,” he said Monday. Abert said he moved to Provincetown from Boston in December and quickly began raising Angora fur rabbits at the stables. He shears the Angora rabbits three to four times a year at the barn and sells the fiber along with hand-dyed yarn at sheep and wool festivals across New England and New York, he said. The meat rabbits are a newer venture, he said. Eventually, his plan is to sell the meat to local restaurants, but so far they have only been raised for his own consumption, he said. The slaughtering occurs “off-Cape,” he said, though he didn’t indicate a specific location. The nearest slaughterhouse in Bridgewater is not permitted for rabbits. Abert refuted the claims of overcrowding, stating that it would actually be counter-productive to his goal of bringing rabbits to market weight as soon as possible. He also maintained that all rabbit cages have a bedding floor and access to light. “All my rabbits are well cared for,” he said.
Posted on: Thu, 23 Oct 2014 09:13:26 +0000
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