Trapping,
beating, drowning and ripping animals' skins from their backs simply for
the sake of vanity is absolutely indefensible.
While most people know fur is cruel and unnecessary, in recent years it
has been seen making a comeback in stores.
Fur
farming has been banned in the UK, but it is not illegal to still sell
the fur of dead animals. 85%
percent of the fur industry’s skins come from animals living captive
in fur factory farms.(1)
As with other intensive-confinement animal farms, the methods used in
fur factory farms are designed to maximize profits, always at the expense
of the animals. A
large amount of fur is farmed abroad in places such as China, where the
animals are kept in tiny mesh cages with little food.
Painful
and Short Lives
The most commonly farmed fur-bearing
animals are mink, followed by foxes. Chinchillas, lynxes, and even hamsters
are also farmed for their fur.(2)
Even domestic dogs and cats are killed for their fur and every
year millions of seals are clubbed to death so that people can wear them.
73% percent of fur farms are in Europe, 12% are in North America, and
the rest are dispersed throughout the world, in countries such as Argentina,
China, and Russia.(3)
The animals, who are housed in unbearably small cages, live with fear, stress, disease, parasites, and other physical and psychological hardships.
Fur farmers pack animals into small cages, preventing them from taking more than a few steps back and forth. This crowding and confinement is especially distressing to mink - solitary animals who may occupy up to 2,500 acres of wetland habitat in the wild.(6)
The
anguish and frustration of life in a cage leads minks to self-mutilate
- biting at their skin, tails, and feet - and frantically pace and circle
endlessly.
Zoologists
at Oxford University who studied captive mink found that despite generations
of being bred for fur, mink have not been domesticated and suffer greatly
in captivity, especially if they are not given the opportunity to swim.(7)
Foxes, raccoons, and other animals suffer just as much and have been found
to cannibalize their cagemates in response to their crowded confinement.
Some countries cruelly trap wild animals and kill them for their furs.
Animals in the wild are often caught in cruel steel leghold traps that
snap shut on the animal’s leg or foot causing excruciating pain.
Often, they end up starving to death, or they will even chew off the trapped
limb in order to get away.
Semi-aquatic animals, such as beavers, are also trapped, but in underwater
cages. Once the beaver is caught in the trap, it is unable to resurface
and will drown.
Slaughter
Small animals may be crammed into boxes and poisoned with hot, unfiltered engine exhaust from a truck. Engine exhaust is not always lethal, and some animals wake up while they are being skinned. Larger animals have clamps attached to or rods forced into their mouths and rods are forced into their anuses, and they are painfully electrocuted. Other animals are poisoned with strychnine, which suffocates them by paralyzing their muscles with painful, rigid cramps.
Gassing, decompression chambers, and neck-breaking are other common slaughter methods in fur factory farms.
Undercover investigators from Swiss Animals Protection East/International spent the past year investigating fur farms in China’s Hebei Province and found that many animals, including dogs and foxes, are still alive and struggling desperately when workers flip them onto their backs or hang them up by their legs or tails to skin them. When workers on these farms begin to cut the skin and fur from an animal’s leg, the free limbs kick and writhe. Workers stomp on the necks and heads of animals who, fighting for their lives, struggle too hard to allow for a clean cut. When the fur is finally peeled off over the animals’ heads, their naked, bloody bodies are thrown onto a pile of those who have gone before them. Some are still alive, breathing in ragged gasps and blinking slowly. Some of the animals’ hearts are still beating five to 10 minutes after they are skinned. One investigator recorded a skinned raccoon dog on the heap of carcasses who had enough strength to lift his bloodied head and stare into the camera, with only his eyelashes still intact.
In Canada every year millions of seals are clubbed to death so that people can wear them. The methods for killing these animals makes the end of their painful lives worse. This issue has received extensive press coverage detailing the blood-bath and massacre which can be seen in one of the pictures to the left.
Companies also claim that fur is a by-product of the meat industry especially when it comes to rabbit fur – this is untrue.
It is products such as this, which make farming animals profitable in the first place, bearing in mind that the fur is worth more than the meat. The rabbit-fur industry demands the thicker pelt of an older animal (whereas rabbits raised for meat are killed at the age of 10 to 12 weeks).(5)
You can read more about this in the rabbit fur section of our site by clicking here.
Fur is also bad for the environment, estimates say that it takes almost twice as much energy to make one fur coat from the pelts of trapped animals as it does to make a fake fur, and that to make one coat from farmed animals' skins takes almost 20 times more energy.