Just because an animal is raised for their fur in a controlled setting doesn't mean their pain and suffering are reduced. ANIMAL ADVOCATES MUST FIGHT MYTHS SPREAD BY FUR FARM ADVOCATES. The fur ads you see in magazines and TV commercials portray furs as a symbol of elegance, but they fail to show how these animals meet their gruesome deaths.
Today, around 85 per cent of the pelts produced by the fur trade originate on fur farms. Despite efforts by the industry to place these facilities in a compassionate light, evidence suggests that fur farming is just as cruel – and perhaps even more so – than the agony inflicted by trappers.
Quick Facts
Thirty-one million animals are killed for fur every year, including 8.4 million that are murdered annually in the United States.The fur trade is responsible for the extinction of three species of tigers, three species of bears, more than a dozen species of wolves, and the Caribbean monk seal.
To make one medium length fur coat, it takes 130-200 chinchillas, 100-400 squirrels, 40-80 mink, 20-30 raccoons, or 10-20 foxes.
Leghold traps, the most commonly used method of catching animals in the wild, are banned in 63 countries, though they are still widely used in the United States and Canada.
Leghold and other traps unintentionally kill about five million dogs, cats, birds, and other animals each year.
Animals raised on fur farms often live three or four to a cage measuring one foot by three feet. The resulting overcrowding leads to high stress, neuroses, and cannibalism.
Fur farms are typically composed of row upon row of battery-style wire cages that are capable of imprisoning up to 100,000 animals.
On some farms, foxes spend their entire lives in a space no bigger than a supermarket cart. Caged chinchilla and minks are kept in cages 1 foot by 3 feet, with up to four animals per cage. They have no stimulus to ward off the stress of captivity. Studies have demonstrated that half of all mink on fur farms display repetitive, stereotyped behaviour for prolonged periods. Their short lives may have been ruled by the fear and stress of confinement, but the deaths of the fur farm inmates are often no less merciful.
Animals can languish in traps for days. At least 1 out of every 4 trapped animal escapes by chewing off its own feet, only to die later from loss of blood, fever, gangrene or predation. Every year, thousands of dogs, cats, raptors and other "trash" animals are crippled or killed by traps.
Millions of fur-bearing animals—including foxes, raccoons, minks, coyotes, bobcats, lynxes, opossums, nutria, beavers, muskrats, otters, and others—are killed each year on fur farms by anal and vaginal electrocution and in the wild by drowning, trapping, or beating. When the time is right to sell their pelts, they may be gassed, electrocuted, injected with poisons, clubbed to death or have their necks broken. These methods are not 100% effective and some animals "wake up" while being skinned. It doesn't matter to the fur farmer....his main consideration is making sure the valuable fur is not damaged.
Top Ten Reasons To Wear A Fur Coat 1. You are so vain you don't care that it takes the bodies of at least 40 dead animals to make a fur coat.
2. You are so cold-hearted you don't care that the steel-jaw trap that captured your fur coat may also have captured a child's pet dog or even a child's foot.
3. You worship Cruella DeVil and wish Dalmations were more plentiful.
4. You like the idea of having something in common with cavemen.
5. You don't care that ranch farmed fur-bearers are killed by anal electrocution, poisoning, decompression and suffocation.
6. It's your "right" to bring harm to other creatures as long as you think you look glamorous.
7. Those baby seals would die from starvation anyway, so you might as well club them to death.
8. You want your friends to envy you even though they really think you're despicable.
9. You convince yourself there's a difference between wearing a stinky ole' mink and your pet Fluffy.
10. You think wearing dead animal skins will fill the void in your life.
Compliments of PETAIn 2003, there were over 300 fur farms in the United States, Utah has the most farms (80), followed by Wisconsin (69), Minnesota (31), Oregon (25) and Idaho (25). Over 2.6 million fur-bearing animals were killed last year in the U.S. all in the name of fashion. In Wisconsin, farmers killed and skinned 706,300 mink, while Utah murdered 590,000. Leading countries that produce mink pelts include Denmark (12.6 million murdered in 2003), followed by China (5 million), and Holland (3.25 million). Finland, the leading producer of ranch-raised fox killed 2.3 million last year. Other animals killed include two million dogs and cats and over 600,000 chinchillas, polecats and raccoon dogs. Millions of dogs and cats in China are bludgeoned, hanged, bled to death and strangled with wire nooses so that their fur can be turned into trim and trinkets. This fur is often deliberately mislabeled as fur from other species and is exported to the U.S. to be sold to unsuspecting customers in retail stores.
Fur is currently in fashion and the fact is that fur sales are on the rise. The number of leading designers and design houses working in fur or fur trim has grown over the past five years. Over 300 fashion designers are currently working with fur including Oscar de la Renta, Dolce & Gabbana, Fendi, Gucci, Michael Kors, Karl lagerfeld, Yves St. Laurent, Valentineo and Versace. However, there are many designers who refuse to work with animal fur such as Todd Oldham who is dedicated to only using synthetic materials in his designs. It is gratifying to know that luxurious alternatives to animal fur exist and made the destruction of countless animals unnecessary.
WHO IS THE MAIN CULPRIT? 1. People who actually prefer wearing fur clothes
2. Fashion designers who do not resist from presenting real fur clothes in an endeavor to make big profits.
3. Designers also market real fur embellished with dyes, making it more appealing and directly luring people to buy it.
4. Use of fur clothes by celebrities entice people towards its use and undeniably dilutes the fact that it's wrong.
5. Stores sell fur products fooling people that it is fake when most of it is real.
BE A FUR FIGHTER If you see fur being sold in a retail store or catalog, please let API CONSUMERS FOR A FUR FREE SOCIETY. They will send that retailer a package of information and urge them to join CFFS by committing, in writing, not to sell fur.
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