The fur ads you might see in magazines and commercials portray fur coats as a symbol of elegance. But these ads fail to show how the original owners of these coats met their gruesome deaths.
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.
To kill the animals without damaging their fur, trappers usually strangle, beat, or stomp them to death. Animals on fur farms may be gassed, electrocuted, poisoned with strychnine, or have their necks snapped. These methods are not 100 percent effective and some animals "wake up" while being skinned.
Many animals are endangered or extinct because of this practice.
Fur is not 'green'. Marketers of fur products have always compared the bio degradation of fur to only fake fur. It is important to realize that the alternative to fur is any and every fabric and textile there is. Fur is no better than the many fabrics out there that also decompose easily. The term, "biodegradable", remains unregulated in Canada.3 It may be surprising to note that certain types of plastic bags are also being marketed as biodegradable. According to Don Jardine, Director of Pollution Prevention with PEI's Department of Environment, "Companies are using their own standards. It may say biodegrade, even if it takes 15 years." 4 It is also interesting to note that marketers of fur products contradict themselves claiming that fur biodegrades and lasts for generations. How long, exactly, does it take for the chemically soaked and treated fur coats to break down in the landfill - Generations?
Buzz Words, such as "organic" or "natural" have also been misleadingly used by the fur trade. To describe a product as "organic" or "natural" is to imply that the production of such product involves neither artificial chemical treatment nor disruption to our eco-system. The washing, drying, tanning, dyeing, and trimming of fur require extensive chemical treatment. The trapping and removing of millions of wildlife from our environment is disruptive to our eco-system. And there is certainly nothing natural or green about cruelly ripping the skins off the animals' backs.
Not purchasing fur from animals will decrease the demand for it and therefore hunter's will have no need to kill animals for their fur.
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