This Is Fur

“We have enslaved the rest of the animal creation, and have treated our distant cousins in fur and feathers so badly that beyond doubt, if they were able to formulate a religion, they would depict the Devil in human form.” (William Ralph Inge, Anglican priest and Cambridge professor, 1860-1954)

Because it’s more efficient (and, ironically, modern sensibilities trend against “cruel” trapping), roughly 70%-80% of the world’s fur comes from “farms” or “ranches.” This is fur (and yes, they are graphic)…








China is the world’s largest exporter of finished fur products. When threatened with a boycott of its 2008 Olympics, a spokesman for the Chinese Ambassador to London rather poignantly said, “…the fur trade mostly feeds markets in the US and Europe. Most of this fur is not for the Chinese market. So the Americans and Europeans should accept the blame. We have no plans to clamp down on this internally that I am aware of – it is for the US and Europeans to take their own action. They should boycott fur as a fashion material.”




Marketing one of the more abhorrent products on the planet requires Goebbels-like deftness, and no one does it better than the Fur Commission USA. Calling furbearers “renewable resources” (like the plant cotton) and themselves protectors (from the big, bad predators who would otherwise rend the helpless furballs), the fur people stoop to an almost unrivaled level of depravity, including coloring books and field trips.

“In the wild, most young mink don’t survive through the first year. In contrast, a farmer’s care ensures that almost all domesticated mink live until the end of the year, when they are harvested.” The mink are indulged with “good nutrition, comfortable housing and prompt veterinary care.”




Even in fur’s sanitized version, at least some truth remains irrepressible. In clean, sterile Nova Scotia, the farm’s host can’t help but refer to the endgame as euthanasia – the mobile carbon monoxide-filled “harvest box” “should [knock the mink] unconscious” and “will euthanzie them fairly humanely and quickly.” “Should” and “fairly.” But if indeed this is humane release from suffering, mercy killing, euthanasia defined, then the prosecution, as it were, can rest: Fur is cruel.