Animal Welfare Issues

Animals Used in Fashion

20 January 2023

No To The Fur Trade

Fur Is For Animals

Fur farming and harvesting cause extreme suffering to the animals whose pelts adorn coats, cardigans, bags and shoes. Yet the fashion item continues to be splashed across fashion magazines, catwalks, and boutiques (even in sunny Singapore). Fur-trimmed items are also pushing up the demand for fur.

Majority of the fur that feeds the industry comes from captive farmed animals. Animals on fur farms are confined in crippling, cramped conditions, resulting in much distress and suffering.

Slaughter methods are concerned with keeping pelts intact but result in great suffering for the animals. Some are killed by genital electrocution, which causes animals the pain of a cardiac arrest while fully conscious. Others are poisoned (and die painful deaths by suffocation) or have their necks snapped.

In Asia, the fur industry is growing. Much of the fur comes from China. In recent years, undercover investigators from EAST International, based in Taiwan, toured fur farms in China. These farms are unregulated. There were foxes, minks, rabbits and other animals like dogs and cats. This is what the investigators found:

…many animals 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 struggle too hard to allow 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.

Click here to learn more about the fur trade.

In Singapore, there is simply no excuse to wear fur, even as an accessory. Exercise your right as a consumer to refuse this symbol of excessive cruelty. Please help the animals suffering in this industry by passing this information along to friends and contacts, encouraging them to say ‘No’ to wearing fur.

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