The Richmond Magazine

Covering Richmond Upon Thames and surrounding areas

Fur Better or Worse

The January article Fur Better or Worse was misleading to your readers in many ways. Fashion Editor Han Na did not examine the controversial issue in depth at all, as she failed to explore the other shocking side of the fur industry.

The photographs of the models wearing fur incorrectly portrayed fur coats as a symbol of elegance. But your pictures failed to show how the original owners of these coats met their gruesome deaths. Millions of fur-bearing animals including foxes, raccoons, mink, coyotes, bobcats, lynxes, opossums, nutria, beavers, muskrats, otters and others are killed each year on fur farms by electrocution, or being skinned alive, and in the wild by drowning, trapping or beating. I strongly advise Han Na to explore alternative fashion trends that do not involve the unnecessary suffering of innocent animals.

Han Na claims that fur is more environmentally friendly than cotton and polyester. But there is nothing 'natural' about clothing made from animals’ skin or fur. In addition to causing the suffering and deaths of millions of animals each year, the production of wool, fur and leather contributes to global warming, land devastation, pollution and water contamination.

Eighty-five percent of the fur industry's skins comes from animals on fur factory farms. These farms can house thousands of animals and, as with other factory farms, they are designed to maximize profits – with little regard for the environment or animals’ wellbeing. Each mink skinned by fur farmers produces about 44 pounds of faeces in his or her lifetime. That adds up to 1 million pounds of faeces produced annually by US mink farms alone. One dangerous component of this waste is nearly 1,000 tons of phosphorus, which wreaks havoc on rivers and streams. For instance, when a Washington State mink farm was charged with polluting a nearby creek, the faecal coliform levels measured in the water were as much as 5,000 times in excess of the legal limit. According to Sandy Parker Reports, a fur industry publication:

“Tougher anti-pollution rules and stricter enforcement by government agencies are causing increasing problems for fur farmers in parts of the US…. Nitrates, phosphates and other substances running off with rainwater or seeping into aquifers and polluting local water supplies are increasingly coming to the attention of environmental protection agencies, and they are clamping down hard.”

Raising animals for their fur also pollutes the air. In Denmark, where more than 2 million mink each year are killed for their fur, more than 8,000 pounds of ammonia is released annually into the atmosphere.

Fur is only natural when it’s on the animal born with it. Once an animal has been slaughtered and skinned, his or her fur is treated with a soup of toxic chemicals to convert the putrefactive raw skin into a durable material (ie to keep it from rotting in the buyer’s closet). Various salts – along with ammonia, formaldehyde, hydrogen peroxide and other chromates and bleaching agents – are used to preserve and dye fur. Much of the world's fur is processed in China, where environmental regulations are often ignored. According to Professor Cheng Fengxia of Shaanxi University of Science and Technology:

“Pollution caused by inappropriate processing, especially colouring the fur, has become a headache.”

Fur farm pollution is further compounded when all aspects of farmed-fur production are considered. Fur processing requires transporting feed to animals; removing animals’ waste; providing electricity for housing facilities, the slaughter process and other operations; using pesticides, vaccines and antibiotics; transporting carcasses; transporting pelts to auction; transporting them to a fur tannery, which involves sorting, soaking, fleshing, tanning, wringing, drying, cleaning, trimming, buffing and finishing; and transporting tanned pelts to a garment maker, a wholesaler and so on. When all these processes are taken into account, a fur garment takes more than 15 times more energy to produce than a faux-fur equivalent.

No federal humane slaughter law protects animals on fur factory farms, and killing methods are gruesome. For more information on the intolerable suffering that animals are subjected to, please visit: ShedYourSkin.com and see the factsheets on the fur-farming and trapping industries.

Han Na further claims that, as individuals, we have "different preferences and tolerances and the right to live thereby". The key consideration, however, is whether an animal is sentient and can therefore suffer pain or experience pleasure. This point was emphasized by the founder of modern utilitarianism, Jeremy Bentham, who wrote of animals:

“The question is not: 'Can they reason?'. Nor is it: 'Can they talk?' It is: 'Can they suffer?'”

Given that animals can suffer, argues the philosopher Peter Singer, humans have a moral obligation to minimize or avoid causing such suffering, just as they have an obligation to minimize or avoid causing suffering to other humans. Animals have basic moral rights because they possess the same advanced cognitive abilities that justify the attribution of basic moral rights to humans. By virtue of these abilities, these animals have not just instrumental, but inherent value. In the words of another philosopher, Tom Regan, they are “the subject of a life”.

29 January 2010
Letter by: Rebecca Hubbard

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