The following essay appeared recently in the Toronto Star (Canada’s largest circulation newspaper), as the pro-fur side of a debate on whether banning the sale of fur apparel and accessories is justifiable.

If we look at facts, those of us who care about the environment, ethical lifestyles, and social justice should promote natural fur, not seek to ban it. Let's review some of the reasons why wearing fur makes sense for anyone wishing to embrace a sustainable and responsible way of living.

Fur today is produced responsibly and sustainably. Only abundant furs are used, never endangered species. This is assured by provincial/state, federal and international regulations.

In the wild, most species produce more offspring than their habitat can support to maturity. Animals that don’t make it feed others, and we too can use part of this natural surplus. This is an excellent example of  “the sustainable use of renewable natural resources”, a cornerstone of the World Conservation Strategy.

There is little waste. Many fur animals – especially beavers and muskrats -- provide food for trappers and their families. Others are returned to the woods to feed birds, mice, and other animals. And because fur is “prime” in late Fall/Winter when the young of the year are already autonomous, activist claims that coyotes or other animals leave behind “starving pups” are nonsense.

Many furbearers would be culled even if we didn’t use fur. Overpopulated beavers flood property. Coyotes are top predators of lambs, calves and, increasingly, pets. Raccoons and foxes spread rabies and other diseases ... the list goes on. But if we must cull some of these animals to maintain a balance, surely it is more ethical to use the fur than to throw it away?

SEE ALSO: Reasons we trap. Truth About Fur website.

Trappers take animal-welfare responsibilities very seriously: Canada is the world leader in humane trapping research, and traps are certified to conform with the Agreement on International Humane Trapping Standards. Trapping is also strictly regulated in the US, under state “Best Practices” provisions.

SEE ALSO: Neal Jotham: A life dedicated to humane trapping.

Fur farmers – producing more than half the fur in North America -- follow codes of practice to ensure their animals receive excellent nutrition and care. Farms are certified to confirm that codes are followed, and farmers may be charged for animal cruelty if they are not. In any case, providing proper care is the only way to produce high-quality fur.

SEE ALSO: Calling PETA: US fur farming is strictly regulated.

Farmed mink recycle left-overs from our own food production – parts of cows, chickens and fish that we don’t eat and might otherwise clog landfills. Manure, straw bedding, and other farm wastes are composted to produce high-quality organic fertilizer, completing the agricultural nutrient cycle.

In contrast to mass-produced “fast fashion”, each fur garment or accessory is crafted individually by artisans, maintaining skills passed from father to son or daughter. Furs are preserved (“dressed”) using alum salts, lanolin, and other benign chemicals; the activist claim that “a World Bank report cited fur dressing as polluting” is simply not true. Furthermore, furs come in a wide range of natural colours, minimizing the need for dyes.

Fur is long-lasting, recyclable, and after decades of service can be thrown into the garden compost. Compare that with fake fur and other synthetics: generally made from petrochemicals, they are not biodegradable and leach micro-particles of plastic into our waterways when washed -- plastics that are now being found in marine life. Cruelty-free indeed!

SEE ALSO: The great fur burial. Truth About Fur proves that fur biodegrades.

Fur, however, is the activists’ designated scapegoat. Perhaps because fur is often associated with glamour and wealth? But most fur producers are not wealthy or glamorous. The ugly lies parroted by anti-fur activists are all the more odious because they attack the integrity and livelihoods of hard-working farm families; of First Nations and other trappers who are among the last people maintaining our North American land-based heritage; and of artisans producing warm and durable clothing with responsibly produced natural materials.

There is little public discussion of how insulting and hurtful activist lies are for the people involved. Living far from media centres, their voices are rarely heard. TruthAboutFur.com was created to help bridge that gap.

No one is obliged to wear fur, but each of us should have the right to make this decision for ourselves. Especially because animal activists now oppose any use of animals. The same misleading and insulting arguments and tactics used against fur are now being mustered against wearing leather, silk and wool; against eating meat or dairy products. Shall all these products be banned as well?

Each of us can decide where we draw the line, these are personal choices. But if you believe it’s ethical to use animal products that are produced responsibly and sustainably, you can wear fur with pride.

***

To learn more about donating to Truth About Fur, click here.

For the past four years, the small but dedicated team at TruthAboutFur has worked to tell the true story of our remarkable North American fur trade, while exposing the lies of animal-rights extremists.

We’ve made impressive progress.  According to the traffic monitoring service Alexa.com, TruthAboutFur is, by far, the strongest on-line voice of the fur industry … world-wide! As of February 9, 2020, Alexa ranked TruthAboutFur at 254,839 in terms of global Internet traffic. No other fur industry site ranked higher than 1,000,000.

Unfortunately, our ability to continue fighting is now seriously threatened. Market conditions and political battles in the US have slashed the industry funding that supported TruthAboutFur.

If you think the work of TruthAboutFur is important, we need your help now!

For the first time, we have added a “Donate” button to our website, blog, and Facebook page. Pressing that button can help TruthAboutFur continue its important work. Or if you prefer to donate by cheque, click here for information.

Your help can make a real difference. If every one of our 70,000 Facebook followers donates just $2, or 10% of them donate $20, we can maintain TruthAboutFur.com for the coming year.

Our budgetary needs are astoundingly small for so powerful a platform, and clearly no one is getting rich from this work! We can do it only because everyone in our little team is passionate about defending our industry.

But we can’t do it alone. The International Fur Federation helped us get this far, but now we need your help to continue fighting.

Thousands Finding Accurate Info - Every Day

Here’s a snapshot of what we have achieved so far:

• TruthAboutFur.com now attracts between 30,000 and 50,000 visitors a month. That’s more than 1,000 people finding accurate pro-fur information each and every day!

• Fully one-half of our visitors are from the US, which matters because this is where the battle over the future of fur is the fiercest. About one-quarter are from Canada, and another quarter are from around the world, mainly Europe.

• Our audience is 50/50 male and female, so we're reaching both genders -- and we are speaking to young people, with the largest segments being between 18 and 45 years old. This is important because it is among millennials and the younger Generation Z that the battle of ideas is being fought the hardest.

• TruthAboutFur is increasingly used by journalists, political researchers and others to get the industry’s side of the fur story.

We’ve achieved a lot, but we can’t stop now. With militant activists pressuring designer brands, retailers and politicians, we are engaged in a ruthless war for the fur industry’s very survival.

It’s time to stand up for our remarkable heritage industry – for the thousands of hard-working men and women who maintain the special skills and knowledge of the fur trade.

Animal extremists would like nothing better than to see TruthAboutFur fall silent, so please take a moment to press the Donate button. Help us to keep working for you!

Those who follow this blog know that I have written often about why banning fur sales – as California did recently -  is a really bad idea. I have repeatedly argued that banning fur makes no sense economically, socially, ecologically, or ethically.  After more than 30 years of writing about fur, you wouldn’t think there was much to add. Then I read a remarkable new book about rare-earth elements and the dark underbelly of our much-vaunted “green transition”.

In his French-language book La Guerre des Métaux Rares* ("The Rare Metals War"), journalist Guillaume Pitron reveals the hidden face of our society’s emerging energetic and digital transformation. How is this related to fur? Well, I think it’s fair to say that the current trendiness of anti-fur rhetoric is part of a much broader rejection of all things "messy". That includes raising and killing animals, cutting trees, digging stuff out of the earth, and burning fossil fuels. Stuff produced by rural working people with calloused hands and dirt under their fingernails.

The cool kids now feel much more comfortable with the clean slickness of computer screens and iPhones, and with lightweight, throwaway fashions. Yes, these pretty things usually involve petroleum in the making of many of their parts, but they don’t look it, so why spoil a good story?

As for the energy to power our fast-paced society, its bye-bye to dirty coal-burning power-plants and smelly combustion engines; hello shiny new solar panels and whooshing wind turbines. And this is only the beginning. New digital “smart” technology will soon direct “clean” energy when and where we need it, eliminating waste, creating wealth, and improving human health. The future looks bright!

Goodbye Coal, Hello Rare Earths

Not so fast, warns Pitron. All our slick new “green” technology relies on a group of some 30 rare metals with exotic names like vanadium, cerium, gallium, and lutetium. While the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century was powered by coal, to fire steam engines, and the 20th century by petroleum, to fuel internal combustion engines, the 21st century’s “green transition” in fact depends upon vanadium, germanium, platinoids, tungsten, antimony, beryllium, rhonium, and niobium. These rare metals have extraordinary magnetic, conductive, and other properties that lie at the heart of our current digital and renewable energy revolution.

These metals are indeed rare compared to iron, copper, nickel and other metals that supported our society until now. Only 600 tonnes of gallium are produced per year compared with 15 million tonnes of copper. And only 160,000 tonnes of rare-earth elements are produced annually, compared with about 2 billion tonnes of iron.

Not only do rare metals occur in very small quantities, but considerable refining is required to extract them: eight tonnes of ore must be crushed to extract one kilogram of vanadium; 16 tonnes to produce one kilo of cerium; 50 tonnes for a single kilo of gallium ... and 1,200 tonnes of ore for one kilo of lutetium.

To put it another way, only 0.8 milligrams of lutetium can be extracted from one kilogram of ore.

And there’s the rub. To extract these remarkable minerals from their ores, huge quantities of rock must be crushed and then dissolved with strong chemicals, including sulphuric and nitric acids. And because rare-earth elements are usually closely fused with other materials, these highly-toxic and polluting operations must be repeated multiple times to refine the pure metals. This is one reason why most of the world’s rare-earth elements are produced in remote parts of China, Africa and South America - far from the prying eyes of the media and environmental protection groups.

Pitron’s research took him, at considerable personal risk, to Inner Mongolia and other parts of China where much of the world’s rare-earth elements is produced. He saw great lakes of effluent-polluted water from the refineries, and heard from local people about crop failures and shockingly high rates of cancer and other diseases. Did I mention that every tonne of ore processed requires at least 200 cubic metres of water?

Cobalt from Congo

The situation is no better in the so-called Democratic Republic of Congo, an important producer of cobalt and other rare metals, where children do much of the most dangerous work. These mines too are now often owned by Chinese companies – as they are in many other countries. In fact, China has quietly achieved overwhelming dominance in the production of the rare metals upon which our new digital and electronic society increasingly depends, raising security concerns as well as economic and ecological ones.

China is now leveraging its control of rare metals both to produce and consume the new technologies they support. The Middle Kingdom already produces four-fifths of the world’s electric car batteries, and while representing only 20% of the world’s population, will soon account for 60% of electric cars. (Ironically, three-quarters of the electricity needed to run these “green” cars in China is produced by burning fossil fuels, especially coal! The same is true in India, the world’s most populous nation.)

Yes, Pitron acknowledges, rare metals could theoretically be produced with better environmental controls – while enhancing national security -- if production was ramped up in Western countries. But that would be costly - who wants to pay more for their iPhone or laptop? - and environmental groups strongly resist any attempt to increase mining activity in the West, a hypocritical stance that Pitron challenges them to confront more honestly.

Green Smokescreen

In fact, the much-touted “clean and green transition" is really a smokescreen for shifting pollution off-shore. Solar energy, wind turbines, electric cars and digital “smart” technologies are all based on the unregulated exploitation of rare metals that is trashing the environment and hurting people in faraway places we rarely talk about.

And this environmental damage will only get worse. Our “green transition" will require doubling the production of rare metals every 15 years. Over the next 30 years – in a single generation – we will rip more minerals from the Earth’s crust than we have done over the past 70,000 years of our existence on this planet!

So what are political leaders in California doing in response to the crises being generated by these new technologies? They're banning fur, a responsibly produced and truly renewable natural resource.

The new “clean" energy produced by windmills and solar panels is anything but. (Ask the people in the Baotou region of Inner Mongolia where thorium levels are 36 times higher than acceptable levels.) But even if extraction were better regulated, our “renewable” energy technologies are really based on the rapidly accelerating exploitation of rare metals – a non-renewable resource!

California as a whole, and Silicon Valley in particular, is of course the heartland of these supposedly “green” new technologies. So what are political leaders in California doing in response to the emerging environmental, social, economic and security crises being generated by these new technologies, of which their state is a major proponent and beneficiary? They're banning fur, a responsibly produced and truly renewable natural resource.

Can you spell h-y-p-o-c-r-i-s-y?

*  *  *

* La Guerre des Métaux Rares: La face cachée de la transition énergique et numérique, par Guillaume Pitron, (Éditions Les Liens qui Libèrent, Paris, 2019).

* * *

To learn more about donating to Truth About Fur, click here.

As many in the industry are aware, Fur Harvesters Auction is boosting its operations to better serve North American trappers and the fur industry worldwide. For an update, we contacted FHA’s Director of Planning and Development, Howard Noseworthy.

TruthAboutFur: Good to speak with you Howard. So how long has Fur Harvesters Auction been serving trappers and the fur industry?

Howard Noseworthy: We trace our roots back to the auction launched in North Bay by the old Ontario Trappers Association, in 1947. The current name and structure of Fur Harvesters Auction was set up in 1991.

TaF: And it is quite a special structure, isn’t it?

Noseworthy: Yes, Fur Harvesters Auction is a 50/50 partnership between indigenous and non-indigenous trappers, and that 50/50 partnership carries right through to the composition of our Board of Directors. The president also rotates every two years between native and non-native trappers. And I am happy to say this partnership has truly been wonderful; it’s served us well for the past 28 years, and hopefully will continue for many years to come.

TaF: We hear that Fur Harvesters Auction is in the process of expanding its operations. What can you tell us about that?

Noseworthy: Fur Harvesters Auction is certainly in growth mode. We are considerably expanding our network of agents servicing trappers, across both Canada and the US. As part of this expansion, we have taken over a facility in Winnipeg to handle western Canadian furs. All our western coyotes will be graded in Winnipeg by an experienced team that is well known to trappers, headed up by Mary Schellenberg.

TaF: We understand that you are stepping things up in the US as well.

Noseworthy: Yes, we are also ramping up the capacity of our facility in Cambridge, Wisconsin, to better serve US trappers. All our US and Canadian raccoons will be graded by the Cambridge team, as well as the majority of US coyotes. We are increasing the number of employees in the US to handle these new responsibilities.

TaF: And we hear there is also some exciting news from northern Canada.

Noseworthy: Yes, on December 11, we were proud to announce a new collaboration with the North West Company whereby Northern and NorthMart stores, across northern Canada, will be acting as our agents. They will receive furs and provide indigenous and other northern trappers with cash advances for pelts they send to auction. This will further expand our offering of the finest northern furs while providing an important service for remote communities.

TaF: And what about your headquarters in North Bay, Ontario?

Noseworthy: We are increasing the size of our team in North Bay as well, so we can handle greater volumes of fur. We expect that the larger collection of fine North American wild furs in one location will attract more buyers, which should result in higher prices for trappers.

TaF: Speaking of prices, how do you see the wild fur market playing out in the coming year?

Noseworthy: We expect coyotes to remain very strong. Better bobcats will also continue at good levels. Muskrats are actually quite strong too; they have been selling through, which is important. Beaver actually saw a little bump this year - prices gained about 18% in the May sale, compared with March - but of course that’s from a low baseline so we still have a long way to go. But demand and prices are strong and still increasing for castoreum, so that helps. Sables should hold current levels. Otters and fishers, unfortunately, are still having trouble. But from what we hear from our customers, the trimming trade is performing well and should be an increasingly important factor. We definitely see some good opportunities emerging for wild fur.

TaF: Fur Harvesters Auction also provides trapping supplies, doesn’t it?

Noseworthy: Oh yes, our agents and depots carry a full range of traps and trapping supplies, and all of our traps comply with the Agreement on International Humane Trapping Standards.

TaF: On a more personal level, Howard, how did you get involved in the fur business?

Noseworthy: Ah, well, I’ve been at this for quite a while. I began trapping when I was 23, and that’s more than 40 years ago. I was active in the Newfoundland and Labrador Trappers Association, and was elected president. The legendary Alec Shieff asked me to set up the first Ontario Trappers Association depot in Newfoundland. After that I worked with the Ontario Fur Managers Federation for 11 years, before moving here to North Bay. I’ve been here for about 11 years now.

TaF: So you have a true ground-up knowledge of the fur business.

Noseworthy: Yes, and I still grade fur too. In fact, all of us here at Harvesters grade fur, even Mark Downey, the CEO. Mark grades lynx and bobcats. That’s part of what makes Fur Harvesters such a special auction house, I think. We understand all sides of the business. We’re close to our buyers, of course, and we understand the market and its needs, but we also understand what it’s like getting wet and cold when you’re out on the trap line. Fur is in our blood.

TaF: Any thought of adding farmed fur to the offering?

Noseworthy: Many people don’t realize that while we’re primarily a wild fur house, we have also been selling the largest collection of North American farmed fox for some time. We have also handled small numbers of farmed mink. As for the future, we’ll see what it brings.

TaF: Anything else important that you see on the horizon?

Noseworthy: One very important event for the industry will be the implementation of the new FurMark program, that begins in 2020. The program is spearheaded through the International Fur Federation and will provide assurance to consumers that furs they buy are produced responsibly. We believe this will be very important for the industry, and Fur Harvesters is supporting it strongly.

TaF: Busy times!

Noseworthy: For sure. For now we’re continuing to focus on providing the best service we can for producers and for the industry as a whole - and we think our role is more important now than ever.

TaF: Thank you for this update, Howard.

***

For information about Fur Harvesters Auction's pick-up and auction schedules, trapping supplies, and other matters, please visit its website. And be sure to check out its Facebook page too. 

Despite some unfortunate flaws in the section on fur, with Putting on the Dog: The Animal Origins of What We Wear (Trinity University Press, San Antonio, 2019), Montana poet Melissa Kwasny has produced a fascinating read and done a service by highlighting the continued importance of animal products in our lives.

Kwasny set out to “investigate the history and ongoing relationship forged between humans and the nonhuman animals whom we still depend on to clothe and adorn us.” In this quest, she says, “one of my goals has been to meet and learn from people who spend their lives working with these animals – hunters, trappers, farmers, ranchers and shepherds – and find out  what their experience can teach the rest of us in a broader sense about our place in nature.”

She also sought to explore the “time-consuming process of making and, therefore, interacting with the material these animals provide, by hearing from tanners, spinners, weavers, sewers, dyers, and artisans of all sorts.”

What does it mean, she asks, for us as consumers (and as individuals) to have lost connection with the source of our clothing, now that few of us make our own anymore?

Fascinating Voyage

“Putting on the dog” is an American expression meaning to get dressed up for a special occasion, perhaps derived from the stiff “dog collar” shirts once worn for formal events at Yale University. Kwasny finds it an appropriate title for her book because it reminds us that the materials animals provide “are precious, given that they often require the loss of an animal’s life and hours of care from those humans who have hunted it, raised it, and crafted painstakingly elegant and practical things from it.”

What follows is a fascinating voyage into the world of six important animal products: leather (including sheepskin), wool (including cashmere, angora, and mohair), silk, feathers (including down), pearls, and fur. Her voyage takes her – and us -- from Alaska’s tundra to sheep farms atop Montana’s Continental Divide, from silkworm farms in northern Japan to a mink farm on Denmark’s western coast, and to pearl beds in the Sea of Cortes.

Her first stop is a visit to a Yu’pik community in Alaska where she considers the aboriginal understanding of how animals “give themselves” to the hunter. “The worst thing is to not appreciate that gift or to turn it down,” she writes. For the Yupiit – like other aboriginal peoples -- making beautiful clothing from these gifts is a way to pay respect to the animals that provide them. As Barry Lopez wrote in his 1986 masterpiece Arctic Dreams, “It was the gift rather than the death that was preeminent in the Eskimo view of hunting.” (PETA take note!)

Kwasny then explores commercial leather production, tracing the process back from wholesalers and tanners, to the abattoir and cattle ranches, becoming aware of the skills, knowledge - and the animals - incarnated in that beautiful leather wallet, jacket, or pair of shoes.

"Green" Wool

The next chapter recounts the remarkable history of wool since the domestication of sheep some 8,000 years ago. As an indicator of the economic importance of wool in British history, Kwasny reminds us that the Lord Speaker of the UK's House of Lords "today literally sits on a sack of wool, the ‘Woolsack’.” The wool industry has also been good for sheep: there is now one sheep for every six people on Earth.

Kwasny visits people who are raising traditional breeds (including some that produce natural colour ranges, without dyeing), as well as artisanal spinners whose wool commands premium prices among knitters ready to pay the price to know by who and how their materials were produced. “They want to be assured their wool is ‘green’, that the processing of their wool has low impact on the earth. They like to think about what flock it comes from.” (Could that be a market trend for the fur industry to consider as we implement traceability with the International Fur Federation’s FurMark?)

At the other extreme, Kwasny exposes the impact of global demand for cheap cashmere. Over the past 50 years, the domestic goat population of Inner Mongolia has soared from about 2.4 million to more than 25.6 million, resulting in overgrazing and, in some cases, desertification of fragile grasslands.

Environment-Friendly Silk

The chapter on silk production tells a fascinating story that will be new to most of us. “No one who has heard the sound will ever forget the low all-night roar created by the munching of thousands of voracious silk worms in a Japanese mountain farm-house!” In one interesting section, producers respond to critics concerned that the silkworms - which are actually caterpillars of the silk moth - must be killed to extract their silk. About 150 silkworm cocoons are needed to produce a silk scarf or tie – and up to 9,000 cocoons for a single traditional Japanese lady’s silk kimono and undergarment. But if all the pupae were allowed to hatch into moths, silk farmers explain, there would not be enough mulberry leaves in the world to feed the next generation. In fact, after so many centuries of cultivation, silkworms have lost their ability to find food on their own, while the moths can no longer mate without help. “The silkworm is a human invention now.” Furthermore, sericulture is environment-friendly, using little energy and a fraction of the water needed to grow cotton, while mulberry trees produce oxygen and nutrients for the soil. In contrast, cotton – a vegan clothing material of choice - accounts for 3% of global water consumption and 7% of US pesticide use, Kwasny reminds us.

A chapter on the evolving use of feathers and down is equally fascinating. Ostrich feathers, Kwasny recounts, became hugely popular when Eugénie de Montijo, the last Empress of France as the wife of Emperor Napoleon III, wore one on her hat, and were worth nearly as much as diamonds (by weight) by the beginning of the 20th century. At the market’s height, in the 1890s, South Africa was feeding and plucking a million ostriches a year. (In an interesting parallel with the fur trade, more than 90% of the South African feather merchants were Jewish immigrants fleeing pogroms in Russia.) Most of these feathers went to England, centre of the global millinery trade, and when the Titanic went down in 1912, en route to New York, some 20,000 pounds of ostrich feathers sank with it. Kwasny also provides an interesting overview of modern down production, mostly for pillows and quilts but also for the lightweight coats and parkas that often include fur-trimmed hoods.

The chapter on pearls includes a short history of the industry and its current evolution, including concerns for sustainability. Who knew that pearls were the most valuable resource the Spanish found in South America, until they began mining silver in Bolivia and Peru? Or that one of the world’s most famous pearls is named La Peregrina - The Wanderer. Pear-shaped and the size of a dove’s egg, this extraordinary pearl was bought by King Phillip II of Spain (1527-1598), who designated it an official Spanish Crown Jewel. It later "wandered" to France, so gaining its name, and then England, until in 1969 it was purchased at auction by Richard Burton, for $37,000, as a Valentine’s gift for Elizabeth Taylor. In 2011 it sold for $11 million.

Grappling with Fur

The final chapter is about fur, and it is here that Kwasny clearly has the most difficulty.  The chapter begins with her visit to a Danish mink farm on the Jutland coast, where she sees for herself that the animals are well cared for. Nonetheless, while perusing fashion photos, Kwasny reflects that fur seems somehow too ostentatious; no one she knows wears fur. “Conspicuous consumption seems less relevant to our lives,” she observes. To her credit, however, she wonders “how much of my attitude has been conditioned by the advertising budgets of PETA.”

What constitutes an ethical relationship with animals? she wonders. "Do I sincerely wish that there were no more mink farmers like the Kvist Jensens? Am I ready to demand the extinguishing of all such rural knowledge, of this husbandry, passed between generations, of this culture of seasons, weather, tools, the farmers’ ‘gear and tackle and trim,’ and instead offer my homage to the chemists who make each day anew our pleather and polyester and faux fur?”

Kwasny is an honest investigator, but the fur cause is not helped when a fur farmer and then an auction employee – while admitting they know nothing about it - tell her they think trapping is cruel. And while Kwasny does quote biologists, the International Fur Federation, and even my own writings to explain the environmental credentials of fur as a sustainably produced natural material, her section on trapping is perhaps the weakest. Unlike the other sections, this one is based solely on secondary sources – including claims by anti-fur groups that are left unanswered. To her credit, Kwasny does clearly report the serious environmental problems of synthetics, including fake furs.

Kwasny acknowledges that when she began her book, she knew fur would be the most difficult chapter for her to write. Though we eat meat, and wear leather, wool and silk, “fur alone brings us face to face with the fact that we need to kill for it. Fur is the least transformed of all animal products.”

Interestingly, Kwasny ends her book with a call for moderation. Everything we use comes from nature, and, contrary to PETA’s claims, she recognizes that it is not possible to live on this Earth without using resources and harming other beings. The only ethical response to this dilemma, she proposes, is to consume less. Buy less but better-quality clothing, especially from natural sources – plants and animals – and care for them so they last as long as possible. Sounds like a great sales pitch for fur!

In summary, while parts of the fur section will cause people who know the industry – especially trappers - to squirm with frustration, Melissa Kwasny has produced an interesting and worthwhile read. She reminds us of the fascinating range of skills and knowledge maintained by people who work with animals, and the materials those animals provide. I only hope that a good trapper will invite her out onto the land to more fully understand that experience before she writes the second edition of Putting on the Dog.

***

To learn more about donating to Truth About Fur, click here.

The remarkable tale of one man's experiment in domestication is told in How to Tame a Fox (And Build a Dog) [University of Chicago Press, 2017], by Lee Alan Dugatkin and Lyudmila Trut. Photo: Institute of Cytology and Genetics archives.

In the Fall of 1952, a Russian scientist boarded an overnight train from Moscow to Tallinn, the capital of Soviet Estonia. It was the beginning of a remarkable adventure that would change our understanding of animal domestication.

Dmitri Belyaev, a geneticist by training, was a lead scientist at the Central Research Laboratory on Fur Breeding Animals in Moscow, working to help the many government-run fox and mink farms produce more beautiful and valuable furs.  Fur farming was an important source of foreign currency for the Soviet government after the war, which provided Belyaev with some protection for the daring experiment he was about to launch.

It was protection he needed, because while Russian geneticists had once been world-leaders, this important new field of study was under attack in Stalin’s Russia. Soviet science policy was dominated by Trofim Lysenko, a poorly educated peasant’s son who rose to power in the 1930s as part of Stalin’s glorification of the common man. Lysenko’s bizarre theories were eventually discredited, but meanwhile a generation of geneticists lost their jobs because their work would have exposed Lysenko as a fraud.  Some – including Belyaev’s own brother -- were imprisoned and killed.

Belyaev enjoyed a measure of freedom because of his success in developing valuable new genetic lines of mink. But the daring new project he was about to launch went far beyond his mandate to increase the value of fur production.

Belyaev was fascinated by the question of how animals had first come to be domesticated. The way farmers selectively breed domesticated plants and animals for desirable traits was quite well understood. But this didn’t explain how certain species had been domesticated in the first place. Or why so few species of plants and animals out of the millions on the planet had ever been domesticated - only a few dozen animals, mostly mammals, plus a few fish, birds, and insects such as silk worms and honey bees.

Scientists by now believed that dogs were the first species domesticated by humans, some 15,000 years ago, and that they had evolved from wolves. But no one really understood how wolves – animals that generally fear and avoid or act aggressively towards humans – developed into man’s best friend, an animal that is attracted to and trusts humans.

Belyaev was also intrigued by the fact that so many of the changes that occur in many different domesticated species were so similar. As Charles Darwin had noted, they often had patches of different colours on their coats. And they often retained physical traits from childhood that their wild cousins outgrew as they matured: floppy ears, curly tails, shorter snouts and babyish faces – neotonic features that make young animals so “cute”. But why would breeders have selected for these traits? Farmers received no benefit, after all, from cows with spotted hides or pigs with curly tails. So why had they emerged?

Belyaev had a theory that domestication – with all the qualities that distinguish domesticated animals from their wild cousins -- might be triggered by selecting for just a single trait: tameness. It had been suggested that dogs evolved from less aggressive wolves – individuals that would have been low-ranking in their own packs but were tolerated close to human settlements, where they gained access to a more reliable source of food and thrived. Belyaev wondered if this process might be replicated by repeatedly selecting the least aggressive foxes on fur farms for breeding.

Floppy Ears and Curly Tails

One of the well-known features of domesticated animals – dogs, cats, cows, pigs -- is that they can breed several times a year, not just once like most of their wild ancestors.  If farmed foxes could be bred more than once a year there would be a clear economic benefit – and this was Belyaev’s cover story as he approached a trusted colleague in Estonia that fateful day in 1952. Nina Sorokina was in charge of some 1,500 silver foxes on a large government-owned farm in a remote forest hamlet. She was surprised by Belyaev’s proposal, because silver foxes were generally quite fearful and aggressive towards people, but she agreed to begin selecting and breeding a group of the least aggressive animals.

The foxes Sorokina bred in Estonia provided the nucleus for a much larger project that Belyaev launched at a new research centre in Siberia as Lysenko was finally repudiated after Stalin’s death. The results soon followed, validating Belyaev’s ground-breaking theories of domestication. Within ten generations – barely a blink in evolutionary time -- foxes were being born that were noticeably tamer. These puppy-like foxes had floppy ears, piebald spots, and curly tails. Some of these pups eagerly approached humans with their tails wagging, behavior never seen before in foxes. As scientific knowledge of hormones evolved, it was confirmed that these newly domesticated foxes had far lower levels of stress hormones. In the next stage of the research, several of the tamest foxes actually lived in a house with one of the lead scientists, Lyudmila Trut, and soon acted very much like dogs.

The speed with which these changes in the physiology and behavior emerged confirmed Belyaev's radically new understanding of the process of domestication. Since Darwin, scientists had assumed that change could occur only in small increments over long periods of time, driven by a gradual accumulation of useful but random genetic mutations. The speed with which these new domesticated foxes evolved, however, suggested to Belyaev that the changes revealed a range of genetic variation that already existed within the original fox population.

This would explain why such a small number of plant or animal species has ever been domesticated. Wild horses, for example, must have had a wide range of genetic variation within their populations, facilitating domestication, while zebras – which have sometimes been somewhat tamed, but never domesticated – do not.

Belyaev was ahead of his time in proposing that important changes to physiology and behaviour might result without the mutation of genes, but rather through the activation or deactivation of existing genes in response to new environmental pressures -- in this case, the selection for tamer foxes. The disruption of long-established systems of genetic stability could provoke a complex suite of changes (curly tails, spotted coats, shorter snouts, etc.) in surprisingly few generations.

Belyaev’s ground-breaking ideas were, in fact, originally sparked by his observation of farmed mink, where he saw new colour strains – pastels, sapphires, violets, pearls – emerge less than 30 years after wild mink were brought onto farms.

Not least interesting, Belyaev’s work puts the lie to activist claims that farmed mink and foxes are “wild animals” that should not be kept in captivity. These species have been selectively bred on farms for more than 100 generations, resulting in significantly different colours, size, and behaviour. These are no longer "wild" animals.

The full story of this extraordinary research project has now been told for the first time in a wonderful book, How to Tame a Fox (And Build a Dog), co-authored by Lyudmila Trut and Lee Alan Dugatkin. Trut heads the research group at the Institute of Cytology and Genetics in Novosibirsk, and continues to lead Belyaev's fox project to this day. Dugatkin is a professor of biology at the University of Louisville and a science writer. Fur farmers and anyone interested in animals and domestication will find it a fascinating read!

FURTHER READING: How humans domesticated themselves. National Public Radio, October 31, 2020.

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Recent proposals to ban the sale of fur in several US cities and states are based on a fiction – a dangerous fiction – the origins of which can be traced back more than 30,000 years. That’s when, as Yuval Noah Harari recounts in his popular book Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, a remarkable mutation occurred in the brains of one of the six human-like species that then existed. That mutation, scientists speculate, allowed our ancestors to do something no animal had ever done: live in an imaginary world.

To understand the importance of this breakthrough, consider money, nations, and human rights, to name just a few vital elements of our civilization. Unlike rocks, trees and other things we see around us, these important concepts exist only because we believe in them and act accordingly.  Money, for example, has value only because we all agree that it does -- so people will give us stuff for it.

The ability to act as if such “fictions” really exist is central to what makes us human. It gives sense to our lives and allows us to work together in large groups for common purposes. But our fictions can also lead us seriously astray: think of Nazism or Communism. Both promised a better life but delivered only misery, not least because they were based on erroneous ideas about humanity: Aryans are not a superior race, and central planning is not efficient. A similar disconnect with reality lies at the heart of recent proposals to ban the sale of fur products in certain US cities and states. Let’s take a closer look.

Justifications for Banning Fur

There are only two possible justifications for banning fur. The first would be if fur were not produced responsibly. Most of us believe that it is morally acceptable to use animals for food and other purposes so long as species are not depleted (sustainability) and the animals are raised and killed with as little suffering as possible (animal welfare). As documented throughout the TruthAboutFur website, the modern fur trade satisfies these moral requirements: both wild and farmed furs are now produced at least as responsibly and sustainably as other animals we use for food,  leather and other purposes. *

But if fur is produced responsibly, the only remaining rationale for banning it would be to claim that any killing of animals is wrong. This idea has been elaborated over the past forty years by Peter Singer, Tom Regan and other “animal rights” philosophers. Simply put, they argue that the life, liberty and pursuit of happiness of “non-human animals” deserve the same respect as those of humans. Just as discrimination against people of colour is now denounced as Racism, and discrimination against women is rejected as Sexism, Animal Rights philosophers propose that using animals for food, clothing or other purposes should be condemned as “Speciesism”. As PETA founder Ingrid Newkirk famously charged: “There's no rational basis for saying that a human being has special rights. A rat is a pig is a dog is a boy.” **

At first glance, this proposal can seem compelling. Just as the idea of extending rights to all races, classes and genders (Human Rights) was once scoffed at, Animal Rights philosophers argue that it is time to extend our moral circle to include all animals. But all social and moral constructs are not created equal. Human Rights is a highly functional “fiction” because human society is clearly strengthened when each member feels that their personal rights and needs are secured. Animal Rights offers no such benefits.

Animal Rights is, in fact, completely out of synch with how the natural world really works. Like it or not, life eats life. Animals only survive by eating other living organisms, plants or other animals. But animals do not usually eat members of their own species. Contrary to the claims of animal rightists, there’s nothing arbitrary or hypocritical about humans eating other animals but not (usually) each other.

The evolutionary logic for not killing members of your own species is evident, especially for humans. If you kill me, my kids come for you, then your kids come for my family, and on it goes – not very conducive to social cooperation or stability. Killing and eating other species provokes no such complications.

Problems with Animal Rights Logic

Most worrisome, the logic of Animal Rights may actually threaten human (and animal) welfare. Activists argue that no one needs real fur anymore because fake fur provides a “cruelty-free” alternative. But fake furs (and most other synthetics) are made from petrochemicals that are not renewable or biodegradable. New research reveals that these materials also leach micro-particles of plastic into our waterways and marine life each time they are washed. Cruelty-free indeed!

By contrast, using fur in a well-regulated fashion is fully compatible with an ecological (i.e., ethical) relationship with nature. Farmed fur animals are fed left-overs from our own food production, the parts of pigs, chickens and fish that we don’t eat and would otherwise clog landfills. Fur farm wastes – manure, soiled straw bedding and carcasses – are composted to produce organic fertilizers, renewing the fertility of the soil and completing the agricultural nutrient cycle. There is no natural farming system that does not include animals.

The production of wild furs is also based on ecological principles: most wildlife species produce more young each year than their habitat can support to adulthood. The sustainable use of this natural surplus is promoted by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and other conservation authorities.  In fact, many wildlife populations would have to be culled even if we didn’t use fur, e.g., to prevent damage to property (flooding caused by beaver dams), to protect livestock (coyote predation), and to control the spread of dangerous diseases (rabies in overpopulated raccoons).

Living Outside Natural Reality

All this was clear so long as most North Americans still had family on the land who understood the realities of nature. But now, for the first time in human history, most people live in cities. When your food comes from supermarkets, while animals dance and sing on your TV screen, and the live animals you know are surrogate children that sleep in your bed, it is easy to believe the killing of animals is as morally reprehensible as abusing human rights.

Due to our highly developed brains, we all live to a certain extent outside the biological-natural reality. All legislation is a human construct, and different societal “fictions” constantly compete for public acceptance. Animal Rights activists have been very adept at using sensationalist tactics to convey their stories through both traditional and powerful new social media. As PETA’s Ingrid Newkirk says: “We’re complete media sluts; we didn’t invent the game but we learned to play it!” But stories that win mass appeal do not always end well if they are not grounded in reality.

Animal Rights seems to some to represent a more gentle relationship with nature at a time when pollution and the spectre of global warming are exposing the dangers of rampant consumerism. But as this brief analysis suggests, basing public policy on the ideas promoted by Animal Rights advocates can have unexpected consequences. The Nazis’ fascination with Animal Rights will be the subject of a future essay. For now, suffice to say that encouraging the use of petroleum-based synthetics is not the way to protect our planet for future generations. Using natural, renewable, long-lasting and biodegradable materials like fur makes environmental sense. Politicians take note.

FOOTNOTES:

* In addition to sustainability and animal welfare, two further requirements for ethical animal use could be proposed: animals should not be killed for frivolous purposes, and most of the animal should be used (no waste). For a fuller discussion, see The Ethics of Fur, TruthAboutFur.

** While the Animal Rights philosophy opposes any use of animals, fur is often seen as an easy target; no city or state is proposing to ban the sale of meat or dairy products. Note, however, that Peter Singer, the intellectual godfather of the Animal Rights movement, wrote in his 1975 landmark book Animal Liberation: A New Ethics for Our Treatment of Animals, that it is hypocritical to criticize fur-wearing while most people are still eating meat, which requires the killing of far greater numbers of animals.

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With the start of a new school year, many of us think about bringing accurate information about the sustainability of fur into our children’s classrooms. This can be a difficult challenge. The first problem is that school curriculums have become so demanding that teachers now have little time for guest presentations. And if you do gain access to a classroom, what information should you share with students, assuming you have the communications skills to capture their attention at all? Luckily, help is available to overcome all these obstacles. Sound interesting? Read on!

The Fur Council of Canada has produced a school program that has now been thoroughly tested in hundreds of classrooms with an overwhelmingly positive response from both teachers and students. Called Furbearing Animals: A Renewable Natural Resource, the program includes a 14-minute video, a teachers’ activity guide, and amusing educational materials for students. The core program was originally developed by educational experts at the Quebec Ministry of Forests, Wildlife and Parks in collaboration with Quebec trappers (Fédération des Trappeurs Gestionnaires de Québec). After funding (and refining) in-class presentations in the Montreal region for many years, the Fur Council produced the video and other tools to allow this extraordinarily successful program to be shared across North America and beyond.

Curriculum-Based Program Assures Teacher Buy-in

One of the most important features of the program is that it is built around key ecology concepts that teachers are already obliged to teach. In Quebec and most other jurisdictions, these concepts are part of the natural science curriculum for Grade 6. This is the main reason the program has been so well-received in schools; rather than taking time away from teachers’ busy schedules, Furbearing Animals actually helps them do their jobs. And rather than promote the fur trade – which would be self-serving and controversial – the program provides a science-based understanding of animals, nature, and sustainable use.

The video begins by explaining in simple language that “natural resources” are materials produced by nature that can be used to satisfy human needs. Water can be used for drinking or transportation. Plants and animals can be eaten or used to make clothing. Petroleum powers our vehicles but can also be used to make a wide range of plastic products, including clothing.

The video then explores the difference between “renewable” and “non-renewable” natural resources. With lively animation, students are shown that snowshoe hares, for example, are a renewable resource: even if you eat some hares for dinner, there may be as many or even more hares next year. Petroleum, however, takes so long for nature to produce that when we use it, it’s gone.

Using foxes and beavers as examples, the video then shows how animals are adapted to different habitats. The beaver’s round body and dense underfur allows it to thrive in water, a semi-aquatic habitat, while the fox’s longer, sleek body allows swift movement on land, a terrestrial habitat.

Similarly, the beaver is a herbivore, with self-sharpening teeth and other adaptations that allow it to cut trees and chew bark, while the fox is a carnivore, with the speed and pointy teeth needed to capture and devour its prey.

A well-illustrated explanation of why some habitats can support more animals than others (“rich” and “poor” habitats) leads to an understanding of “carrying capacity”. Students learn that nature is all about balance: depleting wildlife populations will deprive future generations of important resources, but overpopulated wildlife can be equally problematic, resulting in disease, fighting for territory and starvation. Overpopulated beavers flood property and may “eat out” local vegetation to the point where a habitat may support no beavers at all for many years. Students can now understand why part of the surplus produced by nature can be used by humans without depleting wildlife populations. This is called "sustainable use", a core principle of modern conservation policy – and an important element of the ethical justification for the responsible and well-regulated use of animals, for food, clothing and other purposes.

SEE ALSO: Fur is a sustainable natural resource. Truth About Fur.

The Fur Council of Canada has also produced a Teachers’ Guide to accompany the video, available in downloadable PDF format in English and French. The Guide includes follow-up activities, handouts, and in-class quizzes to reinforce key concepts presented in the video.

Also available on the Fur Council's website are a number of other educational publications that can be distributed to students during classroom presentations. One of the best is EcoNews, a cartoon-format brochure that illustrates key fur messages in an entertaining and easily-understood way. An accompanying activity booklet for teachers provides question-and-answer teaching tools and subjects for in-class debates, based on information presented in the EcoNews cartoons. Printed copies of EcoNews are available in English and French from the Fur Council.

Bringing the Program into the Classroom

Once you have reviewed the video and other program materials, you are ready to contact your local school. You can inform your child’s teacher or the school principal or science coordinator that you would like to present a program that explains important ecology principles from the curriculum, i.e., renewable and non-renewable resources; adaptation of animals to their habitats; carrying capacity of different habitats; and the sustainable use of renewable natural resources. (Check with school authorities to verify the grade when these principles are taught in your jurisdiction.) 

The 14-minute video is designed to be shown to the class before inviting questions and interactive discussion. If possible, bring beaver and fox pelts – and other furs – to illustrate the differences between terrestrial and semi-aquatic animals, as explained in the video. Passing these furs around the classroom is always a hit with students.

Even better, bring beaver and fox skulls too, to show the different dentition of herbivores and carnivores. Ask your fur association to purchase a few professionally-prepared skulls that members can borrow for school presentations.

You can also bring sample fur products to show how fur is used, and any other props that may illustrate your own involvement in the fur trade.

Before leaving, you can circulate copies of EcoNews or other materials to the students, and leave the Teachers’ Guide and EcoNews quiz with the class teacher. You should also leave your contact information, in case the teacher has follow-up questions. The Fur Council of Canada and the Fur Institute of Canada both have excellent educational materials that you can order for classroom presentations.

The Fur Council of Canada’s school program has been successfully tested in hundreds of classrooms to help you deliver the fur trade’s responsible-use messages. Feel free to contact the Fur Council for more information about using this effective program in your region. And if you have school presentation ideas or resources to share, please leave a comment at the end of this article. Together we can help to ensure that the next generation has a better understanding of the sustainable-use principles which underpin the modern fur trade’s environmental ethic.

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Progressive politicians in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and now New York City are trying to ban the sale of fur in their jurisdictions, claiming furbearers die for products we no longer need. New York City Council Speaker Corey Johnson has proposed a ban "because I felt like it was the right thing to do in my heart." But is it the right thing to do?

“Progressives” pride themselves on supporting government action to promote social justice, equality, and, increasingly, protection of our natural environment. But the modern fur trade embodies many of the principles that progressive politicians claim to support.

Let’s look at some of the reasons why progressive politicians should be promoting fur, not seeking to ban it.

1. Fur Products Are Handmade by Skilled Artisans

In this age of industrialized mass-production, fur apparel and accessories are still cut and sewn by skilled artisans. These people maintain remarkable craft skills passed down from parents to their children through generations.

Because of the high value of the raw materials and the specialized skills required, fur products have never been made in the sweatshops that continue to plague parts of the apparel industry. Fur garments are one of the few things we buy that are still made individually, by hand. In fact, each fur piece is really wearable art, often involving 30 hours or more of skilled work to produce.

This remarkable heritage industry should be valued and protected by everyone who appreciates the cultural and human value of craft traditions.

SEE ALSO: Heritage products to warm the body and soul. By Brenda Dragon, president. Aurora Heat.

2. Fur Is Produced on Small Family Farms

More than half of the fur produced in the US (closer to 80% worldwide) is now produced on family-run farms. Fur farms are viable in regions where poor soil or harsh weather make other forms of farming difficult, and provide much-needed employment and income in many rural communities.

Industry standards (now being certified by third-party auditors) ensure that farmed mink receive excellent nutrition and care, in part because there is no other way to produce the high-quality fur for which North America is known. Farmed mink are fed left-overs from human food production - the parts of chickens, pigs and fish that we don’t eat, that otherwise might clog landfills. Mink manure, straw bedding and carcasses are composted to provide organic fertilizers to replenish the soil, completing the agricultural nutrient cycle.

Support for rural communities and sustainable agriculture are two important contributions of fur farming that progressive politicians should embrace, not scapegoat.

SEE ALSO: Facts about fur farming. Truth About Fur website.

3. Trappers Maintain Land-Based Knowledge and Lifestyles

Trappers are, in a sense, the last of the Mohicans. They are among the last people on Earth who maintain the hunter/gatherer skills and knowledge that ensured human survival for 99% of our existence as a species. They are among the few who go into nature alone, continually studying animals and their environment.

We all care about nature, but most of us now  live in cities; it is trappers who sound the alarm when wildlife and their habitat are threatened by poorly-planned industrial activity. Trappers report eagle nests so loggers can avoid disturbing them. Like canaries in the mine, changing fur harvests can signal problems like mercury pollution harming mink reproduction.

We would need trappers even if we didn’t use fur. Regulated trapping protects land from flooding by over-populated beavers. It also protects human health (e.g., from rabies spread by over-populated raccoons) and livestock (e.g., from predation by coyotes) and endangered species (e.g., sea turtle eggs from foxes, raccoons and coyotes); and the list goes on.

Trapping in North America is strictly regulated by state, provincial and territorial governments to ensure that only abundant furs are taken and that the most humane trapping methods are used.

Especially in Canada, trapping also provides food and income for many First Nations communities.

Protectors of our land-based heritage and our natural environment, trappers should be recognized as true guardians of nature. The furs they produce should be respected and treasured by progressives. They should be purchased and worn with pride to support these unique lifestyles - not boycotted.

SEE ALSO: Reasons we trap. Truth About Fur website.

4. Fur Is Sustainable, Durable, Recyclable and Biodegradable

The massive over-production of inexpensive but poor-quality clothing is becoming a serious environmental problem. “Fast fashion” unfortunately also means “fast disposal” of increasing quantities of clothing that is only worn briefly. And as much as 80% of it is made of petrochemical-based synthetics, basically another form of plastic bags.

In landfills, synthetics do not biodegrade like fur and other natural fibres. And each time they are washed, they leach millions of plastic micro-fibres into our waterways that are now turning up in marine life - including species we eat, like oysters - and even in our drinking water.

SEE ALSO: The great fur burial. Truth About Fur proves fur biodegrades.

Intensive production of cotton, the second most common clothing material, is also causing environmental damage in many regions.

It is becoming clear that the only sustainable solution to this clothing crisis is to buy less of it, while ensuring the items we do buy are better quality and last longer with proper care. This sustainable future will include fur. Good-quality mink and other fur garments are often worn for 30 or more years, and unlike most clothing, can be taken apart and completely “remodelled” as fashions change. Fur is often passed down from mother to daughter, or granddaughter. Old furs can also be made into vests, pillows or other accessories.

And after many decades of use, fur can be tossed into the compost to return to the soil. Once again, we see that fur should be appreciated and promoted by environmentally-conscious progressive politicians, not banned!

Progressive politicians who are sincere about wanting to promote social justice, craft traditions, rural communities, and protection of our natural environment, should be asking how they can better protect and promote fur and our remarkable North American heritage industry. They certainly should not be seeking to ban it.

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Finally! The infamous “skinning fur animals alive” video has been exposed as a complete fraud, orchestrated and paid for by animal activists to discredit the fur trade. There is probably no single animal-rights lie that has done more harm to the reputation of the fur trade than this video, first released by a Swiss animal-rights group in 2005.

Entitled "The shocking reality of the China fur trade", the video shows two men in a dusty Chinese fur market town, beating and then skinning an Asiatic raccoon that is clearly still alive. The video went viral and was subsequently repackaged by PETA and many other animal-rights groups around the world as “proof” that animals are abused in the fur trade. It is the centrepiece of campaigns to convince designers to stop using fur, and politicians to ban fur farming or even the sale of fur products.

Most recently, this vicious lie was repeated in support of a proposal to ban the sale of fur products in New York City, notably by the proposer of the ban, NYC Council Speaker Corey Johnson, and actress Angelica Huston, in an opinion piece published in a New York paper.

SEE ALSO: New York fur ban: Furriers fight to save sustainable industry.

But now, an investigation by the International Fur Federation (IFF) has revealed – and documented with filmed confessions and signed affidavits -- that the horrible scenes shown in that disgusting video were, in fact, intentionally staged by professional activists who paid poor Chinese villagers to perform these cruel acts for the camera.

People in the fur trade have known from the start that the scenes shown in the video did not represent normal practice. In 2016, TruthAboutFur published “5 reasons why it’s ridiculous to claim animals are skinned alive”. That article attracted enough attention that it generally pops up first on Google if you search for “skinning animals alive for fur". But pictures speak louder than words, and shocking videos are grist for the Internet mill. What was needed was absolute proof that this video was staged – and now we have it.

Road to Shancun

The IFF sent an investigative team to China to search for the men shown in the shocking video, and they found them – in the dusty market town of Shancun, a few hours drive south of Beijing.

In a new documentary video released by the IFF, the men testify that they were bribed by a woman, who they now understand was a professional activist, to carry out the horrific stunt.

The two men provided sworn affidavits about that fateful day - damning evidence of a calculated conspiracy to mislead the public and damage the fur industry.

Even now, after so many years, every time I think about what we did it makes me uncomfortable.

The two men, Ma Hong She and Su Feng Gang, were working in the Shancun fur market when they were approached with a bribe. “We were working that day and a man and a woman approached us,” said Mr. Ma in Chinese. “They had a camera and were filming. We asked 'What are you doing?’, and the woman said her grandfather had never seen a raccoon skinned alive. She asked if I would do it, and she’d like to film me doing so.

“I told her we can’t do that because the animal might bite us. She said she’d buy us a good lunch, or she’d give us a few hundred Yuan to buy our own lunch. After we finished the skinning we felt uncomfortable. It was cruel for the animal. Even now, after so many years, every time I think about what we did it makes me uncomfortable. It is something we regret. This video was posted on-line. When we saw the video, we felt unwell just to realise that we had been used by these people.

“I worked in the skinning area for two years. We’d never skin animals alive, and I’ve never seen anyone skin an animal alive,” said Mr. Ma.

"Rag-bag Package of Lies"

Mark Oaten, IFF CEO, said: “We have endured 13 years of lies and smears against our industry but we have finally ended this once and for all. We aim to explode the myth with irrefutable proof that the animal rights movement is behind a cynical stunt to discredit our industry.

“We do not skin animals alive and animal rights activists are aware of this,” said Oaten. “This is why they have had to stoop to bribery to try to damage our industry. We want to send a clear signal to anyone who seeks to deny consumers the freedom of choice by these quite wicked and, frankly, twisted tactics – if we find you out, we are coming for you and we will expose you. And if you repeat this behaviour, we will sue you for damages.

“Our industry is no longer prepared to sit back and allow these fanatics to march into the boardrooms of designers and bandy around a rag-bag package of lies and prejudice about our business. My team has gathered a solid dossier and we look forward to challenging every animal rights group which continues to use this staged video,” said Oaten.

Sick, But Not the First Time

So now we know: the cruel actions shown in this video were intentionally staged to make a vicious anti-fur propaganda piece. It’s a sick thing for anyone to do – hard to even believe – but it’s not the first time animal activists have stooped this low to falsely claim that animals are “skinned alive”.

The film that launched the first anti-seal hunt campaigns, in 1964, showed a live seal being poked with a knife by a hunter – “skinned alive!” the activists cried! But a few years later the hunter, Gustave Poirier, testified under oath to a Canadian Parliamentary committee of enquiry that he had been paid by the film-makers to poke at the live seal, something he said he would otherwise never have done. [For more on this, see my book, Second Nature: The Animal-Rights Controversy (CBC 1985; General Publishing, 1991), pg 76.]

Now, more than 50 years later, we finally have proof that this more recent claim of “skinning animals alive” is also a complete fabrication, based on another staged video.  The IFF has exposed the truth; now it’s up to each of us to share this link to its documentary every time this malicious activist lie is published.

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HELP EXPOSE THIS BIG FAT ACTIVIST LIE! Please share this blog post, or copy this link to IFF's video every time you see activists claim that fur animals are "skinned alive", in news reports or comments: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6joIOEk6JU&feature=youtu.be.

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New York furriers are fighting back against a misguided proposal to ban the sale of fur products in New York City – a proposal that would destroy thousands of jobs and hundreds of millions of dollars in economic activity generated by one of the city’s founding industries.

150 furriers and fur workers protested outside New York City Hall on March 28, as the fur ban proposal was presented to City Council by Speaker Corey Johnson and several other council members. The proposal was referred to the Committee on Consumer Affairs and Business Licensing for further discussion.

SEE ALSO: 6 reasons why banning fur sales is a very bad idea.

Family Businesses, a NYC Heritage

“We have to fight because this is a threat to so many people’s jobs. There are more than 1,500 people working in the fur trade and affiliated businesses in New York City,” says Maria Reich, the dynamic CEO of ER Fur Trading, Oscar de la Renta Furs, and Reich Furs, who was a spokesperson at the demo.

“This is also a direct threat to our freedom of choice,” she told me when I contacted her after the demo. “It is sad and worrisome that our local government could think they should dictate how we dress, what we eat, how we live. If the sale of fur can be banned by politicians, so can any other legitimate industry. Speaker Johnson thinks it’s his mission to save animals, so what’s next? Wool? Leather? Meat?

“What’s encouraging is how everyone in the trade has come together to fight against this completely unjustifiable proposal. With support from the Fur Information Council of America (FICA) and the International Fur Federation (IFF), we are signing petitions, calling and writing to our council members, speaking to the media, and getting the word out to the rest of the industry and the public about what’s happening,” she says.

“I have all my social media sites referring people to ShoppersRights.org, where they can easily let New York council members know what they think of this crazy proposal. People are being very engaged and supportive -- they want to help get the word out that people’s jobs are being threatened here, for no good reason.

“The modern fur trade is one of the most sustainable industries; the production of fur is well regulated and we are implementing full traceability with the new FurMark program. It’s just crazy that the council would even think about attacking this quintessentially New York industry. The fur trade is part of New York’s roots, going right back to the Native American people who lived here, and then the Dutch settlers and traders in the 17th century.

SEE ALSO: "Fur is a sustainable natural resource" on TruthAboutFur's website.

“Our company was started by my late husband’s grandfather, Charlie Reich, who arrived here from Poland in 1938, fought in World War II, and then returned to start Reich Furs. His great-granddaughter, Samantha Ortiz, is now president of the company. I am a single working mom, and small businesses like ours are the heart of New York. We are a design-driven company and we directly employ 20 people, but we also work with - and provide work for - many other New York Garment District companies: designers, manufacturers, wholesalers, retailers.

“It is really shameful that the councilman Johnson, who is supposed to represent the Garment District, is the one presenting this crazy proposal to shut down small family businesses and destroy the livelihoods of hard-working New Yorkers,” she says.

Fur Ban Is an Attack on Small Businesses - the Heart of NYC

Nick Pologeorgis is another leader of the New York trade; he also serves on the boards of FICA and the IFF. His father, Stanley, started Pologeorgis Furs in 1960, after arriving in New York from Crete. He apprenticed in a fur workshop without pay and became a master fur craftsman. He was one of the first furriers to forge relationships with top international designers, collaborating with Pierre Balmain from 1970. Nick joined the business when he finished college in 1984. His sister, Joan Pologeorgis, who graduated from the Fashion Institute of Technology, serves as vice-president in charge of production and is co-owner. It has been a family-owned and operated business for over 60 years.

SEE ALSO: Fur bans: Society has much more to lose than fashion.

“We love fur; not everyone has to like fur, but that doesn’t give them a right to ban it. There are real people’s jobs at stake here. This is the trade they know; they support their families,” says Pologeorgis.

“There are more than a thousand direct fur-trade jobs in New York, but our industry now also works closely with many other sectors. Fur is used for accessories and for home furnishings. Fur is used to make felt for hats, and for rugs.

“Think about it: more than $3 billion in economic activity would be lost over the next ten years if this ban was passed – that’s $3 billion taken from New Yorkers’ pockets, from New York families. And for what?

“New Yorkers are upset about all the jobs that were lost when Amazon decided to pull out of our area. More jobs stand to be lost in fur manufacturing with the proposed ban. They want to destroy jobs and small businesses like ours when they should be supporting us and fostering growth in NYC.

"The elected council members don’t really understand all the issues here. They say they want to save animals but what about people and their livelihoods?

“It’s a slippery slope from fur to many other products. What is next?” he asks. "I coach my son’s baseball team and we use leather-covered baseballs and leather mitts. So, is it also unnecessary and cruel to use baseball mitts?

“What is important now is that everyone in the trade – and everyone who supports consumer freedom of choice – should get involved and make their voices heard. You can go to ShoppersRights.org, and everything is there to make it easy to send a message to the city council members. FICA also has a social media tool kit that’s easy to use.

“Many people are working very hard to fight this terrible ban proposal, and we can succeed, but we need everyone’s help. It's time to speak out -- to defend our jobs and our rights!” says Pologeorgis.

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WHAT YOU CAN DO TO HELP:

1. Go to www.ShoppersRights.org to send a message to NYC council members. (You can also send messages about ban proposals in San Francisco and Los Angeles.)

2. New York residents: Encourage your friends and family in NYC to get involved by visiting the website of Fur NYC.

3. Everyone: Follow the Fur NYC campaign on Twitter.

4. Share this TruthAboutFur blog post on social media. And also share our other posts: "6 reasons why banning fur sales is a very bad idea" and "Fur bans: Society has much more to lose than fashion".

To learn more about donating to Truth About Fur, click here.

Recent proposals by Los Angeles, San Francisco, and now New York city councilors to ban fur sales should not only worry furriers who risk losing their jobs and businesses. These proposals should be a matter of grave concern to anyone who values living in a free, fair and tolerant society.

There are so many things wrong about the proposed bans on fur sales that it is hard to know where to begin, but let’s look at six of the most important problems:

SEE ALSO: New York fur ban: Furriers fight to save sustainable industry.

1. These proposals to ban fur sales are a flagrant example of arbitrary government infringement on fundamental human rights. No one is forced to wear fur, and animal activists are free to campaign against the fur trade, but this does not give them the right to impose their personal beliefs on others. After decades of anti-fur campaigning, many people still clearly want to buy fur. The activist response is to seek legislation that would take away our right to choose for ourselves. This should have alarm bells ringing on all sides of the political spectrum!

2. It is illogical and discriminatory to consider banning fur sales when 95% of Americans eat meat and wear leather. Of course, PETA and other “animal rights” groups that are lobbying to ban fur sales are equally opposed to any use of animals, even for food.  But most North Americans do not accept this extreme view; most of us believe that humans do have a right to use animals for food, clothing and other purposes, so long as these animals are treated responsibly. There is no justification for banning fur sales while hundreds of millions of cows, pigs and sheep, and several billion chickens, are killed each year for food in North America. Even philosopher Peter Singer stated in his landmark Animal Liberation – the book that launched the animal-rights movement – that it is completely hypocritical to campaign against the fur trade while most Americans continue to eat meat, eggs, fish and dairy.

3. As a society we do, of course, sometimes restrict personal choice, but only for very important reasons. To ensure that animals will be there for us in the future, for example, we ban trade in endangered species. But endangered species are never used in the fur trade; all the furs we use today are raised on farms or culled from abundant wildlife populations. This is assured by state, national and international regulations. Animal welfare must also be respected -- and decades of scientific research and government regulations ensure that fur today is produced responsibly and humanely. Trapping in North America is regulated by state (in Canada, provincial) wildlife authorities, in accordance with ISO standards and the Agreement on International Humane Trapping Standards. Fur farms are being inspected and certified to ensure compliance with codes of practice developed by veterinarians and animal scientists. There is simply no credible evidence that fur animals are treated less respectfully than other animals we use for food or clothing.

4. Wildlife populations often must be culled to protect property and human (and animal) health, whether or not we use their fur. Overpopulated beavers flood homes, farms and roads; raccoons and foxes spread rabies and other diseases; coyotes are the main predators of lambs and calves – and now attack pets and even people in urban areas; predators must also be managed to protect sea turtle eggs and other endangered species; and the list goes on. But if we must cull some of these animals, surely it’s more ethical to use the fur than to throw it away.

5. The fur trade supports livelihoods and cultures, especially in rural and remote regions where alternate employment may be hard to find. We all care about nature, but most of us now live in cities; indigenous and other trappers are our eyes and ears on the land, the people who monitor wildlife on a daily basis and can sound the alarm when nature is threatened. Fur farms provide employment in regions where the soil is too poor for other agriculture, helping to support rural communities. Fur artisans maintain handicraft skills that have been passed down from generation to generation. In this age of mass-production, each fur garment and accessory is still made individually, by hand. The fur trade maintains a range of remarkable skills and knowledge, a part of our human heritage that should be respected and encouraged, not persecuted with bans based on hateful and misleading propaganda.

6. Finally – and certainly not least – fur apparel is a long-lasting, natural material that is recyclable and completely biodegradable. After many decades of use, your fur can be thrown into the garden compost where it returns to the Earth. By contrast, most clothing today is made from petroleum-based synthetics that do not biodegrade. Instead, these synthetics leach thousands of plastic micro-particles into our waterways every time they are washed – plastic that is now being found in oysters and other marine life. It is bizarre at a time when we are trying to reduce our use of plastic – for example, by banning the use of plastic bags and water bottles – that some cities would even consider banning a long-lasting, recyclable and biodegradable natural material like fur!

SEE ALSO: Fur bans: Society has much more to lose than fashion.

As this quick review shows, recent proposals to ban fur sales are anything but “progressive”. They would unjustifiably usurp our right to use a sustainably produced, natural and biodegradable clothing material. They are arbitrary and discriminatory, especially in a society where most people eat meat and wear leather. They are completely unjustified because the modern fur trade is extremely well-regulated to ensure environmental sustainability and the responsible treatment of animals. And they would unfairly attack the livelihoods and cultures of thousands of people who maintain heritage craft skills and a close relationship with the land.

Again: no one is forced to wear fur. But everyone should be concerned about these misguided proposals to take away our right to make up our own minds about very personal and complex ethical choices.

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What you can do to help! Make your voice heard at: www.ShoppersRights.org