Alexandra Suhner Isenberg has been active in the fur trade since 2009 and from 2014 until 2018 was Social Media Manager and then Director of Online Communications at Truth About Fur. A Canadian with a background in fashion, Alexandra developed a passion for fur when she worked as a designer in some of the top luxury fashion houses in Paris and London. She began working in the fur trade when returning to Canada after a decade in Europe. She has lectured about the fur trade and is an advocate of the industry who has visited farms, auction houses, and trade shows across the world. As of 2018, she resides in Sweden, where she runs her own company producing sleepwear. Here she is shown visiting a Finnish fox farm in 2015. "So many people think the fur industry is about glamour and rich people wearing fancy coats," she says. "That's only a tiny part of the industry, and the part that I see is the opposite of that. Visiting a fur farm is usually the opposite of glamorous: here I am at a fox farm in Finland wearing the regulation hazmat suit. These lovely outfits need to be worn by any visitors on the farms, in order to protect the animals from any outside germs."

WatchMojo.com interviews Alan Herscovici, senior researcher at Truth About Fur, and executive vice-president of the Fur Council of Canada from 1997 to 2016. Did you know that wearing fur can be good for the environment? Edited highlights follow. Alan Herscovici: Some of the activist groups today are saying, “We don’t need fur. We have all these great synthetics,” but most synthetics are made from petrochemicals. They are non-renewable resources, there’s pollution problems and so on. So fur really has a role to play. It’s been around a long time. It’s proven. It has a track record. So here we are, 400 years after the commercial fur trade started in Canada. The biologists tell us that the beaver are as abundant as they were when Europeans first came. That’s quite an environmental success story. WatchMojo: What do you have to say to people who believe that fur is unethical? AH: We shouldn’t kill animals for frivolous purposes, and some activists are saying a fur coat is a frivolous purpose. But we do have to wear something. We do wear winter clothing. When you think of fur as being a natural product, such a long-lasting product, that we can remodel it and restyle it, it can be passed down and worn vintage, it’s anything but frivolous. And it’s not at all frivolous for the people who live on the land. The Cree of James Bay eat beaver and muskrat. They hunt them for food. They don’t have cows up there. When they’ve eaten the meat, should they throw the fur away? WatchMojo: You started an initiative called FurIsGreen.com. Can you tell us about that? AH: People are ready to hear another side of the story. The [fur] trade is so artisanal, a handicraft heritage industry, and that’s why we haven’t heard the other side. When you attack a big modern industry, they give it to some PR department. The reason you haven’t heard the other side of the fur story is because they’re not communicators. It’s trappers out in the bush. It’s family farms. Everything around us does come from the land, from people who got their hands dirty. Lumberjacks or miners or cattlemen, all these people that are being attacked by these protest campaigns are the people that feed us and clothe us. And there’s something bizarre that we’ve had the privilege that the people on the land have done such a good job that most of us can live in the city and have nice clean fingernails and talk about stuff and call that working. What do we do with that freedom? We turn on the people on the land as if there was something wrong with them, and that’s something we have to change.

In this visit to a tanning plant, we follow the process of transforming raw beaver pelts into a material ready for garment designers. First a worker sorts through the raw pelts to determine the type of garment they’re suitable for, and then hammers a lot number into the underside of each pelt. He then cuts out the ear cartilage. The pelts are dry because of preservation techniques used before they were delivered to the tanning plant, so they are rehydrated using chemical washes, including tanning chemicals. These convert the underside of the skins to supple leather that will allow them to be shaped into garments. All the washes cause the pelts to thicken, so they are thinned down using a flesher’s knife. This is a skilled process. One false move and you’ll cut into the follicles and lose fur. Next, the pelts are placed in a rotating drum of sawdust and mineral solution to clean and condition the leather. The furs emerge still damp, so they are hung over wooden dowels, leather side up. Now, a worker scrapes off the long hair to expose the downy undercoat, which has the most desirable look and texture. A generous amount of oil is rubbed onto the leather to lubricate it, and the pelts are then tossed into a “kicker box” which causes the oil to penetrate the skin. Next, a spinning metal wheel tugs at the pelt to stretch it. That done, a worker cuts away the edges, and it’s into the hot press. This irons and adds luster to the fur. After a quick brush, the pelts get one more press. Then a shearing machine cuts the hairs to an even length. And the pelts are ready for their trip to the garment factory!

Jeff Mitchell owns a 150-acre mixed farm with mink in Norwich, Ontario. The farm was started in 1949 by his father with just four female mink and one male. It’s grown to 3,200 females today, producing 13,000 mink a year. “Ever since I was a small child, I’ve always been involved with the mink,” says Jeff. Several family members help out on the farm, plus local hires. “I live in a rural community, and if I can create employment for someone … I’m really glad to do it because that brings a job into our community, and we try to keep our people busy at home first.” Jeff enjoys the challenges brought by running a mixed farm. “Looking after the cattle is a different part of my life, something different to learn about, to watch and to grow. Each phase of agriculture is different, and we all have different ways of doing what we do.” He points at a neighbor’s field with cattle, horses and sheep all together. “Some of us have gone way forward in how we separated and specialized in everything, and some places life hasn’t changed near as much as everybody thinks it has.” Jeff’s mink live on a diet of 85% meat blended with cereal with vitamins and minerals to make a completely balanced diet. By-products used include fish heads, beef tripe, and livers and kidneys. These body organs “are all the parts of the animal that the wild animal goes for first, after it’s made a kill,” says Jeff. “In fact, the mink probably have a lot better diet than a lot of people in our society today.” He also believes his mink are better off than wild mink. “They probably have a lot better diet, on a regular basis, than they ever would in the wild. They’re not out fighting, they’re not running miles looking for their food. They have food on a regular basis, fresh water, a clean dry nest, and they’re monitored to be able to survive because if they don’t survive, we don’t survive.” In the fall, after the mink are harvested, the fat on the carcasses is rendered into biodiesel and the rest is composted along with the manure and used bedding. It is then “returned directly to the land as manure to furnish next year’s crops,” explains Jeff, “which grow exceptionally well on my farm because of said manure.”

My father, Jack Herscovici, visiting me at the 2002 NAFFEM, the wonderful high-end North American fur show run for the benefit of the whole trade by the Canadian fur manufacturers association (CFTDI) in Montreal for 30 years, until 2013. My father was a member of the show committee for many years in the early days of the Montreal fur show. NAFFEM morphed into StyleLab-Montreal in 2014. - Alan Herscovici

Bob Zimbal is a mink farmer from Wisconsin, on the shore of Lake Michigan. The Zimbal Minkery has raised mink for 60 years. “What I like about mink farming is the fact that you’re outside working with the animal,” says Bob. “I think any type of farming you do, you have to have some kind of love of animals to do that because, you know, in the end that’s what we do every day." To opponents of fur, Bob has this to say. “Everybody has the right to choose not to eat meat, not to wear fur, not to use leather. They have the right to their opinion, but also they should respect our right to our opinion, and if we choose to wear fur, that’s our choice.” The Zimbal Minkery is keen to spread a positive image of mink farming, and gladly opens its doors to visitors. “We do quite a bit of tourism. We’ll probably in a year get 500 people through our farm at various times, and a lot of times the comment we’ll get is, ‘Oh, you’re almost like a recycler. You’re using all the by-products that aren’t for human consumption, and you’re recycling this and making it into a beautiful mink skin which can be used for a garment’.” “What I always like when people come to our farm and look, I like to compare it to other types of agriculture. If you’re a dairy farmer or an egg producer, you become an expert at your field, and we as mink farmers, we’ve become experts in the fields of the nutrition and the management of the animals. I don’t care if you’re raising mink, you’re raising chickens or cows, for the farmer raising them, it’s in his best interest to give those animals the best care, the best food, the best veterinarian care, because in the end the better you care for your animals, the better they will produce for you.”

Catherine Moores runs New Mink Inc. mink farm in Nova Scotia with 10,000 breeders. As a girl, Catherine opposed all animal uses except for cats and dogs as pets, but her perspective changed after she began studying to become a vet at Nova Scotia Agricultural College. “I started working more with farmers, visiting farms, and actually seeing their relationship with the animals,” she recalls. “I began to realize that these people [are] working with the animals because they have an appreciation for the animals and respect for the animals, and they actually enjoy working with the animals, because if they didn’t, I don’t think that they would do it. So when I was offered this job, I decided to take it.” Catherine explains the importance of diet for farmed mink. “The majority of our feed ingredients are sourced through local fish plants. Now we feed probably between 60 and 70% fish by-products, and this is providing employment to the local fish processors. And the diet changes through every year depending on the cycle that the mink is going through at the time. We are constantly balancing the diets. We send a feed sample away every week to make sure that our fat and protein levels are exactly where we want them.” In addition to a high-quality diet, “I think that we provide the mink with a very good quality of life. We provide protection from the elements. We provide them with their own comfort zones, their own territories. … We provide them with fresh bedding, warm nest boxes. We do health checks three times a week. We walk through the barns and physically look at all the animals and treat any sick ones accordingly.” “People always comment when they walk on our farm how content the mink seem,” says Catherine. “So I think we have provided them a good-quality life. I love my job, I do. It is the very last thing that I thought I would be doing today, but I really do love it.”

Ted Parkinson is a mink farmer in Ontario and member of the Canada Mink Breeders Association. The farm is a family operation, with Ted’s father starting when he was 15 years old. Ted has now been raising mink for over 30 years, and has been joined by his daughter and son in law. “I still enjoy it to this day, after 30 years,” says Ted. One of the questions Ted commonly hears is how mink are euthanized, and so he explains. “We use carbon monoxide gas. We bring a container down the row with the gas in the container. We put the mink in. It’s an odorless gas so they won’t even realize what’s happening. It’s stress-free, it’s quick, and it’s a system that works well for us. It’s very easy on the mink and on the operators.” Visiting Ted’s farm is a student veterinarian from the University of Guelph studying animal behavior and welfare, with a focus on stereotypical behavior. One of the things she is researching is the effect of adding a simple wire “getaway box” to pens used by nursing mothers. The boxes allow the nursing mothers to get away from their demanding kits for a while to rest. This is expected to reduce the incidence of mastitis in mothers, and hasten the transition of the kits to solid food, resulting in healthier and larger mothers and kits. As for the standard of care received by the mink, our student says, “Compared to other farmed animals, mink have it pretty much the best.”

This video has been produced by the Fédération des Trappeurs Gestionnaires du Québec, and provides an overview of modern trapping, including the development of modern traps, how trapping is regulated, and the importance of training courses for trappers. A transcript follows: For centuries, trapping has allowed us to promote the natural beauty and the incomparable qualities of wild fur. Over the years, techniques have evolved greatly. Today, traps used in Canada are certified to meet the International Humane Trapping Standards. Intensive research involving veterinarians has led to the development of trap types that, depending on the situation, cause the least injury possible, or ensure death within a few seconds for the animals concerned. Trapping is a highly regulated activity, based on the sustainable and responsible use of an abundant and renewable resource. Regulated trapping seasons and the careful monitoring of fur harvests ensure the sustainable use of wildlife while providing quality furs. To receive their trapping permits trappers must complete courses to learn to use the most modern methods while respecting wildlife and the conservation of natural habitats. Naturally, trappers value the fur of animals they capture, but the meat and other parts are also used. Trapping even facilitates the reintroduction of animals that were previously depleted, and also helps to protect endangered species such as woodland caribou, by controlling predators including bears, coyotes and wolves. The Fédération des Trappeurs Gestionnaires du Québec is proud to promote the benefits of trapping, and the use of fur, a high-quality, renewable resource.