« The Right To Die In Spain | Main | Ahmadinejad's Silver Tongue »

November 29, 2006

Don't Let the Door Hit You on the Way Out

It was with great delight that I heard the news last evening on Victoria Taft's show that Schumacher Furs had decided to leave town. That a family can, in this day and age, make a living off the suffering and death of animals for the sake of making prissy, spoiled women feel elegant, and see nothing wrong with doing so, despite the fact that they more than most should know exactly what goes into the production of fur, is, in my opinion, utterly appalling. God bless those "terrorist" animal rights protesters who have finally chased the beasts out of town.

Every week for an entire year Schumacher has faced sidewalk protests by animal rights activists. Schumacher has blasted city officials and police for failing to support him in the face of picketers who appear weekly to try to dissuade customers from buying his coats.

The Schumachers have rejected the advice of the police and the Mayor, and even alienated a member of the City Council who wanted to help them. Randy Leonard now says, "they did what they could to fan the flames at every opportunity." The Schumachers are so rotten they even posted a sign in the window of the store that read:

ALL PROTESTERS SHOULD BE! - Beaten - Strangled - Skinned alive - Anally electrocuted

Just goes to show they know exactly what it takes to make a fur coat and they don't care. Good on Portland for sending them on their way. Of course the Schumachers are so irritated that the City wouldn't magically fix their protester problem that they are now saying Portland isn't any good for retailing because of panhandling, street musicians, and urination in the parking garages. Had to get in a final kick on the way out. But as anyone who visits Portland knows, Schumacher is full of it. And what's wrong with street musicians?

Like a lot of people, I used to not understand the whole anti-fur thing. That was because I didn't know. For those of you who are reading who still don't know, let me suggest the following reading:

This site disputes some of the fur industry's myths. It also tells a little bit about what is wrong with how the animals are treated. For instance, one of the ways the industry kills foxes is by poisoning them with dithillinium. It does not kill the foxes. It simply paralyses them. They can still feel the pain while they are skinned, but they can't do anything about it. The benefit to the skinner is that the fur comes off easier when the animal is still warm.

This site gives a bit of an overview of the fur industry. Some highlights from the site:

No federal humane slaughter law protects animals in fur factory farms, and killing methods are gruesome. Because fur farmers care only about preserving the quality of the fur, they use slaughter methods that keep the pelts intact but that can result in extreme suffering for the animals. Small animals may be crammed into boxes and poisoned with hot, unfiltered engine exhaust from a truck. Engine exhaust is not always lethal, and some animals wake up while they are being skinned.

The fur industry refuses to condemn even blatantly cruel killing methods. Genital electrocution—deemed “unacceptable” by the American Veterinary Medical Association in its “2000 Report of the AVMA Panel on Euthanasia”—causes animals to suffer from cardiac arrest while they are still conscious.

You can also read on this site about how animals are treated in China – if your stomach can take it. This matters because the fur trade is such that it is impossible to know the source of the fur that goes into the products you buy. Even if the label says it was made in Europe, it is likely the fur came from elsewhere, and that could well be from China.

If you're concerned about the environment, you should be especially anti-fur. It takes twenty times as much energy to produce a fur coat as it does to produce a fake fur coat. The chemicals used to treat the fur and prevent rotting also prevent the fur from being biodegradable and can cause water contamination. Moreover, the animals themselves produce an enormous amount of waste – 44 pounds per mink, for example. 2.56 million minks were skinned just in the U.S. in 2004.

Of course, no look at anti-fur sites would be complete without checking out Fur Is Dead. And though I won't link to it because it is too gruesome, I have seen the widely distributed video from a Chinese fur farm showing a raccoon dog that had just been skinned alive and still had enough strength left to lift its head and look at the camera after writhing around while the workers cut the rest of the fur from its legs. Sadly, the workers found this humorous.

Finally, here are a few facts to help those considering buying a fur coat understand the enormity of suffering that has gone into the garment. Imagining the horror of 50 million suffering animals a year (not counting rabbits) might be too difficult, but consider just the suffering of the number of animals required to make a coat from each of the following:

12-15 lynx (a type of cat, for all you cat-lovers out there)
10-15 wolves or coyotes (a type of dog, for all you dog-lovers out there)
15-20 foxes (another type of dog)
60-80 minks
27-30 raccoons
10-12 beavers
60-100 squirrels

Considering seal fur? Then know this: 300,000 are killed in Canada each year and many of them are skinned alive – yes, in a first world country.

Are you the type that would turn in someone if you saw they had twenty dogs kept outside without shelter in all kinds of weather in cages so small they could barely move for so long they went crazy and started chewing on themselves? What if those dogs had eye infections or other infections and were left untreated? Are those dogs inherently any less smart or sensitive than your pet? Would you report to authorities if you saw a person electrocuting small animals by attaching electrodes to their genitals, or to their delicate little feet and snouts despite the animals' screaming? If you saw someone skinning an animal alive, would you try to stop them? Does animal suffering matter?

Neglect and horrible deaths are everyday occurrences in the fur industry. I cannot accept the notion that such treatment of animals suddenly becomes OK when it's being done to make a fur coat, especially considering that other types of coats are available to keep people warm. And when people like the Schumachers have the gall to make a living literally on the backs of mass suffering, should we feel sorry for them when they're finally forced to leave town? Hell, no.

***************UPDATE 12/19/06******************

I just found this site, which claims the video footage of animals being skinned alive are animal snuff films that have been created by anti-fur activists themselves to try to unfairly smear the fur industry. I do not know whether it is accurate or not, but link to it here in the interest of fairness.

Posted by Becky at November 29, 2006 01:29 PM