Fur: A bloody business

Fur for most of us was a hideous part of the eighties; a fashion that died with leg warmers which many thought would never return. Unfortunately a walk down any main city street shows clearly that the bloody trade has returned to the "fashion" scene. The fur industry has surreptitiously re-introduced fur in the form of coat trims, boots, scarves, hats and even hair bobbles into the market of the unthinking New Zealand public.

For the past five years Auckland Animal Action has been campaigning against the cruel fur trade. We have encouraged many stores to make compassionate change for the animals by going fur-free and adopting fur-free policies.

Our campaign has (so far) mainly focused on imported fur such as rabbit, mink, raccoon and fox. These animals are raised on factory farms in which the animals are bred in cruel conditions and live their entire (short, miserable) lives in cramped cages. They only escape these cages to be killed by inhumane methods including electrocution, gassing and neck breaking, all so that their fur coat remains intact.

We have chosen to focus primarily on imported, factory farmed fur due to the horrendous conditions in which these animals live and die. However, much cruelty is also involved in the possum fur industry here in New Zealand (such as cruel trapping methods and equally cruel 1080 poisoning). Auckland Animal Action fully intends to campaign against this issue in the future. Once we have made Auckland free of factory farmed imported fur, we will begin to focus our energies on the possum fur trade.

The Fur Free Auckland Campaign

The following is the method AAA uses to inform stores of the origins of their fur products and if necessary, the campaign tactics that will be used until compassionate change is made:

Stores are first contacted via a formal letter and are given comprehensive information packs detailing the cruel facts behind the fur industry and the animal abuse inherent in it. This is sometimes enough to inspire them to remove the fur on compassionate grounds.

In the beginning of our Fur Free Auckland campaign many stores refused to remove the fur items and only did so after Fur Free campaigns were launched. However, we have recently seen a change in store reactions when we initially contact them. While the occasional business doesn’t care - or removes it only because they don’t want the bad publicity they have seen other stores receive - the majority now say they do not want to support such animal abuse and remove all the fur from their shelves immediately. We hope this is a compassionate trend that will continue and increase as people become more aware of the abuse involved in the production of fur.

Since beginining our campaign against the fur industry in 2000, at least 50 stores have permanently stopped selling real fur and have adopted fur free policies. Our Fur Free Auckland campaign will continue until all fur has been removed from all stores in Auckland.