About 60 percent of entire fur industry based in China
צילום: אורלי דיין
Fashion designers: Love in, fur out
International Anti-Fur Coalition events held simultaneously in 17 countries, including Israel to stress 'unnecessary cruelty of fur industry when synthetic alternative exists'; former Environment Minister Sarid: There may be some medical experiments done on animals that have no alternatives, but this is sheer nouveau riche hedonism. Organizer: Animals treated like things that will eventually become a hat
Leading Israeli fashion designers and animal rights activists convened Wednesday at the Shenkar College of Engineering and Design in Ramat Gan for a conference protesting the USD 12 billion global fur industry.
Similar events organized by the International Anti-Fur Coalition were held simultaneously in 17 countries around the world to stress what animal rights groups say is unnecessary cruelty involving the killing of animals for fur when the alternative of synthetic fur exists.
Eyal Slonim, head of the Utopia social organization, which organized the event in Israel, kicked off the conference with hidden-camera videos from China depicting cruel methods for trapping animals, but he refrained from presenting images of skinning processes.
The videos showed about a dozen dogs cramped inside a small cage before being loaded onto trucks en route to a slaughter house in a fur farm. One particularly gruesome scene showed a Chinese fur farm employee stomping on cats inside a cage to make room for other animals.
According to statistics presented by Slonim, about 60 percent of the entire fur industry is based in China, a country with no animal protection laws whatsoever.
Slonim said anti-fur groups have stepped up pressure on China to improve its poor animal rights record. Hopes have been buoyed by the belief that Beijing is likely to make positive steps in this direction as it seeks to improve its image abroad ahead of the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
Anti-fur activists have planned rallies at Chinese embassies around the world in February.
He vehemently dismissed claims made by fur industry spokespeople that chemicals used to create synthetic fur pose a health hazard, arguing that US studies have shown real fur processing techniques involve the use of greater amounts of chemicals.
Some 55 million animals are slaughtered in “fur farms” each year, about 150,000 a day; 35 female minks, or 60 males need to be slaughtered to make a single coat, according to statistics presented by anti-fur groups.
'I never owned fur and I never froze'
Slonim said most of the animals are skinned while still alive and die about 10 minutes later.
“The animals are not treated as living creatures, but as things that will eventually become a hat,” he said. “This is an industry of suffering.”
Former Environment Minister Yossi Sarid told the audience, "human and animal rights are non-existent in China, and unfortunately we should not set our hopes high ahead of the Olympics; the repression there is only increasing.
"The fur industry may be the most cruel thing there is; cruelty for the sake of profit," he said.
"I never owned fur and I never froze."
Sarid added: "There may be some medical experiments done on animals that have no alternatives, but this is sheer nouveau riche hedonism."
But not all participants agreed. A man who claimed that his wife had worked in the fur industry took to the stage and challenged the audience to explain the moral difference between slaughtering animals for their meat or for their fur.
"Why do you differentiate between a sheep that is slaughtered for food and a mink that is slaughtered for its fur? What's the difference?" he asked before being asked to return to his seat.
The event concluded with a short fur-free fashion show.
Designer Dorin Frankfurt said "Fur went out of fashion; I have no idea how it became en vogue again. I happen to be a vegetarian, but I see no similarities between the two issues. The slaughter of animals for food is a whole other discussion."
