Chapter 8
Fur Morality
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Fox Trapping on Unimak. Photographer Frank L Beals. US Fish and Wildlife Service.
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What are some of the arguments for and against the fur industry? This entry looks at the morality of the fur industry.
Welfare
A solid basis for welfare arguments against the fur industry is the industry's inherent lack of welfare. Advocates of the status quo will not even implement moderate welfare because it eats away the profits. Nor does the fur industry have incentive for change. In China and countries with a similar mental disposition about animals the idea of animal welfare is non-existent.
Confinement
Mink, foxes and other predatory fur-bearers are inquisitive creatures with varied and complex behaviour. A mink ranges along several kilometres of riverbank and is adapted for a semi-aquatic life. Foxes are active throughout tens to hundreds of hectares. These animals need stimulating environments in which to be active. Confining them on fur farms in tiny cages inevitably causes them suffering.
Wild Caged Animals
People assume that raising fur-bearers is like rearing other farm animals and that providing the animals are well cared for they pose no welfare or ethical problems. The fur trade claim that mink and foxes are domesticated animals well suited to the farm. This is not true. People have not bred these animals over centuries like dogs, sheep and cattle, for pliancy and toleration of humans. Fur-farmed mink and foxes retain their wild instincts - they are suffering, caged, wild animals.
Rights & Ethics
However, there are people who insist that the concept of welfare entirely misses the fundamental issue. They maintain that humans have no right to impose suffering on animals to farm and trap them for their fur. This is an issue welfare cannot address and the fur trade continually fails to engage in ethical debate. Aside from welfare ("standards are always improving") the fur trade's arguments extend only to conservation ("we do not use endangered species") and that fur is somehow indispensable ("...the ultimate modern luxury for today's lifestyle").
End Users
It is the end users of fur, the people who ultimately wear fur, who are key to the continuation of the fur trade. They finance the trade by buying fur apparel and the trade will keep going as long as fur-wearers pay for it. But the fashion conscious wearers of fur give no thought to the suffering and cruelty behind their actions and dismiss animal suffering as trivial compared with their need for glamour.
For & Against: argue your case
1. Culpability
- Claim: You cannot blame fur-wearers for any wrong-doing, because they did not kill the animals they wear.
- Claim: The people who buy furs to wear sustain and propel the industry by financing it, so they are the most blameworthy of all for animal cruelty.
- 2. Pleasure
- Claim: Fur is good because it gives pleasure to so many people.
- Claim: These people are not thinking or do not understand the suffering behind the fur.
- 3. Choice
- Claim: You should leave the choice to individuals to decide whether or not to wear fur.
- Claim: We must have free choice, but ban the cruel practices and trade behind the choice.
- 4. Livelihoods
- Claim: The fur trade is necessary because the way of life of many people depends on it.
- Claim: Employment cannot justify cruel practices. People can adapt to changing employment but the animals they kill lose everything.
- 5. Million Dollar Donations
- Claim: The fur trade is good because it contributes million of dollars to animal welfare and conservation projects.
- Claim: Fur farming and trapping still cause suffering and are still immoral no matter how much money you throw about.
- 6. Natural & Sustainable
- Claim: Fur is good for society because it is a natural product, based on the sustainable use of renewable resources.
- Claim: You can find fur in nature (ie it is 'natural') and fur-bearers reproduce (so are 'sustainable'). But this does not give you an automatic right to exploit fur-bearers relentlessly, bringing suffering and death to tens of millions of them every year.
- 7. Environment-friendly
- Claim: Fur is biodegradable and therefore environmentally sound, unlike synthetic fabrics.
- Claim: Fur farming and all the chemicals that go into processing pelts are anything but environment friendly.
- 8. Freedom of Activity
- Claim: Fur farming is a lawful trade. Banning it infringes the legitimate freedom of people to trade.
- Claim: You cannot defend cruel practices on grounds of rightful trade. In any case, other cruel trades and practices have been banned.
- 9. Farming
- Claim: Fur farming is as justifiable as farming any other animals.
- Claim: Real farms do not confine wild animals in tiny cages.
- 10. Quality Farming
- Claim: Fur farming is not cruel. Guidelines and regional, national and international laws regulate fur farmers.
- Claim: In some countries there are guidelines and laws that support fur farming as a legal activity. But these guidelines and laws do not prevent fur-farmed animals from suffering.
- 11. Established Economy
- Claim: Fur farming is an important, established and normal part of farming in many countries.
- Claim: Practices are not right just because they are entrenched and taken as customary.
- 12. Offal
- Claim: Fur farming makes good use of millions of tonnes of animal by-products by feeding the by-products to fur-farmed animals. Doing this is a valuable link in the food and recycling chain.
- Claim: Killing one lot of animals (by-products) to feed another lot (fur-farmed animals) justifies nothing except human economics and is part of the global industrial exploitation of animals.
- 13. Ethical Obligation
- Claim: Providing fur-farmed animals with humane care is an ethical obligation of the fur industry.
- Claim: You cannot provide animals with humane care by locking them into little wire cages and brutally killing them after a year.
- 14. Welfare
- Claim: Fur farms are compassionate because they provide high standards of care for animal health and welfare.
- Claim: They are not and do not. And China and other Asian countries have no concept of animal welfare.
- 15. Science
- Claim: The fur industry recognises that farming and trapping must take account of scientific advice on welfare - not emotions or morals.
- Claim: Science cannot say how we should act. Nor is taking account of scientific advice on welfare sufficient because you do not act on it.
- 16. Glossy Fur
- Claim: You can tell fur-farmed animals are in good health by their glossy good-looking fur. Fur farming and good welfare go hand in hand.
- Claim: Caged animals show behavioural abnormalities (ie they are mentally deranged). These behaviours (eg stereotypies), not coat quality, are the best indicators of health and well-being.
- 17. Breeding
- Claim: Fur farms specifically breed animals for their fur so there is no harm done to wildlife.
- Claim: Fur farms still deprive millions of animals of their freedom and lives. Furthermore, fur farms are factory farms and harm wildlife by polluting the environment.
- 18. Adaptation
- Claim: Fur farms breed mink and foxes so that they adapt to the farm environment.
- Claim: The animals have not had sufficient generations to breed and essentially are wild animals in cages.
- 19. Longevity
- Claim: Most wild-living mink live only a few months but the care of mink farmers ensures that farmed mink live until the end of the year.
- Claim: This 'care' is perverted. Better to live and die free than to live caged and deranged.
- 20. Soap
- Claim: Mink framing is beneficial because it provides fat for hypoallergenic soaps and hair products and supplies manure for organic fertiliser.
- Claim: You are thinking entirely about human-centred interests. No one, who is sensitive to animal issues and recognises them in the products they buy, would want any part of these products.
- 21. Native Peoples
- Claim: The survival of indigenous cultures depends on fur trapping and the fur trade.
- Claim: Commercial trapping is not important for the survival of native societies and it was a cause of the decline of native societies in the first place.
- 22. By-Catch
- Claim: Trappers catch only as many animals that they can manage responsibly and the law allows.
- Claim: Trappers incidentally catch millions of unwanted animals in addition to their target animals.
- 23. Over-population
- Claim: Trapping is necessary for wildlife management. It prevents disease and habitat deterioration because of animal over-population.
- Claim: Humanity first hit animals by upsetting their natural balance. Now humanity is killing them to restore a semblance of balance. The real population that needs management is the over-populated human one (see Human Overpopulation).
- 24. Indispensability
- Claim: Trapping is indispensable for managing animal populations for the protection of people's interests and for the survival of the animal populations themselves.
- Claim: Wild populations can and should regulate themselves naturally. Food availability, weather and disease have always limited wild populations, long before humanity came on the scene playing God.
- 25. Surplus
- Claim: Trappers trap only surplus wild animals (ie those who do not breed and therefore do not contribute to the size of their population). So trapping does not harm wild populations.
- Claim: Traps are non-specific: they kill all who step on them whether breeders or non-breeders. You cannot justify trapping animals even if some of them are non-breeders. Traps also incidentally kill countless no-target (non-fur-bearer) animals.
- 26. Pest Control
- Claim: Trappers trap for pest control.
- Claim: 'Pest' is a human concept, meaning an animal who competes with humans for the resources that humans want. Animals should not suffer in traps because of this. (See Vermin.)
- 27. Law
- Claim: Trappers trap humanely, ensured by international agreements.
- Claim: Animals still suffer and die no matter how humane office-bound bureaucrats try to make trapping in international agreements. In any case, the police cannot monitor or control trappers in the wilds.
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Useful Sources
You can find these and other sources on the Web.
Andrew Linzey (2002): The Ethical Case Against Fur Farming.
Hsieh-Yi, Yi-Chiao, Yu Fu, B Maas & Mark Rissi: Dying For Fur: a report on the fur industry in China. EAST International/Swiss Animal Protection SAP. January 2005 (revised April 2006). Similar to Fun Fur? A report on the Chinese fur industry, by the same authors.
The Socio-Economic Impact of European Fur Farming. European Fur Breeders Association / International Fur Trade Federation. Undated but latest figurers are for 2004.
International Fur Trade Federation (IFTF) web site.
pelts. Industry & Trade Summary. US International Trade Commission. Publication 3666. 2004.
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