Thursday, 1st January 2009
Europe closes its doors to cat and dog fur trade
New Year’s Day brought about an end to the horrific trade in cat and dog fur across Europe.
It has taken nine years of tireless campaigning to secure this ban and save the lives of over two million cats and dogs each year in China. These animals are cruelly killed for their fur for supply to the European market alone.
In 1999, together with Humane Society International – one of the biggest animal welfare groups in the world – we launched a European campaign to ban cat and dog fur.
The campaign exposed not only the barbaric cruelty of the trade but also the potential danger of exposure to high levels of toxic chromium, used in the hide-curing process, on cat and dog fur toys imported from China.
It also highlighted the consumer fraud perpetrated on an unsuspecting public through false labelling using names like Gae Wolf, Sobaki and Asian Jackal and dyeing cat and dog fur to look like faux fur, as well as widespread evidence of cat skins being sold in Belgium, Germany and Austria as pseudo health aids (rheuma-bandages) purportedly to help people suffering from rheumatism.
During the course of the long campaign, five EU countries unilaterally banned the trade – Italy, Denmark, France, Belgium and Greece. The USA and Australia also introduced bans. However, the freedom of movement of goods across EU internal borders meant that the unilateral bans in individual Member States were not effective.
The campaign highlighted some of horrific and quite disturbing scenes.
In countries like China, killing cats and dogs for their fur is the norm. Slaughter of these animals is horrific, with cats strangled outside their cages as other cats look on and dogs noosed with metal wires and then slashed across the groin until they bleed to death.In Harbin (Northern China), investigators from Humane Society International documented a dog being skinned while still conscious. Sadly, that was not an isolated event.
A film shot in 2006 by a Swiss film-maker in an animal market near Beijing showed sickening scenes of dogs being partially stunned by bashing their heads on the ground. Many of the dogs then recovered consciousness as they were being skinned, howling in agony as their pelts were torn from their bloodied carcases.
The pelts from these tortured creatures were being sold to EU stores as full length coats, homeopathic arthritis aids, trim on sweaters and linings for boots and gloves as well as toy cat figurines. One item purchased in the Netherlands for instance, was a bright red hair bow made to appear as faux fur, yet it was positively DNA tested as being made from dog fur. It is cheaper to kill and skin a cat or a dog in China than to manufacture faux fur.
Thankfully, such trading of cat and dog furs will become a thing of the past this week when a complete ban comes into effect in all 27 EU Member States. It was a long and difficult campaign. Along the way, millions of Europeans signed petitions, sent emails or wrote letters while various celebrities backed a boycott on Chinese fur products. Even the director of TV’s Sex in the City, Dennis Erdman, persuaded Hollywood stars to join in.
The comeback of fur in the fashion world reinforces how important this ban is. But retailers must still be vigilant. There remains much work to do to convince the Chinese to put a stop to this horrific business once and for all.
A Europe-wide ban together with the refusal of America and Australia to market such wares brings hope for a complete end to the killing of these animals for their skin.
China must follow suit. Its Government must be persuaded to end this barbaric trade and close down the export of cat and dog skins to Russia, the one remaining major market, if it wants to belong to the global family of civilised nations.
