Can anyone stop fur flying off shelves again?

Published on Monday 27 November 2006 00:16

IF SHEER bulk is anything to go by, fur is back in fashion. Once, after anorexia, fur was the most emotive word in the fashion industry. But if the industry is notoriously fickle, then it appears a growing number of its customers are even more so.

Can it be that few people now neither care nor want to know where the fur came from or, more emotively, how much suffering was caused to produce it?

A list of new statistics produced by HM Customs and Excise seem to suggest they do not. The figures show that more than 1,000 tonnes of fur, worth 41 million, was imported into Britain last year.

Those mink, fox and rabbit pelts and skins now form the basis of a market worth 500 million every year. The British Fur Trade Association (BFTA) claims sales of fur have grown by nearly a third in two years.

There seems little doubt that wearing fur has become socially acceptable again, so the question for organisations such as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) now is: Where did our campaigns go so wrong?

In the 1990s, in more animal-friendly times, PETA convinced five of the world's most beautiful supermodels to strip off their clothes and declare they would "rather go naked than wear fur".

It was the high-water mark of PETA's anti-fur campaign and, by securing the support of models with the celebrity status of Naomi Campbell, Cindy Crawford, Christy Turlington, Claudia Schiffer and Elle Macpherson, countless girls and women around the world turned their backs on fur.

Indeed, to say a fur coat was socially unacceptable in the 1990s is an understatement.

Back then, if a high-profile woman with a desire to appear fashionable paraded the streets draped in dead animals, she could expect to be pelted with rotten eggs - even if she was the fiance of a famous England footballer.

But when Wayne Rooney's partner, Coleen McLoughlin, did just that two years ago, she was pelted with only a few cantankerous words from the tabloids, mostly complaining that her jacket bore the words "F***in' Freezing".

Concern over the comeback of fur is so great that the RSPCA and Scottish SPCA are mounting major new anti-fur campaigns next year.

A spokeswoman for the Scottish SPCA said: "In this day and age, it is unacceptable for fur to be used as a fashion statement. It seems just incredibly shallow and shows an utter lack of thought for the suffering of the animals killed to produce it."

Stella McCartney, one of the few fashion designers to eschew not just fur but also leather, told a newspaper: "There's nothing fashionable about a dead animal that has been cruelly killed just because some people think it looks cool to wear.

"The continuing use of fur is still a real problem in the fashion industry and there is an issue with people out there assuming that fur trim is fake when most of it is real."

Worse still for PETA, some of those in its original models line-up of 1994 have exercised a model's right to change her mind. Naomi Campbell's status as a PETA spokeswoman had to be axed after she modelled fur on the catwalk.

Meanwhile, British designers such as Matthew Williamson, Clements Ribeiro and Julien Macdonald have all worked with fur, while Kate Moss, Sienna Miller, Jade Jagger and Jemima Khan are just some of the high-profile London It-girls who have been photographed wearing fur.

At the moment, the high street is less gung-ho - Topshop, Hennes, Gap and Marks & Spencer all have an anti-fur policy.

Joseph is one of the few UK retailers to stock fur. It sold a rabbit fur coat to Cherie Blair recently, to the disgust of animal rights groups.

Louise Stevenson, of the Coalition to Abolish the Fur Trade, said: "I think it was absolutely disgusting. It's an abhorrent fashion statement to wear fur. People in influential positions should understand the impact they have on the general public."

However, that "sin" committed by the Prime Minister's wife appears to have made little impact on fur sales, which have been boosted by photographs of celebrities including Elizabeth Hurley, Beyonc Knowles and Jennifer Lopez all wearing fur.

The International Fur Trade Federation has reported that global sales are up from 4.7 billion in 2000 to 6 billion last year.

The BFTA, meanwhile, claims that some 400 top designers now use fur, although finding anyone in the fashion industry to go on the record about being pro-fur is almost impossible.

PETA, however, is more than forthcoming with its comments. Anita Singh, a spokeswoman, said: "We know many people now buying fur are doing so unwittingly. If they knew most of the fur used in the UK comes from China, where animals are flung through the air in a rudimentary attempt to stun them before they are skinned alive, then their carcases - eyes still blinking - are tossed in a heap to be burned, I'd hope they'd choose instead not to buy fur."

FOR FUR

I DO not own a fur coat, but I do own a cashmere coat with a beautiful fox collar and a wool cape trimmed with sparkling mink. I have been working hard ever since I left school at 16, and I consider that I deserve these modest fur accessories. Fur is exquisitely warm, and extraordinarily comforting next to the skin. It is also natural.

I abhor deliberate cruelty to animals, but I am not a vegetarian, and I eat animals and the products of animals: I wear leather shoes and use a leather handbag, and if I were somewhat slimmer I might wear a leather jacket.

All these products - from chicken to handbags - come from animal husbandry, and I cannot see any moral difference in eating a piece of lamb and wearing a piece of fur.

Certainly the lamb, or the mink, should not be cruelly slaughtered. Certainly every sensible form of inspection and control should be exercised to ensure that such farming is done as humanely as possible. There may be merit in objecting to fur obtained from countries where vile suffering is imposed upon animals. But there are sources - particularly in North America - where fur is farmed under precisely the same controls as any form of animal husbandry.

As the anti-hunt lobby is partly fuelled by class hatred, so some of the anti-fur campaigns are driven by a Puritanical hatred of adornment. If the wearers of fur decided to put on a coat of rats' tails instead of foxes' tails, would there be the same violent objection? I think not. For no-one would object if ugliness was the outcome rather than enhancement.

AGAINST FUR

EVERY year, more than 50 million animals are killed worldwide so that their fur can be used by the fashion industry; that is more than 130,000 animals slaughtered every day just so that someone else can wear their coats.

More than 30 million animals are bred and killed on intensive fur farms. They are kept in barren wire cages scarcely bigger than the animals themselves. The constant stress and deprivation can lead to self-mutilation. The animals are usually killed by gassing, anal electrocution or lethal injection. Others are clubbed to death or have their necks broken.

The fur industry goes to great lengths to hide the horrendous suffering involved, but undercover investigations have shown the brutal reality behind the spin.

An investigation into Chinese fur farming exposed a catalogue of cruelty inflicted on foxes, mink, racoons and rabbits. Investigators witnessed many animals being literally skinned alive.

In a desperate attempt to make fur appear acceptable to the public, the multi-billion pound fur industry gives pelts away free to fashion designers, models and celebrities. However, an increasing number of high street fashion retailers such as Top Shop, Zara and Harvey Nichols have gone fur-free as a result of ethical policies and/or simply a lack of consumer demand. This is a sign of the times and a reflection that, for the majority of the public, fur remains an unethical relic from the past that has no place in a compassionate society.