A Lifetime in a Cage

Animals raised to become someone’s fur coat spend their days exposed to the elements in row after row of barren, tiny, urine- and feces-encrusted cages. Investigations have found animals with gruesome injuries going without medical care and foxes and minks pacing in endless circles, crazy from the confinement.

Minks, foxes, chinchillas, raccoons, and other animals on fur farms spend their entire lives confined to tiny, filthy cages, constantly circling and pacing back and forth from stress and boredom, some animals even self-mutilating or cannibalizing cagemates. Foxes are kept in cages measuring only 2.5 feet square, with one to four animals per cage. Minks and other species are generally kept in cages only 1 foot by 3 feet, again with up to four animals per cage. The cramped and overcrowded conditions are especially distressing to solitary animals, like minks.

During the summer, hundreds of thousands of animals endure searing heat and suffer from dizziness and vomiting before dying of heat exhaustion. Baby animals are the most common victims, as they succumb faster to dehydration. In the winter, caged animals have nowhere to seek refuge from freezing temperatures, rain, sleet, and snow.

No federal law protects animals on fur farms. Farmers often kill animals by anal or genital electrocution, which causes them to experience the intense pain of a heart attack while fully conscious. Other killing methods include neck-breaking and suffocation. Sometimes animals are only stunned and are then skinned alive.

PETA has gone undercover numerous times to document the cruelty on fur farms firsthand. Click here to find out more about our fur farm investigations.

Foxes in Boxes

Minks are the fur farm animals of choice, with 2.81 million pelts produced in the U.S. during the 2000 season, down 4 percent from the previous year, not counting the animals who die of disease or "mishaps" before they can be pelted. According to a Wall Street Journal article from August 2000, there are about 400 mink farms in the U.S., fewer than half as many as a decade ago.

Ranchers also breed foxes, beavers, and rabbits for fur. In the U.S., fur farms produced approximately 50,000 fox-fur pelts last year.

Some of them came from a place not far from the Eastern Seaboard where dead animals and animal parts litter the grounds in various states of decay. "Breeder" foxes peer intently from their cages, their view of the world chopped into the rectangles created by the mesh wiring. Their food containers are rusty cans, feces is piled up to boot-rim height, and the buildings groan in disrepair. The owner showed our investigators a wheelbarrow full of blood and skinned minks’ bodies and, not far off, two cages dripping with the corpses of foxes newly killed and skinned. One fox’s body, stripped of fur except around the ankles, lay in the dirt. The smell of decay permeated the place.

An undercover investigation into one randomly selected Northeastern fur farm caught one fur farmer illegally killing minks by injecting an insecticide into their hearts. This crude method of killing causes animals to convulse for up to 10 minutes before they die.

A Chilling Find: What We Uncovered on a "Modern" Fur Farm

Furriers say their "farms" are modern: Their cages are spacious and clean, the animals are happy, and death is humane. You be the judge.

For three months, a PETA undercover investigator documented the lives and deaths of more than 1,500 animals on a North American fur farm. One "surprise" is the alliance between the fur farmer and two other animal exploiters—vivisectors and hunters—and what happens to the animals because of it.

The "Farm"

The wire cages are tiny, filthy, and encrusted with dirt, clumps of fur, and excrement. Locked inside each one is a fox, imprisoned here since birth. Many of the foxes live for years in these hideous conditions before the farmer kills them and sells their fur to make coats, cuffs, collars, and trim.

The farmer told our investigator that a humane death by an injection of barbiturate was "too expensive"—even though it costs a mere 30 cents per animal. So he uses a metal noose pole to lift each fox from the cage by the neck, shoves an electric prod into the animal’s rectum and forces a metal conductor into the animal’s mouth. A flip of a switch shoots 240 volts of electricity through the fox’s body.

According to our investigator, "The fox’s eyes usually shut and the body goes rigid. There is a crackling sound … and sometimes teeth break and fall out. … Often the anal probe falls out. When this happens, the fox convulses, shakes, and often cries."

Death doesn’t come quickly. Because the electricity does not go through and stun the brain, the foxes remain awake and feel the full excruciating force of a massive heart attack. Tom Amlung, a veterinarian and administrator for St. Clair County, Ill., animal control, says, "The animals do not lose consciousness … for one to two minutes. The time … seems like an eternity, so one can only imagine how the animal must feel experiencing this pain during this time with the electricity running from one end of his body to the other while heat builds up at the site of the electrode."

The Lab Link

The foxes were fed cast-off chickens sent by a pharmaceutical company. The chickens, who have already suffered at the hands of experimenters, arrive by the thousands, their little hunched-over bodies shoved into sealed cardboard boxes without food, water, or space to move. Our investigator documented the farmer stacking the boxes upside down in a corner of his barn and covering them with a plastic tarp to slowly suffocate the chickens. For hours, the chickens could be heard trying to escape. When the farmer cut open the boxes and pulled them out, some were still alive.

"The farmer forced the live chickens feet first into the grinder," recorded our investigator, "while they were conscious, fighting, squawking, and flapping for their lives. You could hear their screams over the roar of the engine. He would sometimes get a smirk on his face when the chickens’ final protests were cut short."

The "Secret" Ingredient

To glean even more profit, the farmer collects and sells the foxes’ urine. The bottled waste is sold to hunters who use it to mask their scent while they lie in wait for deer. The farmer also buys live deer and raccoons so that he can collect and sell their urine to hunt shops. The wild deer are terrified of humans and have never known confinement. The raccoons are crammed together in small cages. When a young buck caught his hoof in the wire-mesh floor of his cage, our investigator saw the farmer attempt to free him by cutting the fully conscious deer’s leg, rather than the wire, with a razor-sharp knife, severing the hoof. Hoping to salvage his investment, the farmer then threw the bleeding deer into the trunk of his car and drove to a veterinarian. When the vet advised him to destroy the buck, he shot the wounded animal with a .22-caliber rifle, because "bullets are cheaper than injections."

"Trust Us," Says the Fur Industry

"North American mink and fox farmers are strongly committed to the ethic of humane care. … Humane euthanasia techniques practiced on fur farms are those recognized by the American Veterinary Medical Association … [which] approves lethal injection as the most humane method."

—from a publication by Fur Commission USA and the Canada Mink Breeders Association

Fur: Mean, not "Green"

Fur has fallen so far from grace that furriers are now trying to convince consumers that pelts are “eco-friendly.” But nothing could be further from the truth! Furs are loaded with chemicals to keep them from decomposing in the buyer’s closet, and fur production pollutes the environment and gobbles up precious resources. And don’t forget: Unlike faux fur, the “real thing” causes millions of animals to suffer every single year.

Fur Is Eco-Unfriendly

Did you know that more than 60 times as much energy is needed to produce fur coats from ranch-raised animals than is needed to produce fake furs? And that’s just the beginning.

The waste produced on fur farms—where animals spend their entire lives in cramped, filthy cages, constantly pacing back and forth from stress and boredom—is poisoning our waterways. In December 1999, for example, the Washington Department of Ecology fined one mink farmer $24,000 for polluting ditches that drain into a local creek.

The Environmental Protection Agency has also filed complaints against companies involved in fur production and transportation for illegally generating and disposing of hazardous waste from processing pelts. Improper handling of waste can cause water contamination. The fur industry has even lobbied governments in the Great Lakes area to maintain low water-quality standards—so that fur farms won’t be identified as major polluters.

Furriers claims that the carcasses from animals skinned for their pelts are used for animal feed (even though many animals on fur farms are killed by being injected with poisons), but often they end up dumped in landfills. A fur farm in Great Britain was accused of violating waste-disposal laws after a local resident found skinned mink carcasses in a landfill there. Although wasteful, this method of disposal would not be illegal in the United States.

Trapping—and “Trashing”—Wildlife

Approximately 30 percent of the fur sold in the U.S. comes from animals trapped in the wild. As anyone who stops to think about it will quickly realize, traps are indiscriminate: They catch any animal unfortunate enough to stumble upon them. Every year, hundreds of thousands of dogs, cats, birds, and other animals—including endangered species—are “accidentally” crippled or killed by traps. Trappers call these animals “trash kills” because they have no economic value, and most are simply discarded like garbage. Animals who survive and are released often die later from their injuries.

5 Furry Comeback Facts

“In the 21st century, people can choose to be cruel or kind. With so many fashionable, comfortable leather and fur alternatives available today, there is no excuse for wearing any animal skins.We are not survivalists.”

“Every year, millions of animals are trapped, drowned, and beaten to death in the wild and strangled, gassed or electrocuted on fur farms. This is not their choice.”

“If you really believe in the power of personal choice, you should choose to spare animals from a life of misery on a fur farm, where they are crammed and crowded into cages where they literally go crazy in confinement, suffering every day until they are finally and barbarically slaughtered.”

“If you wouldn’t choose to electrocute animals by inserting a rod into their rectums, flipping a switch, and sending 240 volts into them, literally burning their insides—if you wouldn’t watch them convulse, shake, and cry before dying of a heart attack—you shouldn’t wear fur.”

“People know about the cruelty of trapping and the suffering on fur farms. Now there’s simply no excuse for choosing to wear fur.”

Quick Facts - Be prepared for your next fur conversation with these convenient, sound-byte-style points.

Ranch-raised foxes are kept in cages only 2.5 feet square (minks in cages 1-foot-by-3-feet), with up to four animals per cage.

Animals can languish in traps for days. Up to 1 out of every 4 trapped animals escapes by chewing off his or her own feet, only to die later from blood loss, fever, gangrene, or predation.

Every year, thousands of dogs, cats, raptors, and other so-called "trash" animals (including endangered species like the bald eagle) are crippled or killed by traps.

To kill the animals without damaging their fur, trappers usually strangle, beat, or stomp them to death. Animals on fur farms may be gassed, electrocuted, poisoned with strychnine, or have their necks snapped. These methods are not 100 percent effective and some animals "wake up" while being skinned.

According to a study by Ford Motor Company engineer Gregory H. Smith, it takes almost three times as much energy to make a coat from trapped animals' pelts—and 40 times as much from ranch-raised furs—than it does to make a fake fur coat.

Suffering in the Wild

Animals like raccoons and foxes caught in steel-jaw leghold traps—the most widely used trap—endure excruciating pain from the steel bars clamped onto their legs, paws, and bodies. Some animals, especially mothers desperate to return to their young, will struggle to get loose, even chewing or twisting off their own legs to escape. Animals suffer for hours or even days in traps before trappers arrive to stomp on their chests or break their necks. The trapped animal is left to suffer blood loss, infection, gangrene, exhaustion, exposure, frostbite, shock, or attack by nonhuman predators. Other animals, such as beavers and muskrats, caught in underwater traps can struggle for up to 20 minutes before drowning. Every year, traps also cripple and kill hundreds of thousands of dogs, cats, birds, and other animals—including endangered species—who are caught by mistake. Click here for more information on animals caught in the wild for their fur.

What the Fur Industry Doesn't Want You to Know about its
Exploitation of Indigenous Peoples

After a decade of lackluster sales and plummeting profits, the fur industry is shamelessly attempting to justify its bloody trade by claiming to care about indigenous people.

The fur wars of the 1970s and 1980s permanently linked fur, in the minds of consumers, with the barbaric cruelty of steel-jawed traps and the hideous cramped confinement of cage-raised furbearers. With increasing numbers of compassionate people turning their backs on cruelty, the fur industry now alleges to support the traditional trapping lifestyle of aboriginal people. While some indigenous cultures have trapped animals for sustenance, killing animals for the sake of fashion and vanity is irreconcilable with indigenous philosophies of respect for the land and the animals.

The Native/Animal Brotherhood notes that the fur industry is anti-traditional and that the fur industry was a primary force behind the historical subjugation of native peoples. Paul Hollingsworth, founder of the Native/Animal Brotherhood states: "For 300 years the native people have been tools of the fur trade. The fur trade took our land, our culture, and our animal brothers. Once we were one with Mother Earth and all her creatures. It's time we listened to the animals' voices instead of trading in their blood.”

According to Statistics Canada, only 3% of all fur available for sale in North America comes from native trapping. Making an average of $225 per year from the sale of animal skins, aboriginal trappers are paid a pittance for doing the dirty, exhausting, bloody work of an industry that cares nothing about the indigenous people and even less about the animals. While the fur industry claims that aboriginal survival depends on trapping and the sale of fur, clearly, the continuation of trapping as the sole source of income will keep aboriginal people below even subsistence-level incomes.

Fur Free Friday

To eliminate the cruelty caused by the fur industry, it takes dedicated and effective activists from around the world to keep pressure on retailers, fur ranchers, designers, and legislators.

Many activists begin their protest season on the day after Thanksgiving, the busiest shopping day of the year. This kick-off day is known as Fur Free Friday (November 26, 1999).

Our on-going targets:

Neiman-Marcus, Macy's East, Burlington Coat Factory

Neiman-Marcus and Macy's East are two of the largest luxury retailers of fur garments in the U.S. Burlington Coat Factory, with 260 stores, sells coats with fur trim at alarming volume. Burlington was caught selling coats made from dog fur. Their excuse was, "We thought it was coyote."  

When these huge retail companies are convinced to halt fur sales, it will be a lethal blow to the fur trade.

Photos of the Fur Trade's Mental and Physical Abuse of Animals

Though many people can listen to descriptions of animal cruelty without feeling distraught, it's difficult to look at these photographs and not begin to comprehend the abuse inflicted on 40 million animals every year due to the fur industry's greed.

Investigators who captured these images on film were not able to also capture the terrible stench, the repetitive and desperate pacing movements of animals who had gone mad in their tiny cages, or the shrieks of animals in pain due to neglect.

The photos on this page explain why tens of thousands of people will be active on Fur-Free Friday to protest this cruel activity. To view photos, click here then click on "Fur Photos" (all pages have same url)

Links

Fur Is Dead / IDA on Fur / Fur Shame / NeimanCarcass

Think About the Clothes You Wear / Clothing Information Sheet

inFURmation.com

SHE NEEDS HER FUR COAT MORE THAN YOU DO

Merchandise

Stock up on anti-fur gear like T-shirts, buttons, and posters.

What You Can Do

10 Easy Ways to Make a Statement About Fur