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Distressing Article



 
 
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Old December 14th 04, 10:04 PM
Phil P.
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Default Distressing Article

Chinese live markets feed the fur trade



"Much of the fur on the streets now is cat, dog, or rabbit from southern or
coastal China. This cat is safe at the Beijing Human' &Animal Environmental
Education Centre, a first-rate shelter, far from the regions where cats are
often eaten. (Kim Bartlett)"



NEW YORK CITY-"Real Fur Is Fun Again," headlined the October 11 edition of
Newsweek. "It's less expensive and more popular than ever. But as young
people snugÂ*gle up, where are the protesters'?"



Fur appeared on 36 of the 270 pages in the "Women's Fashion Fall 2004"
edition of The New York Times Style Magazine: as many pages as in all
editions from 2001 through 2003 combined.



Fur is more visible now than at any time in the past 20 years. Furriers are
buying more ad space in The New York Times and other periodicals known to
reach affluent younger women, anticipating a profitable winÂ*ter-if the
economy holds up.



But furriers have often misread marÂ*ket demand. Expecting a boom in the
winters of 1993/1994 and 1997/1998, chiefly through believing their own
propaganda, furriers drove fur pelt prices up at auction with panic buying
to increase inventory, stepped up their adverÂ*tising, and experienced busts
instead.



The recent history of the fur trade is that booms arc anticipated whenever
the big retailers exhaust the unsold back inventory from the last time they
misread the indicators. The current buzz in the industry is that in 2004 the
women who were born at the beginning of the last fur boom turned 30,
reaching the age bracket within which most (continued on page 16) who ever
buy fur will buy their first fur coat. Since 1959, when the release of the
first Walt Disney version of 101 Dalmatians preceded a two-year decline in
fur sales, furriÂ*ers have believed that attitudes formed toward fur in
girlhood shape fur-wearing and fur-buyÂ*ing habits for life. The girls who
asked their mothers to stop wearing fur in 1959-1960 mostly never wore fur,
fur trade analysts believe, but girls who admired fur-wearing First Lady
Jackie Kennedy in 1961-1963 became avid fur-wearers 15 to 20 years later.
The fur industry thinks those women's daughters formed their image of glamor
and status when fur-wearing First Lady Nancy Reagan was in the White House.
Furriers hope they will become another generÂ*ation of fur fiends like their
mamas, who for a time propelled the U.S. retail fur trade to all-time peaks
of profitability.



From the 1974 exit of famously nonÂ*fur-wearing First Lady Pat Nixon until
the 1988 arrival of also non-fur-wearing First Lady Barbara Bush, U.S.
retail fur sales rose every year, peaking at $1.85 billion.



Neither Pat Nixon nor Barbara Bush entirely avoided fur. Both wore fur
garments on rare ceremonial occasions. But they did not look comfortable in
fur. They did not boost the fur trade as Nancy Reagan had, or Jackie
Kennedy, Mamie Eisenhower, and Eleanor Roosevelt, all of whom were rarely
phoÂ*tographed outdoors without fur.

Furriers cursed the animal rights movement but quietly blamed Barbara Bush
in 1991 when U.S. retail fur sales fell to just $950 million-an
unprecedented drop of more than 50% in just three years. Anti-fur activists
exulted. The Humane Society of the U.S. and other major animal advocacy
groups dropped or scaled back their campaigning.



Cheap fur


What happened next, according to fur trade spokespersons, is that women
evenÂ*tually got tired of the stridency of Friends of Animals and PETA, whose
anti-fur camÂ*paigns continued. The fur industry claims to have made a
complete comeback, with U.S. retail fur sales back up to $1.8 billion, as of
2002, and global sales up from $8.1 billion in 1998 to $11.3 billion in
2002.

The truth is more complicated.


The $1.8 billion in U.S. retail fur sales would be worth only $1.3 billion
in 1987 dollars, about the level in real dollars sus tained by the fur
industry for the past 50 years, with only the peak sales years of the
midÂ*1980s and the subsequent crash varying far from the norm. That U.S.
retail fur sales have remained so close to the same level in real dolÂ*lars
actually represents declining "market penetration," since the numbers of
U.S. women in the fur-buying age range have increased by about 20% since
retail fur sales peaked.



The supposed global sales rise evapÂ*orates completely when the erosion of
the U.S. dollar relative to the British pound, the French franc, and the
German Deutchmark is taken into account.



But there is more fur, cheap fur, proliferating as collars and trim, sold in
high volume not by traditional furriers but by low market department stores.

Garments priced at under $50 are not tracked as part of the retail fur
trade, and are not subject to the federal law requiring all furs to be
accurately labeled as to species and nation of origin.



Such cheap furs are not part of fur industry profits, yet contribute heavily
to the impression of Newsweek fashion writer Julie Scelfo that "Fur is
baaack," the feeling of vetÂ*eran anti-fur campaigners that hard-won gains
have been lost, and the hope of the traditional fur industry that the
indifference toward aniÂ*mal suffering of people who buy fur-trimmed
department store clothing will translate into less resistance to buying
mink-if and when they can afford it.



Byproduct pelts


The fur that is "baaack" is mostly neither from animals ranched for fur, nor
trapped. And it is not really "baack," because until recent years the supply
source was not a factor in world trade.



The fur seen most often on the street comes from China. It is a byproduct of
the vast and growing southern and coastal Chinese live markets for specialty
meat.



More than 1,800 animal species are eaten in the Cantonese-speaking parts of
China, with consumption heaviest in Guang dong province, where Marco Polo
observed dog and cat eating in the l4th century.



Except for dogs, cats, rabbits, and rats, most of the specialty meat
consumed in Guangdong and elsewhere in China formerly came out of the wild,
and was rare and expenÂ*sive. Wildlife was virtually eaten out of exisÂ*tence
in much of China, during the famines of the Mao Tse Tung regime, but poverty
inhibitÂ*ed importing animals to stock the live markets.



That changed as result of the ecoÂ*nomic surge that began circa 1990 and is
still underway. Affluence rose fastest in Guang dong. which because of
proximity to Hong Kong became a magnet for foreign investment and a hub of
manufacturing.

Suddenly able to afford specialty meats on a regular basis, consumers in
Guangzhau, Shanghai, and other fast-growing southern and coastal cities
began devouring the wildlife of all of Southeast Asia. Consumption of dogs
and rabbits also soared, as did conÂ*sumption of cats in Guangdong, the only
part of China where cat-eating is popular. Rat-eatÂ*ing apparently held
steady.



Eventually, as the wildlife supply from abroad was hunted out, entrepreneurs
began raising more species in captivity.



Mammals, only the smallest part of the southern and coastal Chinese
specialty meat industry, were among the first species to be raised for the
table in volume, being the most lucrative.



Hardly anyone paid attention to the numbers until the Sudden Acute
Respiratory Syndrome outbreak of 2002-2003 surged out of the Guangdong live
markets, killing at least 1,183 people, 349 of them in China. More than
8,000 fell ill. Epidemiologists scrambled to identify the SARS source, and
Chinese offiÂ*cials tried to halt the disease by killing the suspected host
species. Raids on live markets produced some species inventory data, and
crude estimates of turnover rates. Mammal consumption turned out to include
at least two million dogs and cats per year, plus 10,000 or more palm civets
and thousands of other "wild" species.



Rabbit consumption in China had apparently soared from 120,000 metric tons
per year to more than 300,000 in as little as five years. At five pounds per
rabbit, that would be more than 12 million rabbits.





The fur seen most often on the street comes from China. It is a byproduct of
the vast and growing southern and coastal Chinese live markets for specialty
meat.

Trapped fur

Raising and slaughtering that many dogs, cats, rabbits, palm civets, et al
coinciÂ*dentally produces almost as much cheap fur per year as U.S. and
Canadian fur trappers and hunters produced annually from 1976 through 1986,
when they typically killed a combined total of more than 20 million animals
per year.


Cheap Chinese fur has taken over the former market for trapped muskrat,
raccoon, nutria, and fox pelts so thoroughly that as Trapper & Predator
Caller admitted in June 2004, "Recruitment into trapping and fur hunting is
at an all-time low."



From 1976 through 1986, when U.S. trapped fur sales were at their peak,
muskrat made up 45% of the total, raccoon for 21%, nutria for 12%, and fox
for 10%. All four species were used mostly for trim. Raccoon and fox pelts
typically brought between $20 and $40 at auction, depending on size and the
amount of damage done to the pelt by the killing method. Nutria pelts
brought $6, and muskrat pelts rarely sold for as much as $3.50.



Auction prices for muskrat, raccoon, nutria, and fox pelts now run circa $10
for raccoon, $20 for fox, and as little as $1 for muskrat and nutria, if
they sell at all.



George Clements, of Vancouver, British Columbia, who cofounded the
Association for the Protection of Fur-Bearing Animals in 1952, points out
that trappers in the Canadian provinces of Alberta, B.C., Ontario, and
Quebec cumulatively killed more than 3.7 million animals in 1980. In 2003
they killed 563,000, representing a drop of 85%.



Pennsylvania trappers pelted 700,000 raccoons in 1982, according to the
Pennsylvania Game Commission. Last winter they pelted 100,000, another 85%
drop.



Louisiana trappers pelted more than 400,000 nutria per year for 30 years,
but only 24,000 in 2002/2003, before a bounty placed upon nutria as an
alleged "invasive species" drove the 2003/2004 toll to 280,000. Most were
not pelted. Even at $1 per pelt, there was no market.



Anti-fur tactics


The anti-fur campaigns of recent years have been conspicuously less visible
and therefore less effective in countering this trend than they were in
combating trappers and conÂ*ventional fur farmers.



Most of the anti-fur campaign tactics and messages of today are still those
that sent the fur trade into the 1988-1991 tailspin.

The Humane Society of the U.S. squelched fur industry hopes for a big winter
in 1998/1999 with a heavily publicized expose of the use of dog and cat fur
in Asian-made garments sold in U.S. boutiques-but declared victory when
unenforced and perhaps unenÂ*forceable federal legislation banning the import
of dog and cat fur was passed, and has not followed up.



Publicity about dog and cat fur in Europe has centered on shaky allegations
about dogs and cats being raised specifically for fur, sometimes purportedly
in Belgium. This would be economically unviable, since the Chinese specialty
meat industry produces so much fur at virtual giveaway prices.



London Evening Standard political correspondent Isabel Oakeshott issued
possibly the first realistic expose of the present shape of the European fur
trade on August 31, 2004. "Cat and dog fur is being shipped into Britain on
a record scale," Oakeshott began. "Traders from Europe and the Far East
ferried up to £7 million worth into Britain last year. London has become a
major internationÂ*al trading center for the furs, following bans in other
countries. The scale of the business emerged in Customs & Excise records
released to a Member of Parliament.


"More than £40 million of fur-relatÂ*ed items poured into Britain last year,"
up from £26 million in 1999, Oakeshot contin ued, looking at fur-trimmed
garments as well as traditional fur coats. "Imports of clothes and fashion
accessories made with real fur have tripled from £4 million to about £12
milÂ*lion in the past decade," Oakeshott wrote. "As well as fur clothes, more
than £6 million of raw fur and £22 million of tanned or dressed fur, from 12
named species and `other animals,' was shipped into Britain last year,"
Oakeshott summarized.


Oakeshott estimated that the traffic included about £5.9 million worth of
dog fur and £1 million worth of cat fur.


"We live in such an escapist society that they don't even let you [air] ads
that show graphic footage of animals being killed," longtime PETA anti-fur
campaign coordinator Dan Mathews told Scelfo of Newsweek.



Therefore Mathews continues to rely upon celebrity actresses and models to
deliver the anti-fur message, just as PETA has done all along. Fernanda
Tavares was the PETA headliner in 2003/2004, Charlize Theron this winter.
Mathews hopes neither follow the examples of Naomi Campbell and Cindy
Crawford, past headliners who were paid by the fur industry to literally
turn coats.





Fund's last stand


Both PETA and the Fund for Animals have had great difficulty getting
periodicals that carry fur industry advertising to accept anti-fur ads.
Vogue has rejected ads from PETA sight unseen since 1996, when anti-fur
activists associated with PETA delivÂ*ered a dead raccoon to editor Anna
Wintour's table at a fashionable New York City restauÂ*rant. Before that,
PETA ads apparently got at least a quick look before rejection.



The Fund for Animals, now mergÂ*ing into the Humane Society of the U.S., has
had more success in placing print ads. The New York Times Magazine, The New
Yorker, the Washington Post, Paper, Avenue, YM, and Teen have all carried
Fund anti-fur ads, but in 2003 Town & Country, Women's Wear Daily, and Wall
refused an ad showing a bobÂ*cat with the caption, "She needs her fur more
than you do."



HSUS president Wayne Pacelle told ANIMAL PEOPLE publisher Kim Bartlett that
the merger talks with the Fund included discussion of a new anti-fur
campaign, but he indicated that it will not be launched until the winter of
2005/2006.



The Fund's last anti-fur activity as an independent organization may have
been encouraging New York state senators Malcolm A. Smith, of Queens, and
Scott Stringer, of Manhattan, to introduce a bill in the closing days of the
2004 state legislative session which would have banned killing fur-bearing
animals by anal or genital electrocution.



A traditional method of killing ranched foxes, avoiding injury to their
fur, anal or genital electrocution is rarely used with other species. Mink
are usually killed either by gassing or neck-breaking, involving a hard
shake with long-handled tongs.

But there are no more fox farms known to operate in New York state. The last
five mink farms pelted 4,800 mink in 2002.



Because the bill was symbolic and going nowhere, it won little of the news
media attention that the Fund had hoped for.



The "Shame of Fur" campaign waged by HSUS 1986-1991 still appears to have
been much more effective than any anti-Â*fur campaigns that followed-or
preceded it.



The message "It's wrong to wear fur!" was clear, simple, and direct.
Amplified in different ways by other organizations, it applied to all forms
of fur, no matter how they were produced, and left no room for
misunderstanding.



Campaigns focused on leg-hold traps send a mixed message, even it no fur
cusÂ*tomer realizes (any more than do most activists) that Conibear traps and
wire snares are used to catch more wild animals. If the issue is leghold
trapping, a potential fur buyer could think that wearing ranched mink, fur
from a coyote shot with a gun, or fur from rabbits raised for food might be
acceptable.

Conversely, campaigns focused on the many cruelties of ranching mink, fox,
and other species raised for pelts might just persuade a potential buyer to
opt for a raccoon coat instead.



The biggest problem with anti-fur campaigning in recent years, sonic
observers believe, has been that there was not very much of it. Activist
priorities have shifted, from the emphasis on vivisection and fur of the
1980s to the present focus on food and companion animal issues.



Pro-animal activism since the midÂ*1990s has emphasized ways that a
conscienÂ*tious individual can make a difference through personal action,
like giving up meat or sterilÂ*izing a feral cat colony. Giving up fur might
have fit right in--except that pro-animal activists had already eschewed fur
for decades.



Women born in 1959, the year the first Walt Disney version of 101 Dalmatians
appeared. turned 30 in 1989, and are now 45. Most have never worn fur. Most
never will.



As fur faded from activist sight and memory, anti-fur protest came to be
seen by big-group strategists as a low priority: continÂ*ued on a token
level, since some donors and volunteers expect it, but not vitally urgent,
and not a hot fundraising issue either.



New York
More than 60% of all the fur sold and worn in the U.S. is sold and worn in
the greater New York City metropolitan area, where cold winters converge
with affluence and tradition. As fur-wearing goes in New York City, so the
industry goes throughout the U.S. and Canada-and often, the fashion cenÂ*ters
of the world.



Veteran New York City activist Irene Muschel believes the planners of
anti-Cur efforts at some point forgot that whatever they do must be visible.
Instead of campaigning to reach the public, they have campaigned to rally
activists, who donate in response to mailÂ*ings that fur-wearers never see,
table and rally on weekends when fur-wearing suburban comÂ*muters are not out
and about, and congratulate each other about public service announcements
aired on obscure cable TV stations at hours when few people are watching.



"Flyers are put up by companies [hired by animal rights groups] in areas
that are for the most part characterized by housing projects, abandoned
buildings, pervasive poverty, drugs, and crime. Not too many people wearing
fur will see them." Muschel wrote in a series of personal critiques of
antiÂ*fur campaigns sent to ANIMAL PEOPLE at intervals throughout 2004.



"Sometimes flyers are placed in midÂ*dle class business areas, not the
residential areas where anti-fur advertising would be most effective. The
way flyers are placed, one next to another in a mess of form and color,
often makes them invisible. New Yorkers are bomÂ*barded by an enormous amount
of visual and auditory stimuli as they walk and drive through the city
streets," Muschel continued. "Advertising must be big and/or pervasive
enough to get beyond people's tendency to block out so much stimuli."



Having previously used murals to promote pet sterilization (as described and
illustrated on page 4 of the October 200-1 edi tion of ANIMAL PEOPLE),
Muschel tested her theories last winter, at her own expense.



"I contacted some wildlife photograÂ*phers and a designer and had a fabulous
antiÂ*fur poster made," Muschel said. "I paid for three months of advertising
on two telephone kiosks in Grammercy Park. 1 selected two kiosks that I
could monitor to see if this was a successful mode of advertising."



Muschel concluded that the teleÂ*phone kiosk campaign was not successful
because the posters were easily and often stolen. But she came to believe
that billboard advertising would work.



"It is impossible to block out a huge colorful billboard," Muschel
concluded. "No one can steal a billboard. A billboard is, therefore, the
most effective form of advertisÂ*ing," at least in New York City.



Next Muschel spent months scouting potential billboard locations. She found
one at a seemingly perfect site, and negotiated a price for using it that
would have been well below what others had paid. Throughout the summer of
2004, Muschel tried to interest national animal advocacy groups in renting
the space this winter. None were willing to comÂ*mit. The deal slipped away.

Market pressure
The fur trade is still vulnerable to market pressure-if the pressure is
effectively directed. The British department store chain Harvey Nichols
introduced rabbit-trimmed and lined garments last winter, feeling that fur
from animals killed for meat would be acceptÂ*able to.consumers, but
discontinued the fur line after Advocates for Animals and the Coalition
Against the Fur Trade threatened to target the firm.



Other retailers still believe that fur from rabbits raised for meat will
elude protest. Suzy Shier Inc. in Nanaimo, British Columbia, began selling
rabbit fur coats in September 2004 to test customer response, according to
an e-mail from the Vancouver Island Vegetarian Association. (VIVA
repreÂ*sentative Jo Miele asked that protest be directÂ*ed to
mailto


Anti-fur pressure must be sustained and consistent. A Scots firm, the House
of Bruar, introduced a fur line including hamster coats in late 2003,
withdrew the hamster garÂ*ments in March 2004, and then put them back on the
market in August 2004, after protest subsided. Also selling mink, fox, and
racÂ*coon garments, the House of Bruar had interÂ*preted the message not as
"Don't wear fur," but rather -Don't wear hamsters when anyÂ*one is looking."



Image & ethics

The fur industry still lacks a charismatic fur-wearing First Lady. Like
predecessors Pat Nixon and Barbara Bush, Laura Bush does not wear fur.



Lynne Cheney, however, wife of U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney, may have
been best known before the 2000 election cam paign for her defenses of fur
as a frequent CNN Crossfire guest.



Lynne Cheney may now be the perÂ*son in public life who is most often seen
wearÂ*ing fur--but she has never been named among the top five in the annual
USA Today/ CNN/Gallup "Most Admired Woman" polls. Positions lower than fifth
are not announced.



On the other hand, only six women have shared the top five positions during
the George W. Bush presidency, and all six are occasional fur-wearers,
including National Security Advisor Condoleza Rice. TV show host Oprah
Winfrey, named every year, has given mink-trimmed slippers to her guests.

But The New York Times, whose owners' families made their fortunes in fur,
is no longer unambiguously pro-fur.



On Election Day 2004, Times "Front Row" columnist Ruth La Ferla puffed the
vegan fashion industry.



Even more significantly, New York Times Magazine ethics columnist Randy
Cohen on March 21, 2004 wrote, "You cer tainly should not wear a new fur. A
case can be made for some exploitation of animals-as food or in important
medical research-when there is no meaningful alternative, and when their
suffering is minimized. But there is no justification for harming animals
to' make something as frivolous as a fur coat."



Cohen followed up on April 11, 2004 with a column pondering how to
ethicalÂ*ly dispose of unwanted furs.



Lynne Cheney and friends have described The New York Times as an elitist
libÂ*eral newspaper that has become far out of touch with Middle America.



Yet it is still the most read newspaÂ*per in the global hub of fur demand.

-Merritt Clifton


















  #2  
Old December 15th 04, 01:30 AM
Dick Peavey
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Posts: n/a
Default


"Phil P." wrote in message
...
Chinese live markets feed the fur trade


I had difficulty finding the source of this article. Can you help me
out?

Dick

  #3  
Old December 15th 04, 01:51 AM
Phil P.
external usenet poster
 
Posts: n/a
Default


"Dick Peavey" wrote in message
...

"Phil P." wrote in message
...
Chinese live markets feed the fur trade


I had difficulty finding the source of this article. Can you help me
out?

Dick


Animal People, Volume XIII, #9, Nov. 2004

Phil



 




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