Is fur morally acceptable?
The German furrier association says yes and with "We Prefur" has created a seal that is intended to honor only fair and sustainably produced skins.
Animal rights activists speak of "window dressing!" And fear dire consequences for raccoons & Co.
Winter 2021: A cold wave with record lows of up to minus 25 is rolling over Germany.
Collective tremors.
The perfect time for the
German fur industry
to advertise animal skins, which have increasingly fallen into disrepute since the 1970s.
But as an enlightened contemporary, can you even dare to go out in public wearing fur with a clear conscience?
After all, furs don't grow on trees.
Everyone should also have seen one of the undercover recordings of mink farms made by various animal rights activists, on which the animals are only viewed as goods and are therefore kept without empathy until they are killed.
But it is precisely from such
horror practices
for fur production that the furrier association distances itself and complains that consumers and the media mostly compare apples with pears, i.e. sable with fox.
Not all fur is the same.
Rather, one has to differentiate between the types of fur and their countries of origin.
The eco-seal for fur gives buyers a clear conscience
An image polish has to be found for the hairy natural product: "We Prefur".
The
eco-seal for fur fashion,
launched in 2017 by the German furrier association
.
According to the association, only pelts from sustainable fur production are awarded the label.
This means that the skins must come from animals that are approved for shooting in Germany for so-called controlled hunting.
Critters who, according to the fur lobby, have to be shot because they become a nuisance for nature due to their overpopulation and lack of natural enemies.
This applies to red foxes, martens, badgers and raccoons, among others.
The association does not provide any information on what damage and to what extent the predators cause.
The fact is that in Bavaria alone around 106,000 foxes, 4,000 raccoons and 12,000 stone martens are shot annually to protect nature.
90 percent of it ends up in the garbage.
A huge waste of natural resources.
The same applies to meat production: lamb, sheep, goat and rabbit.
If humans consume animals, why shouldn't they also use their leather and fur?
Karl Lagerfeld
always weighed critical questions about his fur designs on the grounds that anyone who refuses fur should not wear leather shoes.
Fur industry: Profit maximization and animal welfare cannot be combined
But doesn't it make a moral difference whether you kill an animal in order to eat it, because food is essential, but a
fur coat as a status symbol
isn't?
It is not the seal skins that the Inuit at the South Pole lace around their bodies to protect themselves from the cold, which fur opponents make furry foam with anger, but rather the fur as a product of the luxury goods industry.
Assembled from
sable
,
mink
,
and
chinchilla
.
Animals that threaten neither nature nor humans and are not on the menu of the latter.
When it comes to profit, it is always about efficiency.
Because the gassing of animals is expensive, on some breeding farms there is an alternative blow to the head with a hammer, which does not always work the first time, but is economical.
The furrier association's intention is not to minimize animal suffering, but
to free
fur from its
negative image
and thereby promote sales.
The "We Prefur" seal may be useful as a guide for consumers who do not want to wear fur based on animal suffering.
However, you can't tell where a fur comes from, which is why the “Action Alliance Fox”, for example, fears that products from the “We Prefur” label could make other labels socially acceptable again.
Do we really want that?
