The bear fur hats of the British Royal Household Guard have long become one of the distinctive symbols of the United Kingdom and part of English culture.
Now, the famous hat is at the heart of a legal battle being waged by an organization for the protection of animal rights.
The organization for the protection of British animal rights (PETA) recently submitted a petition to the Royal Court, demanding that the country's Ministry of Defense replace the fur used by the representative guard regiments with synthetic fur.
According to the organization, the ministry rejected the alternative without justifiable reason.
British Guard soldiers in London, photo: AP
According to the Ministry of Defense, the proposal was rejected for substantive reasons as the synthetic hats did not meet four of the five requirements: water absorption, water penetration, appearance, fast drying rate of the hats and the level of compression of the synthetic fur.
On the other hand, the organization presented tests according to which the synthetic alternative meets all the requirements and sometimes even shows better results.
"The Ministry of Defense breaks the promise to replace the hats when a suitable alternative is found and refuses to check the results of the laboratory test we conducted," the organization emphasized in its appeal to the court.
"We are asking for the intervention of the court to compel the Ministry of Defense to review our proposal. We want the proposal to replace the real fur hats with our artificial fur as the Ministry of Defense has committed to doing," said Lorena Hackett, the organization's legal representative, to be seriously considered.
20 years of struggle
The organization's fight against fur hats began back in 2002. At that time, the organization demanded to stop buying Canadian bear fur for the Royal Guard hats.
The organization accused the British Ministry of Defense of supporting the slaughter of Canadian bears.
On the other hand, the Ministry of Defense stated that the fur does not come from the deliberate hunting of bears for the production of the hats but from other legal hunting, therefore stopping the ordering of the fur will not reduce bear hunting in Canada.
Now, the debate will be decided in the British Royal Court.
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