- Fur, Leather, and Wool
- There is no difference between fur, leather, and wool when it comes
to cruelty to animals. Every fur-trimmed jacket, leather belt, and wool
sweater represents the intense suffering and gruesome deaths of millions
of animals each year.
- Barbaric steel-jaw traps, which clamp onto the legs of wild animals such as foxes and rabbits, cut into their flesh, often
down to the bone. The traps can hold them there for days until trappers return to beat or stomp them to death or to break
their necks. Many animals, especially mothers desperate to return to their young, will often chew or twist their own legs off
in order to escape these cruel traps.
On fur farms the animals are kept in tiny cages in confinement. Often these animals are sick or painfully injured. Many
times they are skinned while still alive. Videos of fur workers standing on conscious animal’s heads and bodies while they
rip the skin and fur from them is a horrific and sickening thing to watch, and very, very real. Leather and wool isn’t much
better. These animals are treated poorly, are often ill and in pain, and have skin cut/alterations made to their bodies with
no anesthesia nor any empathy for their intense suffering.
- As far as wool production goes, the most commonly raised sheep are specifically bred to have
wrinkly skin, which means more wool per animal. This unnatural overload of wool causes many
sheep to collapse and even die of heat exhaustion during hot months, and the wrinkles collect urine
and moisture. Attracted to the moisture, flies lay eggs in the folds of skin, and the hatched maggots
can eat the sheep alive. To prevent this so-called "flystrike," Australian ranchers perform a barbaric
operation-called "mulesing" where they force live sheep onto their backs, restrain their legs
between metal bars, and, without any painkillers whatsoever, slice chunks of flesh from around their
tail area. This is done to cause smooth, scarred skin that can't harbor fly eggs. Ironically, the
exposed, bloody wounds themselves often get flystrike before they heal.
- Within weeks of birth, lambs' ears are hole-punched, their tails are chopped off, and the
males are castrated without anesthetics. Male lambs are castrated when they are
between 2 and 8 weeks old, either by making an incision and cutting their testicles out
or with a rubber ring used to cut off blood supply-one of the most painful methods of
castration possible. Every year, hundreds of lambs die before the age of 8 weeks from
exposure or starvation, and mature sheep die every year from disease, lack of shelter,
and neglect.
- Click here for CEASE - CEASE is a nonprofit, volunteer organization based in Boston, MA area. Over the past several
years CEASE has focused primarily on the issues of fur, animals in entertainment, and animals on factory farms. CEASE
raises public awareness of these issues through media campaigns and public outreach.
| This is what mulesing looks like |
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