95 percent of the skins traded worldwide come from fur farming, the rest is covered by hunting and trapping. Every year around 100 million animals are bred and killed in cruel conditions around the world.
Most fur farms are located in Europe and China. China is now regarded as the world’s largest fur producer, and Asia is also very important as a trading center for furs. There are still around 5,000 fur farms in the EU. These are mainly in Denmark, the Netherlands, Finland and Poland. Around 35 million mink, two to three million foxes, 160,000 raccoon dogs and 200,000 chicillas are killed every year within the EU for their fur. You can find an overview of the situation in various European countries here.
Millions of wild animals such as mink, foxes and raccoon dogs are bred under cruel conditions. Penned up in tiny wire cages, the animals live under constant stress, bars against bars with their fellow animals.
The cages are hung in long rows about half a meter above the ground. Feces and urine fall through the floor grid so that the fur does not get dirty. The predators, equipped with a very good sense of smell, are exposed to an unbearable stench throughout their lives. Their sensitive paws are very often injured from living on the cage floor. There is only a shoebox-sized living box available for mink, otherwise there are no structures whatsoever.
Most fur-bearing animals are solitary by nature and roam in vast territories in the wild. The imprisonment in a confined space is extremely stressful for them. In fur farms, the animals, which still have the same needs as their wild counterparts, cannot even begin to act out their natural behavior. Climbing, hunting or swimming is not possible.
Under these conditions, many fur-bearing animals show severe behavioral disorders, often even cannibalism and self-injury. After a few months of vegetating, the animals are gassed, poisoned or electrocuted during the so-called «fur harvest».
Millions of coyotes, foxes, bobcats and other species are caught in traps annually. Leghold traps are still used today in the USA, Canada and Russia. These traps are extremely cruel – but gentle on the fur. Leghold traps consist of two metal brackets that snap together when released and hold the animal in place. Captured animals die of exhaustion or hypothermia. They bite or twist off the trapped leg and then succumb to blood loss. Surviving animals are eventually brutally killed by the trappers.
Even with manslaughter and snare traps, the fur animals are by no means always killed immediately. Once caught, the animals often fight for their lives for hours or days before dying of exhaustion, hunger, thirst or their injuries. Frightened animals also try to escape from live traps and injure themselves in the process.
fundamentally rejects the killing of fur animals for fur production. Both fur farming and trapping for the production of fashion and luxury items contradict ethical animal welfare. That is why we are committed to a legal ban on fur farming and a Europe-wide trade and import ban on skins and fur products. Our goal is a Europe without fur farms and without fur fashion. We would like this with the following intermediate steps to reach.