My fur

Every year million of animals are killed in the world to rip their skin.

Many of these animals have spent their entire lives confined to farms where they barely can move. When they are taken to the slaughterhouse, many are still conscious while they are tearing the skin.

Other animals are hunted with traps which not always kill them instantly; they suffer a slow death.

Mink

It takes fifty minks to make a single coat. The cages in which they live are so small that they can’t even move and is usual to develop stereotypical behaviors, compulsive repeating movements. Some of them practice cannibalism and self-mutilation.

Their life come to an end when they are gassed at the age of seven month.

Seals

The images of seal hunting have traveled the world, we can see how these helpless animals are persecuted and hit in the skull until they are dead.

Seals have less than a month when they are hunted because their skin color change.

Foxes

Over generations the selection of docile foxes has been evolving to make their exploitation more profitable.

The way that foxes are treated develop psicologics diseases and develop an aggressive behavior.

The way to kill foxes is by giving them a lethal injection in the heart or electrocuted.

Chinchillas

Chinchillas are rodents with a very thick skin. They live in cages and it takes more than a hundred chinchillas to make a single coat.

They are subjected to forced breeding cycles were the mothers are separated from their pups.

Leather is also skin

Cows, sheep and lambs skin treated with different chemicals is leather, every year millions of animals are used to obtain leather.

Is usual to mark these animals with fire in their faces or paws to increase the economic proficiency. When they are at the slaughter house usually they are aware of what is happening to them.

Leather is used to make shoes, coats, accessories, etc…

Wool

Wool is not skin but is another tissue that causes suffering and death of many animals.

Sheep are tied and immobilized while they are shorn and suffering many injuries with the scissors.

They have been crossed searching for the perfect wool. This has caused many infections in their skin by worms that live inside of the skin, because of this many farmers began to shorn them using a method called mulesing which tear the skin of the back of the sheep with shears.

When the lambs are born their tail is cut and some of them are taking to the slaughter house and the females are exploited as a reproduction machine.

Rabbits

Rabbits are curious animals, social and intelligent, that can live between seven and ten years in freedom. They get scared easily and they like to be calm, they don’t usually like to be picked up and loud noises bother them. Nevertheless, each rabbit is different from the other and they can be bold and daring.

Smell is the main sense of rabbits, even more than the view. They can distinguish between many individuals, specie, or even gender using this sense.

They are very social, when they live in freedom in burrows with more than seventy bunnies and divided in groups of two to eight bunnies. They don’t like to be alone and they can spend a lot of time cleaning each other or resting together.

These animals are very delicate and they get scared easily and living in the farm to the slaughter house transportation and see other rabbits get killed make them desperate. Many rabbits in the slaughter house turn around to don’t look the other been killed.

Rabbits skin

The skin of the rabbits are used to produce coats (They need at least seventy bunnies to make one), shoes, purses, gloves and scarf.

The breed plays an important role in the exploitation of bunnies to obtain meet, skin or hair. The main breeds used to produce are blue rex, rex malta, cibelina siames y angora.

In 2006 about 62.013.000 bunnies were killed in Spain in 94 slaughter houses. In 2007 5.195 farms were active, 19 for selection, 117 to procreate, 25 to artificial insemination, 4.691 to rabbit reproduction for meat, 115 to hunt for reproduction, 10 to skin production, 2 to hair production, 21 to companionship, 9 to experimentation and 186 didn’t have a specific task. By June 1 of 2007 5.439.497 rabbits were exploited at the moment.

According to the international fur Spanish business in 2006, 25 million of clothing were made with bunnies skin which made 120 millions of euros.

Exploitation and dead

Most of the bunnies are exploited in intensive farms, they are held in cages inside of closed buildings. In the cages the space is very small (0,35 m2 for the females and 0,06m2 for the babies).

Each female bunny has between 10-12 births and each year between 60-90% are send to the slaughter house depending on their annually births.

After 75 to 90 days of the birth of the bunny the exploiters start to kill them waiting for the moment that they aren’t molting their hair. A bunny will be fasting for 12 hours before they get killed and transported to the slaughter house in plastic boxes with enough space to avoid any accident. To kill them they take the bunny by the ears to avoid bruises that can show a bad “presentation” of the meat.

Bunnies are killed in the following phases

• Desensitization: A sharp blow behind the ears or the forehead that according to an expert if someone doesn’t have practice enough the blow can cause a bruise in the neck and the animal will suffer. In industrial slaughter houses they use electricity.
• Death: The rabbit can be killed by yugulación, like the suspension of the living animal by the hind quarters and cut his head on the atlanto occipital dislocation, in which “suspends the copy of the hindquarters with one hand, the other takes the lead placing the fingers under the branches of the mandibular and the thumb is placed between the ears, apply a strong pull downward and forward to break the spinal cord and blood vessels, in addition to dismantle the head. “, in slaughterhouses, after stunning by electricity, the rabbit is hung by its hind legs and was stabbed in the jugular to bleed.
• Steps after death: basically consist of removing the skin, make an incision from the pubic crest to the xiphoid cartilage to open the body and remove the bladder, gall Vilia, spleen, perianal glands, genital organs, intestines, stomach esophagus, trachea, heart and lungs.

Source:

GranjasDeEsclavos.com
http://www.granjasdeesclavos.com/conejos/

ALTERNATIVES

There are many alternatives that allow us to dress without causing suffering and death to animals, whatever our style is.

In any store you can find cotton and synthetics. It is becoming easier to find quality synthetic shoes. No need to use fur or wool to wear.