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Fur Free Friday: Focusing on Furriers
Alert: Tell Land's End to stop selling rabbit fur
Fur Free Friday is coming up on November 23rd, which means it's time once again to unite and take on the fur industry in the streets and markets where their cruel fashion wares are sold. Sure, they've cleaned the blood off their stolen pelts, but that doesn't mean every bit of fur isn't stained with the pain and suffering of innocent animals.
As we do every year, IDA will hold a large protest in San Francisco's Union Square, a small urban park bounded on each side by a city block lined with stores catering to upscale shoppers. This is also where fur-bearing merchants such as Neiman Marcus and Macy's have set up shop. Dozens of volunteers carrying signs around the commercial hotbed hand out brochures to passerby, while in the center of it all is IDA's huge anti-fur banner behind a display table of literature.
To have an impact, activists have to go where the stores selling fur are, because consumers are the ones who are going to decide the animals' fate by either buying or boycotting fur products. Pervasive advertising, window displays with manikins wearing fur jackets, and even the very fact that fur is being sold all serve to normalize the torture of animals on fur farms and snared in traps, so that few people ever stop to think twice about it. We have to remind them this Fur Free Friday that fur is cruelty incarnate (in clothing form), and show fur purveyors that we are serious about ending their shameful profiteering.
What You Can Do:
- IDA has big plans to help animals this Fur Free Friday, November 23rd, with demos planned for Portland, Ore., San Francisco, and other cities (details to be announced soon), and we hope you'll join us. Please be a hero to animals by joining IDA and other animal advocates on this important annual day of action.
- You don't have to wait until Friday, November 23rd to help animals skinned for fur: in fact, why not start right now? It has come to our attention that Land's End has started selling products made from rabbit fur in their online catalog, including fur-lined boots and hats, fur-trimmed jackets, and even towels and bean bag covers made from fur. Please contact the company by postal mail, webmail, telephone, or fax to politely let them know that retailers such as J. Crew, Ann Taylor, and most recently Guess! have all vowed to stop selling fur, and that Land's End should set the same policy. Here are some talking points to consider:
- Rabbit fur is not a byproduct of the rabbit meat industry. Thicker pelts are required for fur products than can be obtained from the young rabbits slaughtered for their flesh. Hundreds of millions of rabbits are killed every year around the world specifically for their fur.
- Many people know the joys of having a rabbit companion: they are affectionate, smart, fastidiously clean, and litter-trainable. On fur farms, they are forced to live in cramped wire cages that are filthy with their own waste, and they never get to play or run on the grass. Farmers kill them either by smashing their skulls in or breaking their necks, then chopping off their heads.
- If you like faux fur, thank Land's End for offering slippers, gloves, and vests made with faux fur, and encourage them to offer more fake fur fashions while cutting out the real fur.
Mailing address:
Lands' End, Inc.
1 Lands' End Lane
Dodgeville, WI 53595
Webmail
Telephone and Fax: (from the U.S. and Canada):
Tel: (800) 963-4816
Fax: (800) 332-0103
International phone and fax numbers
Learn more about the lives of animals used by the fur trade at furkills.org.
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