The Truth About Fur Trim

Recently, the use of fur trim has become a major part of the fur industry. In the past, the fur industry’s emphasis was on full-length coats. Now trim is becoming a mainstay of the trade.

With sales of traditional full-length fur coats on the decline, furriers have focused on fur trim to keep their businesses solvent. By disguising small amounts of fur through shearing, dying, and plucking, furriers are able to market their cruel products to an unknowing audience.

Major furriers have changed the focus of their advertising and are trying to keep their industry alive by pushing fur trim on such items as bikinis, blankets, hats, jeans, scarves, skirts, knitted sweaters, ponchos, purses, and vests.

The sale of fur coats is down, but the fur industry can claim victory in making fur trim socially acceptable. The latest figures from the Fur Information Council of America (FICA) reveals the fur trim market to be worth nearly $500 million annually.

With the trim trade growing, the number of animals dying is increasing. According to Sandy Parker Reports, a fur industry newsletter, the number of animal pelts used for trim will soon outnumber those used for all-fur garments in western European and U.S. markets. Demand for fur trim is currently so strong that some U.S. manufacturers, which typically produce only full-fur garments, are now moving into the trim business.

FICA recently claimed that retail sales of fur rose 21 percent over last season (fall 2000-winter 2001) to $1.69 billion. However, the income from fur storage, cleaning, and repair have traditionally been included in sales figures, and FICA which only surveys select members of its organization for data no longer provides a breakdown of what percentage of revenue comes from services and what comes from the purchase of new fur products.

As fur retailers branch out to include more and more non-fur items and products with small amounts of fur trim, this sales statistic becomes more and more dubious.

The animal most commonly killed for fur trimmings is the fox. Ninety percent of the foxes raised on fur farms are killed for the fur-trim market. Blue foxes (the industry term for cage-raised arctic foxes) are the primary type used, followed by the silver fox (cage-raised red foxes).

Trapped foxes red, gray, and arctic are also skinned for the trim trade. As of 2000, the total number of foxes killed on fur farms worldwide was 4.3 million.

The European Fur Breeders Association and the Canadian Fox Breeders Association openly admit that anal electrocution is preferred method of killing foxes.

Given that about 90 percent of the foxes killed for their fur will end up as fur trim on garments and accessories, there is an overwhelming chance that any fox fur trim in stores is from an animal who was anally electrocuted.

Trappers in the U.S. and Canada kill hundreds of thousands of additional foxes annually, most often by catching them in the barbaric steel jaw leghold trap.

Scandinavian countries kill about 60 percent of the foxes used worldwide. Finland, the biggest killer, slaughters 2.1 million foxes annually, nearly half the world's total. The U.S. kills less than 2 percent of the world's factory-farmed foxes.

By actively marketing fur-trimmed items, the fur industry seeks to inundate consumers with fur-buying options. Fur trim items are available everywhere and in many cases will not be marked as real fur. According to fur industry publications, furriers believe fur-trimmed garments will become more important than all-fur garments in terms of repeat business because such items might be replaced in only a few years, whereas a fur coat may last for 20 years or more. Furriers also believe that fur trim is what helped bring younger consumers back.