Chinese live markets feed the fur trade, from ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2004

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>From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 2004:

 

 

Chinese live markets feed the fur trade

 

NEW YORK CITY-- " Real Fur Is Fun Again, "

headlined the October 11 edition of Newsweek.

" It's less expensive and more popular than ever.

But as young people snuggle up, where are the

protesters? "

Fur appeared on 36 of the 270 pages in

the " Women's Fashion Fall 2004 " edition of The

New York Times Style Magazine: as many pages as

in all editions from 2001 through 2003 combined.

Fur is more visible now than at any time

in the past 20 years. Furriers are buying more

ad space in The New York Times and other

periodicals known to reach affluent younger

women, anticipating a profitable winter--if the

economy holds up.

But furriers have often misread market

demand. Expecting a boom in the winters of

1993/1994 and 1997/1998, chiefly through

believing their own propaganda, furriers drove

fur pelt prices up at auction with panic buying

to increase inventory, stepped up their

advertising, and experienced busts instead.

The recent history of the fur trade is

that booms are anticipated whenever the big

retailers exhaust the unsold back inventory from

the last time they misread the indicators.

The current buzz in the industry is that

in 2004 the women who were born at the beginning

of the last fur boom turned 30, reaching the age

bracket within which most who ever buy fur will

buy their first fur coat.

Since 1959, when the release of the

first Walt Disney version of 101 Dalmatians

preceded a two-year decline in fur sales,

furriers have believed that attitudes formed

toward fur in girlhood shape fur-wearing and

fur-buying habits for life. The girls who asked

their mothers to stop wearing fur in 1959-1960

mostly never wore fur, fur trade analysts

believe, but girls who admired fur-wearing First

Lady Jackie Kennedy in 1961-1963 became avid

fur-wearers 15 to 20 years later.

The fur industry thinks those women's

daughters formed their image of glamor and status

when fur-wearing First Lady Nancy Reagan was in

the White House. Furriers hope they will become

another generation of fur fiends like their

mamas, who for a time propelled the U.S. retail

fur trade to all-time peaks of profitability.

From the 1974 exit of famously

non-fur-wearing First Lady Pat Nixon until the

1988 arrival of also non-fur-wearing First Lady

Barbara Bush, U.S. retail fur sales rose every

year, peaking at $1.85 billion.

Neither Pat Nixon nor Barbara Bush

entirely avoided fur. Both wore fur garments on

rare ceremonial occasions. But they did not look

comfortable in fur. They did not boost the fur

trade as Nancy Reagan had, or Jackie Kennedy,

Mamie Eisenhower, and Eleanor Roosevelt, all of

whom were rarely photographed outdoors without

fur.

Furriers cursed the animal rights

movement but quietly blamed Barbara Bush in 1991

when U.S. retail fur sales fell to just $950

million--an unprecedented drop of more than 50%

in just three years. Anti-fur activists exulted.

The Humane Society of the U.S. and other major

animal advocacy groups dropped or scaled back

their campaigning.

 

Cheap fur

 

What happened next, according to fur

trade spokespersons, is that women eventually

got tired of the stridency of Friends of Animals

and PETA, whose anti-fur campaigns continued.

The fur industry claims to have made a complete

comeback, with U.S. retail fur sales back up to

$1.8 billion, as of 2002, and global sales up

from $8.1 billion in 1998 to $11.3 billion in

2002.

The truth is more complicated.

The $1.8 billion in U.S. retail fur sales

would be worth only $1.3 billion in 1987 dollars,

about the level in real dollars sustained by the

fur industry for the past 50 years, with only

the peak sales years of the mid-1980s and the

subsequent crash varying far from the norm. That

U.S. retail fur sales have remained so close to

the same level in real dollars actually

represents declining " market penetration, " since

the numbers of U.S. women in the fur-buying age

range have increased by about 20% since retail

fur sales peaked.

The supposed global sales rise evaporates

completely when the erosion of the U.S. dollar

relative to the British pound, the French franc,

and the German Deutchmark is taken into account.

But there is more fur, cheap fur,

proliferating as collars and trim, sold in high

volume not by traditional furriers but by

low-market department stores. Garments priced at

under $50 are not tracked as part of the retail

fur trade, and are not subject to the federal

law requiring all furs to be accurately labeled

as to species and nation of origin.

Such cheap furs are not part of fur

industry profits, yet contribute heavily to the

impression of Newsweek fashion writer Julie

Scelfo that " Fur is baaack, " the feeling of

veteran anti-fur campaigners that hard-won gains

have been lost, and the hope of the traditional

fur industry that the indifference toward animal

suffering of people who buy fur-trimmed

department store clothing will translate into

less resistance to buying mink--if and when they

can afford it.

 

Byproduct pelts

 

The fur that is " baaack " is mostly

neither from animals ranched for fur, nor

trapped. And it is not really " baack, " because

until recent years the supply source was not a

factor in world trade.

The fur seen most often on the street

comes from China. It is a byproduct of the vast

and growing southern and coastal Chinese live

markets for specialty meat.

More than 1,800 animal species are eaten

in the Cantonese-speaking parts of China, with

consumption heaviest in Guang-dong province,

where Marco Polo observed dog and cat eating in

the 14th century.

Except for dogs, cats, rabbits, and

rats, most of the specialty meat consumed in

Guangdong and elsewhere in China formerly came

out of the wild, and was rare and expensive.

Wildlife was virtually eaten out of existence in

much of China, during the famines of the Mao Tse

Tung regime, but poverty inhibited importing

animals to stock the live markets.

That changed as result of the economic

surge that began circa 1990 and is still

underway. Affluence rose fastest in Guang-dong,

which because of proximity to Hong Kong became a

magnet for foreign investment and a hub of

manufacturing.

Suddenly able to afford specialty meats

on a regular basis, consumers in Guangzhau,

Shanghai, and other fast-growing southern and

coastal cities began devouring the wildlife of

all of Southeast Asia. Consumption of dogs and

rabbits also soared, as did consumption of cats

in Guangdong, the only part of China where

cat-eating is popular. Rat-eating apparently

held steady.

Eventually, as the wildlife supply from

abroad was hunted out, entrepreneurs began

raising more species in captivity.

Mammals, only the smallest part of the

southern and coastal Chinese specialty meat

industry, were among the first species to be

raised for the table in volume, being the most

lucrative.

Hardly anyone paid attention to the

numbers until the Sudden Acute Respiratory

Syndrome outbreak of 2002-2003 surged out of the

Guangdong live markets, killing at least 1,183

people, 349 of them in China. More than 8,000

fell ill. Epidemiologists scrambled to identify

the SARS source, and Chinese officials tried to

halt the disease by killing the suspected host

species. Raids on live markets produced some

species inventory data, and crude estimates of

turnover rates. Mammal consumption turned out to

include at least two million dogs and cats per

year, plus 10,000 or more palm civets and

thousands of other " wild " species.

Rabbit consumption in China had

apparently soared from 120,000 metric tons per

year to more than 300,000 in as little as five

years. At five pounds per rabbit, that would be

more than 12 million rabbits.

 

Trapped fur

 

Raising and slaughtering that many dogs,

cats, rabbits, palm civets, et al

coincidentally produces almost as much cheap fur

per year as U.S. and Canadian fur trappers and

hunters produced annually from 1976 through 1986,

when they typically killed a combined total of

more than 20 million animals per year.

Cheap Chinese fur has taken over the

former market for trapped muskrat, raccoon,

nutria, and fox pelts so thoroughly that as

Trapper & Predator Caller admitted in June 2004,

" Recruitment into trapping and fur hunting is at

an all-time low. "

From 1976 through 1986, when U.S.

trapped fur sales were at their peak, muskrat

made up 45% of the total, raccoon for 21%,

nutria for 12%, and fox for 10%. All four

species were used mostly for trim.

Raccoon and fox pelts typically brought

between $20 and $40 at auction, depending on

size and the amount of damage done to the pelt by

the killing method. Nutria pelts brought $6, and

muskrat pelts rarely sold for as much as $3.50.

Auction prices for muskrat, raccoon,

nutria, and fox pelts now run circa $10 for

raccoon, $20 for fox, and as little as $1 for

muskrat and nutria, if they sell at all.

George Clements, of Vancouver, British

Columbia, who cofounded the Association for the

Protection of Fur-Bearing Animals in 1952, points

out that trappers in the Canadian provinces of

Alberta, B.C., Ontario, and Quebec cumulatively

killed more than 3.7 million animals in 1980. In

2003 they killed 563,000, representing a drop of

85%.

Pennsylvania trappers pelted 700,000

raccoons in 1982, according to the Pennsylvania

Game Commission. Last winter they pelted

100,000, another 85% drop.

Louisiana trappers pelted more than

400,000 nutria per year for 30 years, but only

24,000 in 2002/2003, before a bounty placed upon

nutria as an alleged " invasive species " drove the

2003/2004 toll to 280,000. Most were not pelted.

Even at $1 per pelt, there was no market.

Fur produced as a byproduct of the

Chinese specialty meat trade took over the market

niche vacated in the late 1980s by the collapse

of demand for cheap trapped fur. Byproduct fur

had the advantage of being even cheaper than

muskrat and nutria, as an abundant waste product

that would otherwise have to be disposed of at a

loss--and it is available close to the Asian

garment makers who now clothe much of North

America and Europe.

 

Anti-fur tactics

 

The anti-fur campaigns of recent years

have been conspicuously less visible and

therefore less effective in countering this trend

than they were in combating trappers and

conventional fur farmers.

Most of the anti-fur campaign tactics and

messages of today are still those that sent the

fur trade into the 1988-1991 tailspin.

The Humane Society of the U.S. squelched

fur industry hopes for a big winter in 1998/1999

with a heavily publicized expose of the use of

dog and cat fur in Asian-made garments sold in

U.S. boutiques--but declared victory when

unenforced and perhaps unenforceable federal

legislation banning the import of dog and cat fur

was passed, and has not followed up.

Publicity about dog and cat fur in Europe

has centered on shaky allegations about dogs and

cats being raised specifically for fur, sometimes

purportedly in Belgium. This would be

economically unviable, since the Chinese

specialty meat industry produces so much fur at

virtual giveaway prices.

London Evening Standard political

correspondent Isabel Oakeshott issued possibly

the first realistic expose of the present shape

of the European fur trade on August 31, 2004.

" Cat and dog fur is being shipped into

Britain on a record scale, " Oakeshott began.

" Traders from Europe and the Far East ferried up

to £7 million worth into Britain last year.

London has become a major international trading

center for the furs, following bans in other

countries. The scale of the business emerged in

Customs & Excise records released to a Member of

Parliament.

" More than £40 million of fur-related

items poured into Britain last year, " up from

£26 million in 1999, Oakeshot continued, looking

at fur-trimmed garments as well as traditional

fur coats. " Imports of clothes and fashion

accessories made with real fur have tripled from

£4 million to about £12 million in the past

decade, " Oakeshott wrote.

" As well as fur clothes, more than £6

million of raw fur and £22 million of tanned or

dressed fur, from 12 named species and 'other

animals,' was shipped into Britain last year, "

Oakeshott summarized.

Oakeshott estimated that the traffic included

about £5.9 million worth of dog fur and £1

million worth of cat fur.

" We live in such an escapist society that

they don't even let you [air] ads that show

graphic footage of animals being killed, "

longtime PETA anti-fur campaign coordinator Dan

Mathews told Scelfo of Newsweek.

Therefore Mathews continues to rely upon

celebrity actresses and models to deliver the

anti-fur message, just as PETA has done all

along. Fernanda Tavares was the PETA headliner

in 2003/2004, Charlize Theron this winter.

Mathews hopes neither follow the examples of

Naomi Campbell and Cindy Crawford, past

headliners who were paid by the fur industry to

literally turn coats.

 

Fund's last stand

 

Both PETA and the Fund for Animals have

had great difficulty getting periodicals that

carry fur industry advertising to accept anti-fur

ads. Vogue has rejected ads from PETA sight

unseen since 1996, when anti-fur activists

associated with PETA delivered a dead raccoon to

editor Anna Wintour's table at a fashionable New

York City restaurant. Before that, PETA ads

apparently got at least a quick look before

rejection.

The Fund for Animals, now merging into

the Humane Society of the U.S., has had more

success in placing print ads. The New York Times

Magazine, The New Yorker, the Washington Post,

Paper, Avenue, YM, and Teen have all carried

Fund anti-fur ads, but in 2003 Town & Country,

Women's Wear Daily, and W all refused an ad

showing a bobcat with the caption, " She needs

her fur more than you do. "

HSUS president Wayne Pacelle told ANIMAL

PEOPLE publisher Kim Bartlett that the merger

talks with the Fund included discussion of a new

anti-fur campaign, but he indicated that it will

not be launched until the winter of 2005/2006.

The Fund's last anti-fur activity as an

independent organization may have been

encouraging New York state senators Malcolm A.

Smith, of Queens, and Scott Stringer, of

Manhattan, to introduce a bill in the closing

days of the 2004 state legislative session which

would have banned killing furbearing animals by

anal or genital electrocution.

A traditional method of killing ranched

foxes, avoiding injury to their fur, anal or

genital electrocution is rarely used with other

species. Mink are usually killed either by

gassing or neck-breaking, involving a hard shake

with long-handled tongs.

But there are no more fox farms known to

operate in New York state. The last five mink

farms pelted 4,800 mink in 2002.

Because the bill was symbolic and going

nowhere, it won little of the news media

attention that the Fund had hoped for.

The " Shame of Fur " campaign waged by HSUS

1986-1991 still appears to have been much more

effective than any anti-fur campaigns that

followed--or preceded it.

The message " It's wrong to wear fur! " was clear,

simple, and direct. Amplified in different ways

by other organizations, it applied to all forms

of fur, no matter how they were produced, and

left no room for misunderstanding.

Campaigns focused on leghold traps send a

mixed message, even if no fur customer realizes

(any more than do most activists) that Conibear

traps and wire snares are used to catch more wild

animals. If the issue is leghold trapping, a

potential fur buyer could think that wearing

ranched mink, fur from a coyote shot with a gun,

or fur from rabbits raised for food might be

acceptable.

Conversely, campaigns focused on the

many cruelties of ranching mink, fox, and other

species raised for pelts might just persuade a

potential buyer to opt for a raccoon coat instead.

The biggest problem with anti-fur

campaigning in recent years, some observers

believe, has been that there was not very much

of it. Activist priorities have shifted, from

the emphasis on vivisection and fur of the 1980s

to the present focus on food and companion animal

issues.

Pro-animal activism since the mid-1990s

has emphasized ways that a conscientious

individual can make a difference through personal

action, like giving up meat or sterilizing a

feral cat colony. Giving up fur might have fit

right in--except that pro-animal activists had

already eschewed fur for decades.

Women born in 1959, the year the first

Walt Disney version of 101 Dalmatians appeared,

turned 30 in 1989, and are now 45. Most have

never worn fur. Most never will.

As fur faded from activist sight and

memory, anti-fur protest came to be seen by

big-group strategists as a low priority:

continued on a token level, since some donors

and volunteers expect it, but not vitally

urgent, and not a hot fundraising issue either.

and noa

 

New York

 

More than 60% of all the fur sold and

worn in the U.S. is sold and worn in the greater

New York City metropolitan area, where cold

winters converge with affluence and tradition. As

fur-wearing goes in New York City, so the

industry goes throughout the U.S. and Canada--and

often, the fashion centers of the world.

Veteran New York City activist Irene

Muschel believes the planners of anti-fur efforts

at some point forgot that whatever they do must

be visible. Instead of campaigning to reach the

public, they have campaigned to rally activists,

who donate in response to mailings that

fur-wearers never see, table and rally on

weekends when fur-wearing suburban commuters are

not out and about, and congratulate each other

about public service announcements aired on

obscure cable TV stations at hours when few

people are watching.

" Flyers are put up by companies [hired by

animal rights groups] in areas that are for the

most part characterized by housing projects,

abandoned buildings, pervasive poverty, drugs,

and crime. Not too many people wearing fur will

see them, " Muschel wrote in a series of personal

critiques of anti-fur campaigns sent to ANIMAL

PEOPLE at intervals throughout 2004.

" Sometimes flyers are placed in middle

class business areas, not the residential areas

where anti-fur advertising would be most

effective. The way flyers are placed, one next

to another in a mess of form and color, often

makes them invisible. New Yorkers are bombarded

by an enormous amount of visual and auditory

stimuli as they walk and drive through the city

streets, " Muschel continued. " Advertising must

be big and/or pervasive enough to get beyond

people's tendency to block out so much stimuli. "

Having previously used murals to promote

pet sterilization (as described and illustrated

on page 4 of the October 2004 edition of ANIMAL

PEOPLE), Muschel tested her theories last

winter, at her own expense.

" I contacted some wildlife photographers

and a designer and had a fabulous anti-fur poster

made, " Muschel said. " I paid for three months

of advertising on two telephone kiosks in

Grammercy Park. I selected two kiosks that I

could monitor to see if this was a successful

mode of advertising. "

Muschel concluded that the telephone kiosk

campaign was not successful because the posters

were easily and often stolen. But she came to

believe that billboard advertising would work.

" It is impossible to block out a huge

colorful billboard, " Muschel concluded. " No one

can steal a billboard. A billboard is,

therefore, the most effective form of

advertising, " at least in New York City.

Next Muschel spent months scouting

potential billboard locations. She found one at

a seemingly perfect site, and negotiated a price

for using it that would have been well below what

others had paid. Throughout the summer of 2004,

Muschel tried to interest national animal

advocacy groups in renting the space this winter.

None were willing to commit. The deal slipped

away.

 

Market pressure

 

The fur trade is still vulnerable to

market pressure--if the pressure is effectively

directed. The British department store chain

Harvey Nichols introduced rabbit-trimmed and

lined garments last winter, feeling that fur

from animals killed for meat would be acceptable

to consumers, but discontinued the fur line

after Advocates for Animals and the Coalition

Against the Fur Trade threatened to target the

firm.

Other retailers still believe that fur

from rabbits raised for meat will elude protest.

Suzy Shier Inc. in Nanaimo, British Columbia,

began selling rabbit fur coats in September 2004

to test customer response, according to an

e-mail from the Vancouver Island Vegetarian

Association. (VIVA representative Jo Miele asked

that protest be directed to

<operationshr.)

Anti-fur pressure must be sustained and

consistent. A Scots firm, the House of Bruar,

introduced a fur line including hamster coats in

late 2003, withdrew the hamster garments in

March 2004, and then put them back on the market

in August 2004, after protest subsided. Also

selling mink, fox, and raccoon garments, the

House of Bruar had interpreted the message not as

" Don't wear fur, " but rather, " Don't wear

hamsters when anyone is looking. "

 

Image & ethics

 

The fur industry still lacks a

charismatic fur-wearing First Lady. Like

predecessors Pat Nixon and Barbara Bush, Laura

Bush does not wear fur.

Lynne Cheney, however, wife of U.S. Vice

President Dick Cheney, may have been best known

before the 2000 election campaign for her

defenses of fur as a frequent CNN Crossfire

guest.

Lynne Cheney may now be the person in

public life who is most often seen wearing

fur--but she has never been named among the top

five in the annual USA Today/ CNN/Gallup " Most

Admired Woman " polls. Positions lower than fifth

are not announced.

On the other hand, only six women have

shared the top five positions during the George

W. Bush presidency, and all six are occasional

fur-wearers, including National Security Advisor

Condoleza Rice. TV show host Oprah Winfrey,

named every year, has given mink-trimmed

slippers to her guests.

But The New York Times, whose owners'

families made their fortunes in fur, is no

longer unambiguously pro-fur.

On Election Day 2004, Times " Front Row "

columnist Ruth La Ferla puffed the vegan fashion

industry.

Even more significantly, New York Times

Magazine ethics columnist Randy Cohen on March

21, 2004 wrote, " You certainly should not wear

a new fur. A case can be made for some

exploitation of animals--as food or in important

medical research--when there is no meaningful

alternative, and when their suffering is

minimized. But there is no justification for

harming animals to make something as frivolous as

a fur coat. "

Cohen followed up on April 11, 2004 with

a column pondering how to ethically dispose of

unwanted furs.

Lynne Cheney and friends have described

The New York Times as an elitist liberal

newspaper that has become far out of touch with

Middle America.

Yet it is still the most read newspaper in the global hub of fur demand.

 

--Merritt Clifton

 

 

--

Kim Bartlett, Publisher of ANIMAL PEOPLE Newspaper

Postal mailing address: P.O. Box 960, Clinton WA 98236 U.S.A.

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