Calls/Letters Needed: SF Bay Area-based store (Bebe) Promotes Fur

August 13, 2004

The women's clothing store Bebe, a chic boutique chain based in the SF Bay Area, is promoting and selling real fur. (To view products visit http://www.bebe.com/Main/browse_category_fall04.jsp?FOLDER<>folder_id=2534374302797203 & pageIndex=1)

Please call and email bebe (contact info below). Tell them to stop selling real fur and that you and your friends will boycott bebe until they implement a no-fur policy.

With so many beautiful faux furs available, there is no excuse. bebe should not participate in and profit from the bloody fur industry. Millions of fur-bearing animals are killed each year on fur farms by anal and vaginal electrocution and in the wild by drowning, trapping, or beating.

After suffering through years of confinement, animals are killed and skinned for their pelts. Killing methods are typically cheap, crude, and performed in such a way so as not to damage the animal's fur; there is no such thing as humane "euthanasia" on a fur farm.

On U.S. fur farms, one of the most frequently used methods of killing animals is electrocution: the "farmer" puts a metal clamp in an animal's mouth, a metal rod in the anus, and sends a high-voltage current surging through the body.

Sometimes the power surge forces the rod out of the anus, so the procedure must be repeated to kill the animal. Other commonly-employed techniques include homemade gas chambers, such as a box hooked up to a tractor exhaust pipe; lethal injection of various chemicals that kill through paralysis, which can result in immobilized animals being skinned alive; and neck breaking.

bebe currently operates 201 stores in the United States and Canada as well as an online store.

Corporate headquarters:Manny Mashouf, founder and CEObebe400 Valley DriveBrisbane, CA 94005415-715-3900 x2301askus (customer service)

For more information visit: http://www.api4animals.org/1598.htm or http://www.furisdead.com/