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What We Uncovered on a "Modern" Fur Farm

Furriers say their "farms" are modern: Their cages are spacious and clean, the animals are happy, and death is humane. You be the judge.

For three months, a PETA undercover investigator documented the lives and deaths of more than 1,500 animals on a North American fur farm. One "surprise" is the alliance between the fur farmer and two other animal exploiters—vivisectors and hunters—and what happens to the animals because of it.

The "Farm"
The wire cages are tiny, filthy, and encrusted with dirt, clumps of fur, and excrement. Locked inside each one is a fox, imprisoned here since birth. Many of the foxes live for years in these hideous conditions before the farmer kills them and sells their fur to make coats, cuffs, collars, and trim.

The farmer told our investigator that a humane death by an injection of barbiturate was "too expensive"—even though it costs a mere 30 cents per animal. So he uses a metal noose pole to lift each fox from the cage by the neck, shoves an electric prod into the animal’s rectum and forces a metal conductor into the animal’s mouth. A flip of a switch shoots 240 volts of electricity through the fox’s body.

According to our investigator, "The fox’s eyes usually shut and the body goes rigid. There is a crackling sound … and sometimes teeth break and fall out. … Often the anal probe falls out. When this happens, the fox convulses, shakes, and often cries."

Death doesn’t come quickly. Because the electricity does not go through and stun the brain, the foxes remain awake and feel the full excruciating force of a massive heart attack. Tom Amlung, a veterinarian and administrator for St. Clair County, Ill., animal control, says, "The animals do not lose consciousness … for one to two minutes. The time … seems like an eternity, so one can only imagine how the animal must feel experiencing this pain during this time with the electricity running from one end of his body to the other while heat builds up at the site of the electrode."

The Lab Link
The foxes were fed cast-off chickens sent by a pharmaceutical company. The chickens, who have already suffered at the hands of experimenters, arrive by the thousands, their little hunched-over bodies shoved into sealed cardboard boxes without food, water, or space to move. Our investigator documented the farmer stacking the boxes upside down in a corner of his barn and covering them with a plastic tarp to slowly suffocate the chickens. For hours, the chickens could be heard trying to escape. When the farmer cut open the boxes and pulled them out, some were still alive.

"The farmer forced the live chickens feet first into the grinder," recorded our investigator, "while they were conscious, fighting, squawking, and flapping for their lives. You could hear their screams over the roar of the engine. He would sometimes get a smirk on his face when the chickens’ final protests were cut short."

The "Secret" Ingredient
To glean even more profit, the farmer collects and sells the foxes’ urine. The bottled waste is sold to hunters who use it to mask their scent while they lie in wait for deer. The farmer also buys live deer and raccoons so that he can collect and sell their urine to hunt shops. The wild deer are terrified of humans and have never known confinement. The raccoons are crammed together in small cages. When a young buck caught his hoof in the wire-mesh floor of his cage, our investigator saw the farmer attempt to free him by cutting the fully conscious deer’s leg, rather than the wire, with a razor-sharp knife, severing the hoof. Hoping to salvage his investment, the farmer then threw the bleeding deer into the trunk of his car and drove to a veterinarian. When the vet advised him to destroy the buck, he shot the wounded animal with a .22-caliber rifle, because "bullets are cheaper than injections."

"Trust Us," Says the Fur Industry
"North American mink and fox farmers are strongly committed to the ethic of humane care. … Humane euthanasia techniques practiced on fur farms are those recognized by the American Veterinary Medical Association … [which] approves lethal injection as the most humane method."

—from a publication by Fur Commission USA and the Canada Mink Breeders Association

Click below to read more about animals suffering on fur farms.

Ranch-Raised Fur: Captive Cruelty