Fur Industry

Fur Farms: Cage-raised animals are deprived of natural conditions. Many suffer from stress-related behaviour such as pacing and self-mutilation. Killing methods include gassing (which can burn the eyes and lungs of animals prior to death), neck breaking, and anal electrocution.

It's not cool to be cruel!

Our message is: DON'T wear fur! Don't buy fur in any form; there are many beautiful synthetic materials available, which are the humane alternative.

Leg and Body Hold Trapping:

Unbelievably, the leg-hold trap and to a smaller extent, the snare trap and conibear trap, are still being used in our province today. The public in British Columbia is being told that conventional traps have not been used since 1983, when in fact conventional leg-holds are still legally used on all of our water animals including the mink, muskrat, otter, and beaver. The "padded" or "modified" leg-hold trap is legally in use on land for the coyote, lynx, wolf, bobcat, and fox. This "padded" trap is simply a regular leg-hold trap with synthetic material stuck onto the steel jaws. These so-called "improved" traps cause just as much agony to the animals being trapped, and no matter what we are being told, they are NOT a humane alternative to regular leg-holds. Although traps must be checked every 72 hours, it is not acceptable for an animal to suffer for hours or even minutes in these archaic and cruel devices.

The Good News: The amount of animals being trapped in Canada is down from five and a half million in 1979 to one million today. In British Columbia, the annual number being trapped has gone down from 300,000 to about 45,000. Wearing fur is becoming less and less acceptable among Canadians and the fur market is diminishing more and more each year.

The Bad News: Cruel and inhumane trapping continues in our province and in our country even though the majority of the public opposes the use of leg-hold traps.

What You Can Do to Help Stop Cruel Trapping: Write to the Minister of Environment, your MLA, and as many MLA's as possible. Ask them where they stand on this important issue and if they would support a province-wide ban on all leg-hold traps (and other cruel traps). Tell them that cruel and inhumane trapping is unacceptable and it must be stopped. Write letters to the editor in newspapers to inform the public that inhumane trapping still continues and it must end. Join animal welfare groups that oppose the use of leg and body-hold traps (TRACS in Kelowna, The Furbearer Defenders in Vancouver, and others).

Fact Number Three: The effort to end cruel trapping has been long and difficult but we are winning and we will be successful!