Forming a view

Essay:

How is the fur industry killing off the environment?

The fur industry takes advantage of animals on a daily basis and uses their fur for our leisure which has already become a huge problem in our current world and society.

Animal fur has been used as a part of fashion for many centuries now, the usage even dating as far back as the Stone Age, when materials were scarce and temperatures low and thick clothing was a necessity to survive.

However as our society has developed, many more materials discovered and are so easily accessible to all, why is fur still being used in the name of fashion?

Using fur means skinning animals in unimaginable cruel ways, making them go through a whole painful ordeal for the sake of our clothes. This is all completely morally wrong and apart from this, harms the environment in which we live in.

I have chosen this particular topic to discuss because I am very against using animal products for our leisure. It is not fair that another living being is tortured for another beings looks. It is completely immoral that this issue still takes place today.

Over the last few years, the fur industry has received more and more backlash over the use of fur in the products and items of clothing. More people are now realising how much abuse animals are going through daily for the sake of fashion. This has turned some people into becoming animal activists to raise awareness for these animals and the rise of animal activists have risen quite steadily over the years to hopefully end animal cruelty one day which has inspired me to talk about this highly important issue we are facing today. By writing this essay I hope to raise a bit more awareness on this matter.

The first key issue caused by the fur industry is how it harms the environment. About 85% of the fur used in clothing comes from the suffering animals which live on fur factory farms. These farms can contain thousands of animals facing very bad living conditions. These farms as well as other factory type farms are built in mind to collect as much profit as possible without the environment or animals’ welfare in mind.

Each animal which is skinned by fur farmers makes about 20 kilograms of waste in their lifetimes. Which adds up to about 450000 kilograms of animal waste made by US fur farms each year. This waste has dangerous components inside such as having 1,000 tonnes of phosphorus which pollutes and destroys wildlife in rivers and streams. For example, a fur factory farm in Washington was charged with polluting a stream nearby as the waste and pollution levels measured in the water were about 5,000 more times more than the legal limit.

This process is all completely unnecessary as there are other available alternatives instead of using animal products, for example, using faux fur which can be locally sourced and is cheaper than animal fur.

A fur industry publication that I looked into, Sandy Parker Reports, says that “tougher anti-pollution rules and stricter enforcement by government agencies are causing increasing problems for fur farmers in parts of the US. Nitrates, phosphates and other substances running off with rainwater and polluting local water supplies are increasingly coming to the attention of environmental protection agencies.” This means that this problem has been recognised and action is being done but a lot more has to be done to stop this issue.

Raising these animals for their fur, pollutes the nearby area but also heavily pollutes the air. For example, in Denmark where over 14 million animals are killed for their fur annually, more than 3,000 kilograms of ammonia is released into the atmosphere each and every year.

PETA also published an article and a video which claims that the animals which are trapped from the wild by the hunters suffer for days on end and suffer from “blood loss, shock, dehydration, frostbite, and gangrene”. These animals may be caught in “steel-jaw traps that slam down on their legs” which more often than not cut these suffering animals right to the bone. Another common way of killing these animals for their skin are by using “conibear traps which crush their necks with 90 pounds of pressure per square inch” which will put these animals in agonizing pain before their deaths. And lastly, “water-set traps, which leave beavers, muskrats and other animals struggling for more than nine agonizing minutes before drowning” are used, too. All these cruel ways of murdering animals for their fur are slow and immensely painful, which just goes to show how inhumane the hunters and workers in the fur industry must be, as they do not even show the slightest remorse to kill these animals quickly and painlessly.

According to cryoftheinnocent.com, 100 million animals per year in total, are slaughtered all around the world for the sake of the fur industry, not including the 1 billion rabbits killed annually for their skin.

Thankfully some big brands such as Gucci, have taken note of these figures and have therefore ditched using fur in their high end products to reduce these numbers and to encourage other high profile brands to do the same.

Along with the obvious underlying issues of the negative impact the fur industry has on the environment, there are also many health risks caused to humans from wearing the fur.

Various hazardous chemicals are used in the process of bleaching and dying the fur, and after tests made all over the world, results prove that these chemicals are extremely toxic to humans and pose a very serious threat to human health.

Chemicals such as formaldehyde and ethoxylates are used in big portions and are found in the majority of fur trims which cause health problems ranging from minor issues such as allergies to severe health risks such as cancer and hormonal imbalance.

The toxics found in fur are absorbed very easily through the air or skin and these toxics remain in the body for over 20 years, damaging the body.

Studies based in countries in Europe such as Italy, the Netherlands and Germany, have found significant harmful amounts of toxic substances in fur clothing in childrens clothing in popular brands such as D&G and Nickelson.

In conclusion, clothing should not be made from animals’ skin or fur as this is cruel and causes too much suffering in an animals’ life. Adding to the suffering and deaths of millions of animals annually, using fur for clothing contributes a number of problems towards pollution, water contamination, land loss and climate change. After reflecting on my research, I can say that my view on fur production is that it should not happen as it has more negatives than positives and should be stopped.

However, using fur is still an issue today, the use of it even dating back to the Stone Age. So why are the public still using it to this day?

I was reading an article on ‘BoF’ which according to the director of the British Fur Trade; Frank Ziberkweit, fur is not only “beneficial for the business of fashion, but also for the environment”.

 Ziberkweit claimed that by producing faux fur, “you are making a petrochemical product that is not biodegradable” and that the fashion industry is “about raising animals in a natural way”. However, the latter statement can be argued to be false as there are reports of animals experiencing “death by anal electrocution” and “days long torture” for the sake of fur in fashion. Which reinforces the point I am trying to make.

Nevertheless, it can be argued that using fur is no different to eating animals for their meat or using leather for fashion. They all end in animals being farmed and killed as well.

Which brings me onto my next point about using leather in fashion. Leather can be argued to be more ethical due to it being a byproduct of the meat industry, but it also contributes dangerous toxins into the environment. For example, the Buriganga River which runs through a leather production zone in Bangladesh has been declared to be “ecologically dead”. This shows that using any animal in the name of fashion has devastating second hand effects on the world and the environment in particular.

Although the use of fur has devastating effects, it can be argued that the good trumps the bad, in some cases. For example, in some remote nations, some people have to wear fur to keep warm and to keep healthy, due to the weather and lack of resources surrounding them. This is reflected through the Stone Age, where people had to wear fur due to the immense lack of possibility to wear anything else.

Overall, I believe that the animal use in the fashion industry should be prevented due to the shocking and horrifying treatment towards animals, and the damaging effects on the environment. However, in certain cases such as in remote nations, the people there should be permitted to wear fur as it is for their own survival and they have no choice.

Feedback for my essay:

To share my essay and to collect feedback on what people thought about my essay, I used the site: 'Survey Monkey'. 

Link to the survey site I used to collect feedback for my essay:

https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/BHRJS7V

Screenshots of feedback I received through 'Survey Monkey': 

Sources I used for my essay:

https://www.businessoffashion.com/articles/video/the-great-fur-debate

http://www.furisgreen.com/renewable.aspx

https://fashionista.com/2018/04/real-faux-fur-sutainability-ethics-debate

http://www.debate.org/opinions/should-people-wear-animal-fur

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/oct/19/fur-coat-recycle-ethical-dilemma

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/feb/15/is-wearing-leather-less-moral-than-wearing-fur

http://www.ad-international.org/fur/go.php?id=17&ssi=19

http://thefurbearers.com/the-issues/fur-farming/what-is-wrong-with-fur-farming

https://www.peta.org/features/nine-shocking-fur-facts/

https://www.peta.org/issues/animals-used-for-clothing/fur/environmental-hazards-fur/

Reflection on Research:

Through writing this essay on fur, and researching so much around the subject, I learnt so many new pieces of information which I would not have done so if I had not done so much extensive research leading up to write this essay. The information which I have learnt about the subject of using fur in fashion, definitely has shocked me and I am more educated on the chemistry, ethics and processes that go on behind the fur production trade which I did not know prior to doing my research. Finding out about the fur industry, has definitely encouraged me not to wear any fur products myself and also not to use any fur in my designs or work as the fur trade is not something which I stand for or wish to support, which I would be doing so if I wore or used the fur, and promoted it in my fashion. If I was to use fur to wear or in my designs, I will only use faux fur so that it is friendly to the planet, environment and animals themselves. This essay and research behind it has most definitely influenced my views as a fashion enthusiast and will definitely be using my newfound knowledge when planning on my next collections and fashion choices.