Craziest claim of the week: "Fur is green"

From our eco-friendly blog Hippyshopper...

One of the maddest things I've seen on the web for some time has to be this new marketing site from the Fur Council of Canada, claiming that fur is "the ultimate eco clothing".

If that wasn't preposterous enough a claim in itself, the strapline used on the site is 'protecting nature while pampering yourself'. Now, I'm sorry if I've missed something here, but in what way is cruelly trapping animals and stealing their skins in the name of fashion 'protecting nature'?

The council tries to make the case for fur by saying it's environmentally friendly, because it's a renewable resource, biodegradable, and that trappers have to have the interest of the land as their top priority because they depend on it. "Farmers who do not care for their animals will not remain in business very long", they say. Somehow, I don't think that will convince PETA...

[via Hippyshopper]

Craziest claim of the week: "Fur is green" - Comments

Kim

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David Dent

Sorry I forgot a couple of your points Lesley.

first the Iberian Lynx. Yes I agree the other things you mntion have been hugely damaging too but hunters impact has been minimal. Lynx have been hunted there for thousands of years. Still high numbers. Agricultural change was the first problem toward decline; then now the others like dams and roads hasten it.

Remember that no big cat to our knowledge has gone extinct since the sabre tooth cats which vanished because of massive climate change at the end of the ice age. So 11 000 years of man hunting big cats for fur and not one gone extinct. Now suddenly many under threat despite the lowest hunter kill rate and fur use ever in human culture and protection for 30 years. It is NOT the fur trade that is wiping them out but a variety of far more damaging habitat changes.But while we simply blame hunters we will not be able to stop the decline; and ironically intensive arable crops and plantation crops is ONE of the greatest threats. Hunters are often the first to alert the world to the problems and the Iberian hunters were a case in point. They warned us and we just ignored them by saying "well stop killing them then". They already had....they knew something else was deeply wrong.

Now your request for PETA and AR policy on pets:

"In a perfect world, animals would be free to live their lives to the fullest: raising their young, enjoying their native environments, and following their natural instincts. However, domesticated dogs and cats cannot survive "free" in our concrete jungles, so we must take as good care of them as possible. People with the time, money, love, and patience to make a lifetime commitment to an animal can make an enormous difference by adopting from shelters or rescuing animals from a perilous life on the street. But it is also important to stop manufacturing "pets," thereby perpetuating a class of animals forced to rely on humans to survive."

-PETA pamphlet, Companion Animals: Pets or Prisoners?

"I don’t use the word "pet." I think it’s speciesist language. I prefer "companion animal." For one thing, we would no longer allow breeding. People could not create different breeds. There would be no pet shops. If people had companion animals in their homes, those animals would have to be refugees from the animal shelters and the streets. You would have a protective relationship with them just as you would with an orphaned child. But as the surplus of cats and dogs (artificially engineered by centuries of forced breeding) declined, eventually companion animals would be phased out, and we would return to a more symbiotic relationship – enjoyment at a distance."

-Ingrid Newkirk, PETA vice-president, quoted in The Harper's Forum Book, Jack Hitt, ed., 1989, p.223.

"It is time we demand an end to the misguided and abusive concept of animal ownership. The first step on this long, but just, road would be ending the concept of pet ownership."

-Elliot Katz, President, In Defense of Animals, "In Defense of Animals," Spring 1997

"Liberating our language by eliminating the word 'pet' is the first step ... In an ideal society where all exploitation and oppression has been eliminated, it will be NJARA's policy to oppose the keeping of animals as 'pets.'"

-New Jersey Animal Rights Alliance, "Should Dogs Be Kept As Pets? NO!" Good Dog! February 1991, p.20

"Let us allow the dog to disappear from our brick and concrete jungles -- from our firesides, from the leather nooses and chains by which we enslave it."

-John Bryant, Fettered Kingdoms: An Examination of A Changing Ethic, PETA, 1982, p.15.

"The cat, like the dog, must disappear..... We should cut the domestic cat free from our dominance by neutering, neutering, and more neutering, until our pathetic version of the cat ceases to exist."

-John Bryant, Fettered Kingdoms: An Examination of a Changing Ethic, PETA 1982, p.15.

"As John Bryant has written in his book Fettered Kingdoms, they [pets] are like slaves, even if well-kept slaves."

-PETA's Statement on Companion Animals

"The bottom line is that people don't have the right to manipulate or to breed dogs and cats ... If people want toys they should buy inanimate objects. If they want companionship they should seek it with their own kind."

-Ingrid Newkirk, President, PETA, "Animals," May/June 1993

"You don't have to own squirrels and starlings to get enjoyment from them ... One day, we would like an end to pet shops and the breeding of animals. [Dogs] would pursue their natural lives in the wild ... they would have full lives, not wasting at home for someone to come home in the evening and pet them and then sit there and watch TV."

-Ingrid Newkirk, President, PETA, Chicago Daily Herald, March 1, 1990.

"Pet ownership is an abysmal situation brought about by human manipulation."

-Ingrid Newkirk, President, PETA, Washingtonian, August 1986

"One day we would like an end to pet shops and breeding animals [Dogs] would pursue their natural lives in the wild."

-Ingrid Newkirk, Chicago Daily Herald, March 1, 1990

NOT that I am accusing you of being PETA Lesley I just wanted to warn you of those who argue against fur with millions of dollars of propaganda (like those well dodgy videos)also have some sinister attitude toward pets....and humans.

I will debate with you all day you are decent: they are not. But I don't class you as AR as all your argument has been AW. And I agree with that.

And yes I absolutely believe that people who are bad to furbearers on farms should be prosecuted. But also they who have excellent husbandry should b acknowldged. For one thing, it is bad that someone who spends huge effort on veterinary care large accomodation etc has to compete with someone who doesn't. The only thing is the fur will be better if you look after them. Just like meat and eggs will be better if you look after animals free range.

I don't think we will EVER get a solution between us on Sharon Stone as I think she has made some great movies ;)

On the farming thing the UK governemnt has bn whinging about subsidising farmers and trying to stop it. Howver today it has been revealed that suprmarkts have been price fixing. They will be fined but I bet the money doesnt go to farmers.

A supermarket will pay a farmer in Wales about £40 for a two year old lamb and that is nothing like what it should be so then they sell the meat on at twenty times that to the customer. So actually the government is subsidising already huge supermarket profit as they do not pay the true price of good welfare and production. Same on milk eggs everything. Hence battery farming and bad welfare comes about as a side effect of intensifying production to try to compete....especially with meat from countries which do not have such good welfare . Animals should not be victim to market forces like that and this government and their supermarket paymasters have reduced it to that . I can't speak for the USA but if farmers are subsidised you have to ask why: it is because someone is not paying the true cost of welfare and production.

David Dent

hi Lesley

my point is that David Bellamy is one of the few people warning of intensive arable farming and warned twenty years ago that it wasnt hunting cultures that threatend the environmnt but soya and palm oil nd prairi agriculture. He warned too that the global warming idea was not proven and would be used to justify bio crops and it is. Yeah course they try to rubbish him but now it is turning out he is correct...and yes Greenpeace follow on twenty years later re palm oil.

My links re the soya:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3622108.stm

Quote from Science in Society:

http://www.i-sis.org.uk/isisnews/sis28.php

We need look no further than Latin America for the nightmare scenario. It is being destroyed by soya cultivation, especially with the arrival of GM soya (“Argentina’s GM woes”, SiS 20; “How Europe is recolonizing America”, SiS 25). Soya is inextricably tied to the meat industry ever since agronomists discovered that adding soya to grain could improve the feed to meat conversion ratio up to two-fold. Countries like Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Paraguay and Uruguay are driven to grow soya for foreign exchange, to repay foreign debt, and in response to demand from importing countries especially China, currently the world’s largest importer of soybean and soybean products. Soya fields have been spreading in Latin America like an ecological canker, eating up the pampas, the savannahs and the Amazonian forests; bringing with it massive infrastructure projects for transporting and processing soybean that obliterate natural habitats far beyond the areas cleared for soya cultivation. This is happening just when the integrity of the Amazonian forests is absolutely essential for stabilizing global climate against the increasingly frequent climatic catastrophes of hurricanes, floods, droughts, and heatwaves.

yes now argentina's economy is gaining from it because of new chinese demand. But that isn't good for the environmnt and its absurd for a habitat friendly free range beef producer to be in this situation:

http://english.fleischwirtschaft.de/news/pages/show.prl?params=keyword%3Dsa%26all%3D%26type%3D%26laufzeit%3D0&id=9175&currPage=8

No doubt the welsh farmers would make more money from it than sheep too but it will destroy th habitat i have shown you aswell;

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2004/apr/16/gm.food

Take a look for yourself to see what it has done:

http://www.sprol.com/?s=soya+argentina

David Bellamy has warned against this kind of thing for years.

Yes this year soya has gone up in price but last year the Argentinian government was screaming at the west for conning them.

It was Monsanto's dream to feed the world with gm soya. Not cattle. No one wanted it so it ended up as cattle feed. Now the chinese are buying it but that will just make it worse. The Jaguar has had it unless this stops.

I brought up palm oil because hunters were getting the blame and only now has it been revealed its actually plantation crops like that:

it replaces a hunting culture which leaves very little eco footprint; and its crops like that all over the world doing the same.

more:

http://ipsnews.net/interna.asp?idnews=19906

Ok the Nazis and animal rights:

Some Nazi quotes for you;

"One may regret living at a period when it's impossible to form an idea of the shape the world of the future will assume. But there's one thing I can predict to eaters of meat: the world of the future will be vegetarian."

- Adolf Hitler. November 11, 1941. Section 66, HITLER'S TABLE TALK

Himmler actually wrote in the SS magazine in 1933 in an article called "Animal Rights" about enlightened (Aryan) people respcting the rights of animals.

In 1934 a conference on Animal Rights in Berlin saw this slogan adorned with swastikas:

'Entire epochs of love will be needed to repay animals for their value and service.'"

That sounds like somthing from PETA to me. And yes I said they were hypocrites and to remind you so are the AR movement now:

www.petakillsanimals.com/petaT...

And as Husley's article here concludes:

"However, whenever animal activists argue today that giving rights to animals will produce a kinder, gentler society, it is perfectly appropriate to point out that the only modern civilization to officially embrace a philosophy of animal rights did not turn out to be more kind or more gentle. "

http://www.hitler.org/links/NAP_5.html

I think I quotd this artcile above but again for your reference. Please read it what you seek is there;

http://www.kaltio.fi/index.php?494

I hav also given you profssor Mark Almond, the top historian at Oxfords artcile on the Nazis and modrn animal rights movement.

and again this is a superb article:

http://www.social-ecology.org/article.php?story=20040611140817458

You must remember that the Nazis had close connections with both Indian National movement and Tibetan Buddhism. Indeed, Heinrich Herrer an infamous SS officer who escaped British justice at the end of the war and fled to Tibet taught the current Dalai Lama and remained a close friend of his all his life. The man hid his Nazi roots and hollywood even celebrated him in the movi "7 years in Tibet " a movie which Brad Pitt claimed he would never have starred in if he knew of Herrer's history as an SA stormptrooper and then SS man. For all those who moan about China's rcord on human rights they have a point when they point this out. The current Dalai Lama has whipped pople into a frenzy burning furs:

http://www.rfa.org/english/tibetan/2006/02/21/tibet_fur/

Now if that looks enlightened to you fine but it looks like this to me:

http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/ww2-pix/book-burn.jpg

Now this is a new departure in Buddhism because traditionally Tibertan people wear furs. So they ar destroying history. And when people start burning things they don't like it isn't long before they start burning people as the saying goes.

Many American buddhists are active in the AR movement and many neo Nazis are involved in it too:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2000/09/03/neo03.xml

neo Nazis recently demonstrated in Germany with placards saying ;

"stop animal vivisection: use Turks instead"

i also think you have ben watching too many glamorisd movies about Gandhi too. Are we talking about the same Gandhi who often defended the cast sytem of untouchables? The same Gandhi who let his wife die rather than allow a British doctor to give her penicillin? The same Gandhi who said on resistance to Nazi panzers blitzkrieging through Europe:

"This manslaughter must be stopped. You are losing; if you

persist, it will only result in greater bloodshed. Hitler is not a bad man...."

"HITLER IS NOT A BAD MAN?"

That Gandhi who said that you mean?

http://history.eserver.org/ghandi-nobody-knows.txt

I am not going to do a complete hatchet job on Gandhi but he ain't all perfect either. Neither will I defend british colonialism but it wasn't all bad either. I don't think that you would think it was bad for instance for british troops to try to stop the slaughter of female babies in India.

All I am saying is that I do not like humans hailed as "enlightened" when they are not god. Especially when they show "enlightenment" toward animals and not humans. It's a shame Gandhi didn't condemn the idea of the caste system. An idea which Hitler incidntally was influenced by in his classicifcation of humans.

It comes down to morality. And animal rights versus animal welfare.

http://www.furcommission.com/debate/index.html

you are correct about the chinchilla farm if they did that it is not defensible. But if they were biting their fur out it can't have been good fur can it?

The vast majority of euthanasia in the USA is done by adherence to the AMVA recommendations as humane. Certainly producers like Blackglama adhere to them strictly.

Here is a warts an all assessment of the problems on further laws governing fur farming in the USA; note the conclusions say:

"To the extent that animal rights activists are successful in their ultimate goal of eliminating all animal use, there will be negative effects for producers, consumers, and animals alike:

"The cost of compliance with unrealistic and unnecessary government regulations will force producers out of business.

Increased government regulation of agriculture will mean, over the short term, higher prices for the animal products that consumers enjoy. Over the long-term, consumers will lose the right to choose animal products at all, resulting in greater reliance on synthetic substitutes. This is particularly true for consumers of fur, since most alternatives to natural fur are petroleum-based synthetics.

These changes may ultimately mean that some species of animals will become endangered or even extinct. As human civilization expands, the availability of natural habitat for animals diminishes. If natural habitats cannot absorb these animals and support them, the long-term survival of many species will be at risk. "

In Canada welfare is certainly strictly controlled:

http://www.qp.gov.bc.ca/statreg/reg/F/FurFarm/310_59.htm

Som further links here about laws governing fur farm welfare in Europe:

http://www.britishfur.co.uk/main/fur%20-%20%20farmed%20or%20wild/Farmed%20Fur

Now morally I do not know if you think there is a difference between meat and fur, or both being used. To me leather and meat and fur are no different. An animal does not say "okay you can kill me for meat but not for fur" so ethically it is a nonsense. I am sure you will being a vegetarian acknowledge that.

So if we are going to use animals at all, all we can do ethically is say we must treat them well. And yes I agre if we don't...for whatever reason...then it is bad. But telling me one fur farm is bad is rather like saying you should not be allowed to own a dog bcause one person treats it badly. Of course PETA woud say that: they want an end to pet ownership and extermination through neutering in a generation.

So I don't know where you stand on that, but I think you stand more on the welfare side of the fence than rights, and I would stand by you. But then you have to accept that some people think it acceptable to rear an animal with good welfare and humane euthanasia to manufacture something beautiful that will last for generations . Take for example that fur farm in Finland. You can see welfar there is good, accomodation is roomy etc. so if you are arguing on a welfar platform YES lets do the ones that don't follow good welfare. I would say the same on sheep. Chickens...well I abhor battery farming but the vast majority of fur farming isnt like that. I have shown you this.

If however your argument is based on rights not welfare, then why argue a welfare perspective? Because that says to me that if the welfare IS good then you approve?

The rights argument is impossible to defend intellectually. The animal has no concept of rsponsibility or morality. he does not respect othr animals rights not to be eaten therefore you are back to the speciesism anomaly. I do not argue a dominion viewpoint so therefore we are animals just like all animals have the right to kill. And in fact even herbivores kill. Hippos for example kill more people that crocs in Africa I believe. A hippo at Basel zoo recently bit a zebra in half: he didn't eat it. So that comes back to teh "we are more enlightened than animals because Gandhi said so" and I am sorry I do not accept him as a moral authority; neither do I even want to be "above" an animal in this way. I take natural law as the only authority and it is amoral. It gives a hippo the right to do the above, a cheetah to kill a gazelle, and humans to kill for fur. Indeed, we are not the only animals to have done it: many similar creatures to humans once walked the earth such as neanderthals and they used furs too. But the unique human adaptation is we learned to make proper clothing from it and all modern humans are descended from them. So it is a natural thing. So if you say we have advanced beyond that into "enlightenment, because we have oil" then you automatically say that those who do not share that view are morally lower than you....savage. Therefore it is inherently racist against cultures that do not share those morals. And to many animal rights advocates that justifies violence against them. So see the dilemma? There is nowhere to go but human conflict....and that certainly is not nlighnd bcause it does not respect human rights.

So all you can say is that you personally do not like fur and choose not to wear it and I respect that. Do you respect Conservationist Saba Douglas Hamilton's right to wear fur; and the fact she may hac vry thical reasons for doing so as I have. IE that fur CAN be eco friendly.....which is an argument rubbished by the initial article here without...no disrespect intended...perhaps looking as deply into the argument as we have subsquently.

http://www.douglas-hamilton.com/Site/Photos/running-with-reindeer.jpg

Whereas I say that people who get their clothes from oil justify this:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/7132349.stm

Bcause when you have had to clean up seabirds and watch them suffer I cannot. and I promise you that no fur farm would make a death linger that long. But hey I am not going to throw red paint at those who do wear oil based clothes.

Now I don't know quite how you misunderstood my remarks before but I was saying that the shops in my high street do not sell clothes made from hemp is all; none of them do perhaps they should was my point. They sell them made from oil primarily; and cotton which is not eco friendly. You can buy co friendly cotton but not in a t shirt for a few dollars.

I have also shown you what happens to the landscape when you convert to intensive arable use. It destroys habitat which for example sheep farming in wales or reindeer herding in Siberia or trapping in Saskatchwan protects.

They mention the problems with cotton here :

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blast/art/articles/organic_and_eco_fashion.shtml

Now hemp again yes...I agree. But if we converted the whole of production to hemp it would also have eco problems for many animals.

http://www.gov.mb.ca/agriculture/crops/hemp/bko02s00.html

No good for beaver is it? Beaver would flood such hemp crop land and could not be tolerated. So I think it can be said that Cree use of beaver is more eco friendly than hemp even.

But yes a certain amount of it is good... expressed here especially alongside prairie crops in rotation to enhance soil.

But we wouldn't want the absurd scenario of cutting forest to grow hemp! So its about balance. Like nature. And conflict resolution in human debate. ;)

Lesley

I assure you that chinchilla farm is still in business and they were never prosecuted. The farm is Six Okes and they are in Midland, Michigan. There are no laws protecting fur animals here in the US (sorry I don’t know the EU or UK laws). I think we’d both agree that Michigan farm needs to change. The video also showed the electrocution of the animals, the disgusting cages they were kept in. Several of the chins were under so much stress that they had chewed away the fur on their backs and had raw wounds. The farmer said in the film that his profit margin had no room for veterinary care. This is completely legal in the US. Again, I know we both think this is a disgrace.

I don’t hate people who wear fur. I don’t know them and it would be irresponsible of me to hate them. I don’t have any problems with Sharon Stone, other than the fact that she owes me $20 for some bad movies of hers that I saw in the theatre.

I don’t understand the Methodist link. In it the Methodists today are apologizing for their part during a Native American massacre. The Methodist cavalry officer involved was not John Wesley, the man I named as being pro-animals rights and a Methodist. Why did you bring it up?

David Bellamy does not believe humans are causing global warming. I really doubt his credibility as a scientist. Even his organizations doubt him: In 2005 a spokesperson for Plantlife, where Bellamy has been president for 15 years, said it "would be wrong to ask him to continue [as president]". The Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts stated in 2005 "We are not happy with his line on climate change", and Bellamy was succeeded as president of the Wildlife Trusts by Aubrey Manning in November 2005.

Please cite your source about the soya. I could not find anywhere in your previous articles stating that the soya was intended for the world’s vegan community and that the food companies backed out. You are mistaken, Argentina’s economy is strong now. Real GDP growth was 8% for 2007, Britain’s was only 3.1%. Argentina’s recession ended in 2002. It began when their currency was first pegged to the US dollar, their currency lost value compared to neighboring countries when this happened. All of sudden it was cheaper for companies to purchase goods (beef, grain, everything) from Brazil instead of Argentina. Great for Brazil, bad for Argentina. Also fueling the recession was extensive government debt, making it harder for private companies to secure loans. Companies closed, people lost jobs, etc. Here is an article showing that Argentina’s recession had nothing to do with soy (in fact soy helped the economy recover):

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9900E7DE1339F932A15752C0A9629C8B63&n=Top/Reference/Times%20Topics/Subjects/B/Black%20Markets

The article reads: “Argentina, the world's third-largest soybean producer, exported nearly 25 million tons of soy meal and oil last year. The nearly $5.5 billion earned from soy exports in the first three quarters of last year gave the economy a much-needed lift as it gradually recovers from a four-year recession that led to a default and a currency devaluation in 2002.”

Yes, I’m just now becoming familiar with palm oil. I too think that’s very unsustainable and I hope popular opinion changes soon. I was just reading where one of my favorite organic companies is discontinuing the use of palm oil. But I don’t see the connection between animal rights and palm oil? Even Greenpeace (a somewhat unorthodox animal rights and environmental group) believes palm oil is unsustainable and urges companies to use other oils. So why did you bring up palm oil? The only reason I wasn’t complaining about palm oil is because I had no idea it was open for discussion.

Yes, the lynx is dying out partly because its food source (rabbit) is going away. But the rabbits are going away not because of intensive farming, but rather myxomatosis (the rabbit killing disease, which I know you have in Britain as well). Here is an article:

http://www.nwf.org/nationalwildlife/article.cfm?issueID=80&articleID=1190

The article states: “Early last century, roughly 100,000 lynx roamed the Iberian Peninsula. Smaller than their Eurasian and Canadian counterparts, they moved between wooded areas and Mediterranean scrubland, hunting for rabbits, their primary food. But in the 1950s, a French pediatrician introduced myxomatosis, a disease deadly to rabbits, into his garden to control rabbit populations. The disease proved too effective, spreading through France and crossing the Pyrenees into Spain. It drastically reduced the Spanish rabbit population, and that reduction in turn affected the lynx. Road construction through isolated scrublands that were the lynx’s home also took a toll…World Wildlife Fund predicted the species would be extinct within five years.”

Other sources cite road deaths, illegal hunting and dam building as contributors to the lynx’s declining numbers.

http://exoticanimallover.com/?p=106

I’m not sure what the EU’s position is on myxomatosis (are they trying to euthanize the carriers to stop the spread? Are they working on an antidote?). Are they looking into rabbit sterilization if they fear the rabbit population will rebound too quickly?

PETA does not want the elimination of pets. Where did you read that? Again, please cite your source. This is almost slander if you don’t cite your sources. Last I read, most folks who worked at PETA had adopted animals sharing their homes. And really, PETA does not represent all AR folks. The few vegetarians I know are not members of PETA. And the overwhelming majority of us don’t affiliate ourselves with the ALF. So don’t assume they speak for us. That is not what my ideology stands for. You’re debating with me, not PETA and the ALF. I can’t speak for them.

You said, “So please yes be vegetarian but don't force it on others.” Where was I forcing vegetarianism on you? I even said I’d let my own daughter decide for herself.

Well, free range eggs are becoming the latest trend here in the US. You can find them at every supermarket and some markets have altogether stopped selling battery eggs. Even Burger King agreed to use some free range eggs in its breakfast menu. So I don’t think the free range farmers are struggling to stay in business. In the US (again, sorry I don’t know the situation in the UK), farmers are subsidized by the government.

What was your point about the Nazi’s? I already showed that their animal laws were all talk and no action. As for their destruction of the fur shops in Germany, it was largely motivated by who owned the shops (mostly the Jews as you pointed out). Please don’t insist that Himmler started AR. I already showed you that Gandhi (and the antislavery movement and some religious movements of the 1800’s) spoke about AR. Gandhi even wrote several volumes addressing AR. The Nazi’s passed one law that they secretly disobeyed. How does that make the Nazi’s the founders of AR and not Gandhi? As you’re a British person, I assume you’re familiar with Gandhi and everything he stood for.

The pictures of Wales are beautiful. I think we agree on that too. I would stand by you and argue for the protection of those pastures from development.

David Dent

Hi Lesley and everyone else

yes I too respect your views that is why I am trying to give you the other side. Nobody is trying to make you eat meat or wear fur; and I am just trying to show you with a great deal of evidnce that animal rights ideology and tactics have a sinister side.

I didn't say everything was good about the old days: I said we caused less damage to the planet before mass production and intensive arable farming, and certainly the use of oil for billions of plastic santas and cds and sports shoes.

remember these:

http://www.footy-boots.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/05/1830boot.jpg

My great uncle had a dignified living making these until the age of mass produced sports shoes . I still have mine form 35 years ago and they are still beautiful, still fit me. He ended his days a broken man with no pride working on a conveyor belt. Yes things were tough but the working class had dignity and they valued beautiful things; often made them with pride, would buy them eventually and treasure them. Even

black women under terrible racist laws in the US had furs. In the seventies and 80s too it seemed everyone had furs. It was indeed sustainable: rabbits fox and mink are still here and there were no major eco diasters: certainly all the pollution caused by fur together in the history of man wouldn't come to one exon valdez.

I am unfamiliar with the particular case you mention re the chinchilla farm but I assure you that what you have seen must have been somehow edited. Chinchilla are not kept in tiny cages: they may have been put in them for transport which is often how they are pictured. This is akin to showing a horse in a horse box and saying it is how it is kept. Indeed, many AR pople would have you believe that horses are kept in boxes 24 hours a day, but then when they are out in the field soggy they say they have no shelter. You can't win if someone wants to make you look bad. If the chinchilla farm was bad they can be prosecuted. You cannot say that we shouldn't have pet dogs becaus some dogs are mistreated. Neck breaking is swift instant death and any movement you see afterwards is pure reflex. If it is done badly then again a proscution can happen. But every time I have seen it with chickens and rabbits it has been instant.

I don't have much time for research tonight but I assure you that Himmler popularisd the term animal rights in a radio broadcast in the early twenties. Yes I know they were hypocrites! Nobody would disagree with you there.

But if you look on the net and just see the hateful vitriole for example against Sharon Stone, a highly intelligent and educated woman who doeas a great deal of work for AIDS charities has been abused because she wore a Fendi fox ...well these people are not animal lovers they are people haters. Gandhi wouldn't have approved.

Also Gandhi , Christ whoever you care to mention still does not represent moral authority to me. Nature has ultimate authority in this life at least and I see only amorality. The argument that man has dominon over animals is represented by the AR movement as speciesist. But if we take your argument that we are more "enlightened" than animals and should know better than to kill them then that is the ultimate speciesism. I do NOT believe we are above animals: and we should share the planet with them the same way as they share; by not damaging habitat but by using each other as a resource. a Tigr would eat a human if ther is nothing much lse around and he as the right to: he is not "unenightened" and I see Gandhi as no better than him I am sorry. Where I differ with AR is I think I have the right to kill too. We all have the right to kill ; and not purely just to eat. All human life is descended from those who worked out how to fashion skins into clothing. And we are no better than them by saying it is now bad because we have alternatives: look what we are doing with those alternatives. Wiping animals out for good.

Yes a few isolated doctrines have preached animal rights in the 19th century. You mentioned Methodism:

http://www.yvwiiusdinvnohii.net/news/sorry.htm

The idea that the native Americans were a savage hunting people with no regard for animals was not only racist, but ultimately committed the officer , a methodist preacher, to commit probably the most hideous crime of the 19th century against unarmed women and children.

Of course the "civilisation" of enlightened white amricans opened up the west by killing the food sourc of the native amricans and to make way for trains and fields of wheat. This is the reality of Agrarian revolution: it commits to destroying animal habitat.

Yes rabbits poo. What are you gong to do with them all then if we leave them alone? They will become billions anyway....and consume your precious crops. So you have to manage them anyway. So may as well use them is my opinon: especially when they have multi use: meat textiles (shearing) and fur aswell as many bi products. Nothing is wasted.

There simply is no future in a vision of every human culture becoming vegan in which animals have a chance of co existence. David Bellamy and many consevationists have pointed this out.

you miss the point about soya: it is only feed to cattle because they can't sll it anywhere else but farmers are now in a vicious circle . But the vision of gm soya was to feed the worlds poor and to supply a growing vegan community. It was encouraged by many vegetarian food producers who quickly backed out of buying it when it was revealed what was happening; hence 60% goes to cattle now.

As you can imagine Argentina feel they have been conned as if they had stayd with beef they would have had a good economy now, and the jaguar would still be there.

Its not that I am blaming vegetarians: my own girlfriend is one. I only eat game. I want to know where exactly my meat comes from and I can't tll that from the supermarket. We used to have local meat from local butchers. This government stopped local abbatoirs. Its that many crops grown are bad for wildlife. In Indonesia the cloudd leopard and tiger survived thousands of years of hunting and now they face extinction because of palm oil instantly. I am saying by all this concentration on animal righs these things have been allowed to happen; indeed hasten them by forcing insustries like free range sheep and fur farms off the land.

So what I am saying is that alternative land use, particularly for intnsive agarian crops, destroys wildlife and is doing so on an unprecedented scale.

Here is one example of where arable chemicals almost wiped out otter and ironically it was trappers that saved them;

http://alligatorfur.com/fur/conservation.htm

I can cite you hundreds of such examples. The same was true in the uk. Otter hunts first noticed that they were in sharp decline, and in Spain the hunts noticed the sudden absence of lynx because of arable change which wiped out their prey: the hare.

So I am also saying that if you have an incentive for using animals, the sensible thing to do (I would not support poaching) is to look after them so they are plentiful. The Cree have won conservation awards as have the Inuit and Sami: yet they all wish to trade in furs and that is why they protect the wilderness.

So then the AR lobby comes head to head with them. They will not change except by force. Those that still choose to wear fur will not change except by force. And there you have it; I have shown you also how the leaders of the AR movement like PETA approve the use of force, violence intmidation and even terrorism. In addition, thye want the complete eradication of all domestic animals includng pets. Do you want your children to grow up in a world like this? No lambs, no dogs, no cats, no horses? That is what the Ideology stands for.

I know you do not.

You jut do not like the idea that an animal may have suffered to provide someone with furs. But I don't see you complaining as I am about palm oil; a threat that will wipe out Tiger orangutan and cloudd leopard if somthing is not done. If we do not use animals for resources, then we must exploit where they live for resources and they cannot survive this.

Alos please look at that Finnish fur farm: please tell me with your hand on your heart that you believe that the animals suffer there at the hands of cruel people. I have seen it many times. Fantastic husbandry. Far better than so called animal shelters; especially peta's where they end up dead and dumped; cats and dogs not mink. You may get the odd cowboys. and I would stand with you back to back on prosecuting such people.

So please yes be vegetarian but don't force it on others. And respect that some people have looked into these matters and seen that furs can be produced with fabulous welfare or highly ecologically sound ways with superb conservation benefits. inded; campaign for good welfare: again I will stand with you on that; so will the people on the finnish fur farms whose livelihood can be undrmined by people selling cheap tatty fur without good welfare.

That is the same with chickens: a free range farmer is struggling to stay in business because people want battery chickens and do not care about welfare.

My point about the Nazis has not been answered; if you get time read the links I supplied. And there are many many more if you would like them.

Your final point is an absolute misunderstanding of nature. This world is all about survival through on animal eating another, or killing it because it is competition. Leopards don't eat cheetah cubs they just kill them. Chimps hunt monkeys for sport. A Lion will kill another lions cubs so his genes continue. Even dolphins hunt for sport. So we are just animals, part of the same eco system; no better no worse. But when I see hatred consuming people who think they are guardians of animals and somehow think they are better off dead than exploited, I see something very sick.

this is my country:

http://www.equestrianwales.org.uk/images/Tyn-y-Clyn%20cairn.jpg

http://www.carterjonas.co.uk/images/project/clogwyn%20398x252.jpg

http://www1.istockphoto.com/file_thumbview_approve/3499711/2/istockphoto_3499711_grazing_sheep_above_the_beach.jpg

http://www.welshwales.co.uk/ponies-cefnbryn.jpg

and it stays like that under great pressure bcause the whole of rural life depends on this:

http://www.graigfarm.co.uk/images/welshmnt.gif

and this;

http://www.chunt.org/Old_Pages/news.htm

and this:

http://www.vicijpricehorses.co.uk/vjpnew_000001.htm

and then animals like this;

http://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/mid/fun/wallpaper/pages/images/red_kite1024.jpg

http://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/nature/sites/galleries/images/340x255/mammals/red_squirrel_alan.burfitt.jpg

http://www.wyenot.com/news/images/061108/DSC_7948.jpg

are safe.

already animals like this:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/1955000/images/_1957490_vole150.jpg

http://www.asiantaeth-yr-amgylchedd.cymru.gov.uk/commondata/figureimages/great_crested_newt_fs_777504.jpg

are gone in my immediate area and it isn't bcause the sheep make too much muck. it's because of this;

http://www.biodiesel-expo.co.uk/images/rapeseed_small.gif

and this:

http://www.greenfingers.com/articledisplay.asp?id=2149

and this:

http://www.torfaen.gov.uk/EnvironmentAndPlanning/Regeneration/CwmbranRegeneration/Images/Aerial%20View%20of%20Housing%20at%20Henllys.jpg

and this

http://www.fullflow.com/images/casestudies/LG%20Electronics.jpg

and that is the truth. And it is happening all over the world where animal dependnt economies are being undermined by the most ridiculous lies. I am sorry you believe them and so are the Sami and the Inuit and the Cree and the Evenk and the Finnish fur farmer and the Czech Rabbit farmer. Just remember when all the animals are gone don't blame us. But we will fight to protect them.

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Craziest claim of the week: "Fur is green"

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