Dear friends,
Every year, millions of individual animals, including more than 2
million cats and hundreds of thousands of dogs, are killed for their
fur in China. Some are strays, and countless others are companions who
once shared homes with people who loved and cared for them before the
animals were rounded up often with metal tongs around their necks and
tossed, screaming, into a crate.
A timid young rabbit waits, terrified, in a cramped, filthy wire
cage. Suddenly, a hand reaches in and roughly grabs her. Her neck is
broken. She is then tossed, still convulsing, into a barrel. When it's
filled, the barrel is wheeled into another room, where she is skinned.
This horrific abuse is happening right now to countless rabbits and
cats and dogs on Chinese fur farms and in Chinese markets. Won't you
please help us stop this massive cruelty?
China is one of the world's largest fur suppliers, and more than 95
percent of the country's finished garments are exported with many
ending up in North America. And as we now know, Chinese companies have
been known to deliberately mislabel cat and dog fur as "Asian jackal,"
"rabbit," or "raccoon" to fool consumers. Every fur-trimmed collar or
other fur item from China, regardless of the kind of animal slaughtered
to manufacture it, is the product of cruelty on a truly massive scale.
And we must combat it!
We need your help right now. Please make an urgently needed donation
to PETA today and help us stop the horrific slaughter of cats, dogs,
and other animals for their skin.
The suffering on Chinese fur farms involves all sorts of animals,
all of whom are deeply frightened. Powerful video footage taken during
a PETA Asia-Pacific undercover investigation documents the misery of
rabbits condemned to a short, miserable life and painful death at the
hands of grubby fur-farm operators. The investigator saw rabbits who
were crammed into filthy cages covered with urine and feces, where they
could only wait, petrified, as workers made their way along the tiers
of cages.
The rabbits were yanked out of their cages by their ears or legs.
The workers aimed at their heads with handheld electrical devices often
multiple times as the animals kicked and screamed. The rabbits were
then hung upside down and were crudely decapitated. The farm that the
investigator visited has 11,000 cages and will be responsible for the
slaughter of more than 600,000 animals this year alone in the quest to
satisfy the demand for their skins.
Through difficult investigations similar to this one and through
decades of relentless campaigning, PETA has saved many thousands of
rabbits, dogs, cats, and other animals by convincing consumers and
corporations to reject all fur. We've successfully persuaded some of
the world's leading designers and retailers including Ann Taylor,
Calvin Klein, Polo Ralph Lauren, and Tommy Hilfiger to adopt permanent
no-fur policies, and we've made fur so synonymous with suffering that
furs are no longer considered "luxury goods," and fur prices have seen
record lows.
While we've accomplished much, the wholesale slaughter of so many
animals for their fur in China is an urgent matter. To help these
animals, we must educate consumers, corporations, and even governments
about the pain that goes into every piece of fur trim and every fur cat
toy produced in China. That is only part of our work, but it is a vital
part.
Please contribute to our work for dogs, cats, and all animals by making a special gift today.
On behalf of all animals, especially those confined and killed for their skins in all parts of the world, thank you.
Kind regards,
Ingrid E. Newkirk
P.S. With the fall fashion season just around the corner, we need to
do everything we can to make sure designers, retailers, and consumers
know the horrific extent of the animal suffering that takes place on
fur farms in China and around the world. Please rush your online
donation to PETA today. Together, let's save more animals from being
cruelly mistreated and killed for their skin.