“This is yet another way humans have learnt how they can abuse animals; & profit from their pain! See video below, which brought me to tears, rabbits screaming in pain as their fur is repeatedly ripped from their bodies. Please please don’t buy clothes made from Angora wool; if you do, then you are condoning this barbaric abuse & cruelty! The video is at the bottom of this post, viewer discretion is advised!”
UPDATED: 13:28, 15 December 2013
High Street clothes shops are cancelling orders for fashion items made from angora wool after disturbing images of how the animals are farmed emerged.
- Topshop, H&M, Boden, Primark suspend orders for Angora products
- It follows a storm of protest following release of undercover video
- Cruel methods at Chinese Angora farm revealed by Peta investigation
- Rabbits trimmed then plucked using painful and cruel techniques
- Longer Angora hair comes from using inhumane plucking method
High Street clothes shops are cancelling orders for fashion items made from angora wool after disturbing images of how the animals are farmed emerged.
More than 35 popular brands such as Topshop, H&M, Boden, Primark, Calvin Klein, Whistles and Next have said they will not stock Angora.
It follows an investigation by the animal rights organisation People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals which sparked a storm of consumer protest.
Factory horror: An angora rabbit is tied up by its feet and its skin stretched as it is being cut with an electric shear
Topshop told The Sunday Times it stopped buying clothes made of Angora after more than 100,000 people petitioned the company.
Marks & Spencer also told the paper: ‘We will not place any further orders from our suppliers for products containing Angora until we have concluded our visits to farms.’
The agora fibre is prized even more than cashmere, merino wool or mohair because it is considered softer and fluffier than all the rest.
These sought-after knits are produced from the fur of the Angora rabbit — giant balls of fluff with tiny faces peeking out, bred for their long, soft wool.
Angora fibres are hollow, which gives clothes a fluffy texture. It’s warmer than wool and the fibre is also exceptionally fine — just 11 microns (11 thousandths of a millimetre) in diameter — which means Angora is softer than cashmere.
It is also far cheaper than the luxury fabric. Angora jumpers were on sale in Topshop for £36 and scarves in John Lewis for just £30.
The images, taken at an undisclosed location in China, shows angora rabbits in cages
But the Peta investigation revealed for the first time how these bargain knits may be coming at an immense cost to the animals that produce this fluffy Angora wool.
The group released a gut-wrenching exposé into the Angora industry in China, which is responsible for 90 per cent of the world’s supply of Angora wool.
The rabbit is bent across the woman’s knee before being trimmed of its fur using scissors
Investigators went to ten different Angora farms and witnessed, they say, appalling abuse of animals at all ten locations. At half of the farms a particularly barbaric form of live plucking is used to remove the fur.
PETA, which is campaigning for shoppers to boycott Angora, did not name the farms to protect its sources, but has documented its hard-hitting findings in video footage.
Cruel: The dead rabbits are processed for meat after their fur is taken for wool
Peta’s campaigns manager Yvonne Taylor told The Sunday Times: ‘Many retailers have taken on board customer complaints, but, while we welcome their decision to stop sourcing Angora products, we would urge them to also pull existing Angora stock.
The footage (below) showed terrified white rabbits, screaming with fear, stretched prone on wooden boards and held by the neck while their fur is plucked by hand.
In other scenes, the defenceless creatures are tethered with rope by the front and back legs while they are sheared by men armed with metal scissors, who pay little attention to the cuts they are inflicting on the animals.
Animal cruelty: The Angora rabbits are alive throughout the plucking and are kept for several years, plucked every few months, before their throats are slit
Angora has a trade value of £22 to £28 per kilogram, but the longer hair that comes from plucking, as opposed to shearing, can sell for more than double that.
Angoras can live for five years, or even as long as ten years when well looked after, but farmed rabbits have a much shorter lifespan, which can be as little as two years.
Yet it is not just the manner in which these animals — which are more commonly kept as pets in Britain — have their fur harvested that has sparked animal welfare concerns.
Pictures show forlorn looking rabbits with tattered and partially shaved fur cowering in tiny cages in half-covered sheds.
Pain and suffering: The terror in the animal’s eyes is unmistakable as a worker with a Chinese Angora trader stretches it out and yanks out its fur
The rabbits are forced to spend their entire miserable lives standing on the thin cage wires that constantly cut into their sensitive footpads, never having a chance to dig, jump or run around.’
Once the rabbit’s health fails, they are of little use to breeders.
Those who survive the brutal conditions in these rabbit farms are killed by having their necks broken, and are hung upside down and have their throats slit before their flesh is sold to local markets, PETA says.
There are thought to be more than 50 million rabbits on Angora farms in China, producing more than 4,000 tonnes of fur a year.
Left to recover: After the rabbit had had all its fur yanked out it is thrown into a cage to regrow its fur in complete solitude
It is by far the world’s biggest producer, followed by Argentina, Chile, the Czech Republic and Hungary, which produce the bulk of the remaining 10 per cent of the supply chain.
In China, there are no penalties for the abuse of animals on farms and minimal, if any, standards to regulate their treatment. A new law was drafted in 2009, but has not been implemented.
And there is no doubt that China has a woeful record of factory farming and animal cruelty, particularly when it comes to producing clothes for the fashion industry, many of which end up on sale on British High Streets.
In 2009, campaigners exposed how down used in jackets and other items was being ripped from the bodies of live geese by Chinese suppliers.
Two years later it emerged that raccoon dogs were being skinned while still alive to produce imitation sheepskin boots.
No hope: This young bunny is in the process of regrowing its fur while recovering from an eye infection in a naked steel cage
Viewer Discretion Advised: EXPOSED: The Agony Behind Angora
Published on 19 Nov 2013
An undercover investigation by PETA Asia shows rabbits screaming in pain as the fur is ripped from their bodies on Chinese Angora farms. Once you’ve seen the graphic footage, you’ll never want to buy items made of Angora wool again. Join the campaign against this cruel industry here:http://petauk.org/angora
Just A Few Petitions to Sign On this Horrific Abuse Of Sentient beings:-
- http://www.change.org/petitions/only-animals-should-wear-furs-stop-killing-rabbits-for-fur
- https://www.change.org/en-AU/petitions/australian-government-ban-importation-of-angora-based-products-in-australia
- http://www.change.org/petitions/mike-jeffries-discontinue-use-of-angora
- https://www.change.org/petitions/h-m-stoppt-den-verkauf-von-angora
- http://www.change.org/petitions/the-angora-fur-industry-end-the-cruel-fur-trade
DUE TO THE NATURE OF THIS BLOG - SOME PICTURES & VIDEOS CAN & WILL BE VERY GRAPHIC - SO PLEASE, VIEW THIS BLOG AT YOUR OWN DISCRETION.
STOP ANIMAL ABUSE 