ANIMAL PEOPLE is the leading independent newspaper providing original investigative coverage of animal protection worldwide. Founded in 1992, ANIMAL PEOPLE has no alignment or affiliation with any other entity.

 

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ESSENTIAL DESTINATIONS

MONTH: January/February 2007

Rabbit fur farming exposed

 

The Portuguese animal rights group ANIMAL on December 9, 2006 unveiled a nine-minute video showing conditions in the Portuguese rabbit fur farming industry.

"The film finishes showing the rabbits in the skinning factory, tied upside down in a line before being skinned alive," said ANIMAL president Miguel Moutinho. Live skinning, Moutinho said, follows "slaughter without proper stunning, with the rabbits still conscious when having their throats slit.

"In late October," Moutinho elaborated, "investigators went inside the Portuguese rabbit fur trade," visiting "various rabbit farms and slaughterhouses in different regions," where they learned "how profitable the rabbit fur business really is, and how it is disguised as the rabbit meat trade. Scared rabbits caged in miserable conditions are sent to slaughter at only six weeks old," if raised for meat, "or three to five months old, if bred just for their fur," Moutinho said, mentioning "huge mortality of rabbits due to the extremely poor conditions in which they are kept."

"Rabbits are bred and killed in Portugal," Moutinho charged, "then sent to Spain to be more cheaply sent from there to China, where the pelts are very cheaply treated, and then sent back to Europe."
Moutinho said the ANIMAL investigation "also reveals how so-called 'chinchilla Rex' rabbits bred in Portugal many times are sold as genuine chinchilla fur, as only experts could distinguish" their pelts after treatment.