Fur: more than 1,500,000 signatures to put an end to this industry in Europe!
The fight against fur has taken a decisive turn. The Fur Free Europe European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI) has been undertaken to ban the production, importation, and marketing of fur in the European Union. The signatures of 1,502,319 citizens have been validated. This is a movement that seems to be being echoed on a global level, since a bill has just been presented in the United States to put an end to breeding mink on American soil due to health risks.
Fur farms: places of misery
Minks are territorial animals. In breeding farms, they are enclosed with several in each minuscule mesh cage with no access to water and they show their discontent by developing self-mutilation and often cannibalistic behaviours.
Whether its the horror that the animals are subjected to or the soil pollution and the health hazards that these breeding farms cause, they must be banned throughout the European Union.
A victorious fight which will have taken years in France
Thanks to our repeated investigations into mink breeding farms in France published in 2017, 2019, and 2020 and presented to European parliamentarians, we have repeatedly alerted the public to the conditions in fur farms.
We have also written to the prefects concerned and to the Ministry for the Ecological Transition. This work, led relentlessly, has ultimately allowed a ban on all farms breeding wild animals for their fur in our country.
Fur farms: hotbeds for contamination
At the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, we had confirmation that breeding farms were dangerous reservoirs for variants
because of potential vectors of mutations of the virus transmissible to humans due to a lack of hygiene, cramped conditions, and the proximity of the cages. This has led to the slaughter of millions of mink, particularly in Denmark and the Netherlands, and even in France. We have launched a petition addressed to G20 members to ask for the urgent closure of all European breeding farms and warned the AgriPêche [Agriculture-Fishing] Council on this subject, who have not moved one bit on this issue.
Others take their responsibilities much more seriously: this is exactly what was proposed today by an American democrat after the confirmation of the outbreaks of SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) in 18 breeding farms in the United States. Its bill was just filed scarcely a few days ago and intends to ban fur farms within a year by leaning on the issues of public health that they represent.
Prevent production from being relocated
The whole point of this European Initiative is to extend the ban obtained in France at the end of 2021 to all member countries, as remains to be done in Finland, Lithuania, and Romania. But it is also to avoid production being moved abroad, for example to China. We must therefore fight to obtain a ban on importations and marketing of fur in any member State.
With the validation of the signature stage having finished, it goes to the European Commission!
The Fur Free Europe ECI, led by Eurogroup for Animals and supported by One Voice and its partners from the Fur Free Alliance, has just had more than one and a half million European Citizens’ signatures validated, who are thus supporting this request. They are therefore part of a process of participating in democracy in favour of animals, which really gives hope!
To get the production, importation, and marketing of fur banned in the European Union, we must meet with members of the European Commission before the start of the summer. And thus, we can be heard by the European Parliament from next October and obtain a definitive response from the Commission before 2024.
Translated from the French by Joely Justice