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One Voice infiltrates the Angora industry and reveals the torture of rabbits in French farms
On
September 15, One Voice, an animal rights association that has been
active since 1995, will release a video and an investigation report
summarizing months of undercover work inside several French Angora
rabbit farms. The images and the comments of the breeders gathered on
this occasion are without appeal: not only are the rabbits raised in
battery style conditions of feeding, but comfort and hygiene are more
than doubtful here. They are overexploited in a cruelty that falls on
deaf hears the screams of their agony.
Stacked
in multiple cages, the angora rabbits filmed by the investigators of
One Voice in the French farms finally have no fate more enviable than
those of China. It will be remembered that a film broadcast by the
PETA association on Chinese rabbit farms (90% of world production)
chilled the opinions in 2013.
Unfortunately,
good animal welfare practices, though recommended by the Ministry of
Agriculture as the guiding principles of a five-year plan to 2021, do
not seem to be more concrete. And yet, here and there we boast about
the reputation for fine quality French angora, something that is just
tied to the hair of an animal bred for only one thing and not for the
hideous methods of those who exploit it for profit.
A furious investigation …
This
is important investigative work. Investigators from the
Whistle-blower Association have infiltrated this environment for
months (In France there are about forty farms operating with
thousands of rabbits, figures obtained during our investigation and
for which we have not been able to obtain any official documents as
the sector seems to be poorly regulated). Their objective was to
study the whole chain, to document the hair removal from rabbits
because it does not happen every day. The rotation in the activities
plays: phases of reproduction, the sexing of baby rabbits, food
production with the flesh from unwanted males (males have less hair,
they are mainly intended for pâté or the butchers). A lot of
waiting between hair removal, three times a year, which means
permanent stress for rabbits, stripped after the “harvesting of
hair” and exposed to thermal shocks, with no further temperature
protection in their hutches.
The
association One Voice therefore worked for one semester, from
February to July 2016, in six different farms: their findings take
stock of the state of play in a sector in decline, but still harmful,
if we judge by this simple workers recorded comment, among others:
“the females are a little more fragile than the males at the
level of the skin. It happens that it tears. Sometimes, like, oops,
there is a piece of skin that comes with it. When it starts, I have
had times when I have torn off everything, I had to finish removing
hair with scissors because all the skin came off, so there you spend
more time. I have seen it sometimes where you spend up to two hours
on a rabbit that was tearing everywhere. Sometimes you say to
yourself, you’d better knock her on the head that one. “
Large-scale public action
Disgusted
by the screaming of rabbits hastily being stripped of hair, not
simply combed as one would like to believe, Muriel Arnal, president
and founder of One Voice, takes the same position here as in the case
of the use of all animal fur: Angora must be banished from France,
and we have great hope to make things change for these animals. Our
investigation legally supports our demand: yesterday we obtained the
ban on the sale of fur from dogs and cats imported from China. There
is no reason that products of angora, obtained in such conditions,
can be freely circulating on home ground. “
State
mediation is essential to act with stakeholders in this sector, which
visibly enjoys great flexibility in terms of regulations and controls
with the Departmental Directions of the Protection of Populations
(DDPP). “To stop such practices, surviving form the Middle Ages and
based on an unworthy cruelty, we are ready to work with the breeders
to support them in their conversion,” explains Muriel Arnal.
One
Voice (France representative of the international Free Fur Alliance
coalition) has chosen to lodge a complaint against the main local
breeders, located in Loire-Atlantique (44), on the basis of several
breaches of the regulations in force (breeding conditions and
slaughtering, acts of cruelty). A practice deemed unacceptable, the
sale of rabbits that have developed breast tumours to an experimental
laboratory, where they will experience a second ordeal, weighed up in
the choice of a legal action that targets the top of the chain.
Angora, out of farms and cabinets
On the stop-angora.fr site, a
petition has been launched to the Minister of Agriculture so that
emergency measures, precautionary measures or controls are taken in
place on these farms, and that in the long run both their activity
and trade in products of Angola are banned in France. In addition,
the association invites the public to stop buying Angora wool fabrics
and to empty their closets. “From the footage, I would not
understand why people could continue to wear sweaters with a smile in
angora. We will be able to collect them and bring them to cat
shelters, where they will be much more useful,” concludes Muriel
Arnal, who hopes for an influx of cartons containing “angora”
signed clothing, resulting from animal suffering to the offices of
her association…