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...
