Actor Anjelica Huston is urging city council members to pass a proposed ban on fur sales in New York City.
In an editorial printed in the New York Daily News, she writes, "If you Google ‘Anjelica Huston fur,’ you’ll find images of me in a variety of pelts. . . . This was decades before I learned that these animals are trapped, gassed, drowned, and even skinned alive…. There is so much violence in the world beyond our control, so let’s eliminate whatever cruelty we can — especially when it’s for something as unnecessary these days as fur.
“Nowadays, most fur is coyote trim on hoods, collars, and cuffs. Few people who buy these items seem to know that wild coyotes are caught in steel traps. Some suffer for days in excruciating pain before trappers return to bludgeon them to death. (Trapping is mostly a hobby.) Because traps don’t discriminate, other wild animals — as well as family dogs and cats—are often caught by mistake. In some instances, mothers with cubs have even been known to chew off their own legs to escape. And this bloodbath isn’t limited to the remote wilderness — it’s happening as close as densely populated Connecticut and Westchester County.
“Like trap lines, fur farms are self-policed. No government inspectors come to ensure that foxes or chinchillas are being treated with compassion or electrocuted “properly” so that they aren’t still alive on the skinning table. Mink farmers have been caught injecting the animals with weed killer as well as breaking their necks and tossing them into a squirming pile. This is a sadistic shadow industry operating without oversight."
Other major cities, including San Francisco and Los Angeles, have already passed similar fur bans, while numerous top designers and retailers — including many with stores in Manhattan, such as Burberry, Gucci, Versace, Michael Kors, Jimmy Choo, and Giorgio Armani — are now 100% fur-free. Huston has since given her furs to PETA to be donated to the homeless.
Read the full editorial here.
