Environment & Pollution
Dallas-based Neiman Marcus, a trendsetter in the fashion world, is marketing one product that some in Houston find unfashionably brutal.
“Fur is cruel and unnecessary,” said Rhea Green, director of In Solidarity with Animals. “It’s an industry used merely for fashion, and it serves no other functioning purpose.”
Whether naughty or nice, Neiman Marcus is promoting fur as one of its top commodities in its 2003 Christmas Book, featuring clothing made of fox, rabbit and raccoon on eight of the first 15 pages. The fur items include jackets, cardigans, hats, wraps, stoles and fur-trimmed coats.
“Fur trim, people think, is just the remnants of the animals,” Green said, “but it’s actually these whole animals just to make fur trim.” As for a full-length mink coat, about 50 animal pelts are necessary.
“Surprisingly enough, it is hugely marketable,” Green said of fur in Houston. The 23-year-old is heading up a local effort as part of the nationwide “Neiman Carcass” campaign organized by the Fund for Animals. She said, “There are a large number of wealthy women who perceive it as a status quo and purchase furs or pull out their existing furs every winter. This is one of our arguments here in Houston -- that fur is not only cruel, it is absolutely unnecessary.”
Minks, chinchillas, foxes and rabbits are among the animals most commonly killed for their fur. Raccoons, beavers, lynx and bobcat are also used.
“I’ve even heard of squirrel being used lately, and of course, dog and cat is used in some countries,” Green said. “And that’s all interrelated with the fur trade.”
“It’s the creation of beauty through trash,” says a video on the Fur Commission USA’s website. The pro-fur organization declined to comment on the “Neiman Carcass” campaign, but information on their website says fur production is “a very natural and efficient system” because fur farmers buy animal waste products and feed them to their herds.
“They say they’re doing a service,” said Green, “but there’s actually serious environmental devastation due to the waste from fur farming. They do feed (animal byproducts) to the minks, but they discard most of it into rivers and waterways and it flushes out to places it doesn’t need to be.”
During their most recent protest, on Oct. 20, In Solidarity with Animals joined with protesters of the Central American Free Trade Agreement outside of the Galleria.
“According to WTO and free trade organizations,” Green said, “fur is fur regardless of how it’s caught. And it’s a profit-making avenue, but they don’t consider the horrendous ways the animals are caught and they don’t make any attempt to strengthen the rules against certain traps and certain fur farming techniques.”
According to the Humane Society of the United States, about 8.5 million animals are killed for their fur each year in the United States alone. The organization says no laws regulate fur farms in America, which account for 60 to 75 percent of the animals killed. Furthermore, they say living in cages sometimes drives the animals to obsessive-compulsive behavior that ranges from pacing to self-mutilation and cannibalism. Killing methods of these animals include neck-breaking, gassing and anal electrocution, the latter commonly used on foxes.
Trapping, which is legal in 44 states, and constitutes up to 30 percent of the fur sold in the United States, usually employs a steel-jaw leg-hold trap, which slams shut on the animal. Although mainly foxes, raccoons and coyotes are targeted, Green says nine out of 10 animals caught in the indiscriminate traps are non-target animals. Some animals chew through their trapped limbs to escape while others languish for weeks.
In Solidarity with Animals’ next protest, part of a nation-wide event called “Fur Free Friday,” will take place outside of Neiman Marcus at the Galleria on Nov. 28, the day after Thanksgiving. Green said protesters, many costumed as caged and trapped animals, will try to convince passerbys that animals need their fur more than Neiman Marcus does.
With the campaign only about a year old, Green says there hasn’t been any indication that Neiman Marcus will pull fur from their stores anytime soon. She says that because the store is a trendsetter, if they make that decision, other stores will quickly follow suit.
“We’re definitely looking long term,” she said. “So we’re just getting our feet wet.”
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