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While most people know fur is cruel and unnecessary, in recent years it has been seen making a comeback in stores.

Fur farming has been banned in the UK, but it is not illegal to still sell the fur of dead animals. A large amount of fur is farmed abroad in places such as China, where the animals are kept in tiny mesh cages with little food. The permanent confinement makes animals go mad or turn to cannibalism. Some countries cruelly trap wild animals and kill them for their furs and every year millions of seals are clubbed to death so that people can wear them.

Animals farmed for fur range from rabbits, foxes, chinchillas, racoons, mink to cats and dogs. And methods for killing these animals makes the end of their painful lives worse. Documentation has shown animals being skinned alive. Other methods range from anal electrocution to gassing.

Companies using fur claim that it is a by-product of the meat industry – which is untrue. It is products such as this, which make farming animals profitable in the first place, bearing in mind that the fur is worth more than the meat.

Fur is now being used on many ordinary products – such as shoes, scarves, special ornaments and handbags. It can also be found as trim lining the hoods of jackets. Don’t be fooled by the colour either – it is now being dyed all shades of the rainbow in an attempt to disguise the true nature of what is for sale. Rabbit fur is also being used to make ornamental ships cats, tests showed that these were also made from dog fur, farmed in the East.

Leather appears to be perfectly normal until you start thinking about it. Looking at handbags or shoes, the real origin is cleverly disguised with a series of harsh chemical treatments, and sometimes even colourings. Yet the reality is, leather is the crusty skin of a dead animal. During the Holocaust, many victims from concentration camps had their skin made into lampshades, which is horrific; and yet many people still think its ok to make products from the skins of animals who have the capacity to suffer as much as we do.

Leather is not just made from the sliced skin of dead cows; it could come from any animal killed for profit – sheep, goats, or horses. After all, dried skin is dried skin, and will end up looking pretty much the same. Some vegetarians still wear leather, claiming that it is a mere by-product of the meat industry. Not true. It is elements such as this, which make farming animals profitable for farmers, and as a result prop up the meat and diary industry.

Animals that have their bodies disembowelled and made into handbags or shoes will suffer immensely before doing so. A pair of leather shoes is often the end result of a worn out dairy cow, after years of intense and relentless suffering. The skin of veal calves is also used for leather products, as it is a lot softer than older animals.

In recent years, it has also been indicated that some leather products may come from countries like India, where there are little or no animal welfare laws. Animals have been found tied together with ropes piercing through their noses, and were crammed into small lorries to faraway slaughterhouses. The main reason for the existence of these animals was for the farmers to sell their skin as leather.

If we really disagree with the cruel treatment of animals, we shouldn’t wear the end product of their torture; their skin. There are non-leather alternatives to so many shoes now, with entirely vegetarian shoe shops also available.

Wool can come from a sheep, goat, or Tibetan antelope. It may be called "wool," "mohair," "pashmina," "shahtoosh," or "cashmere." But no matter what it's called, it causes harm to the animals from whom it is taken.

Despite contrary belief, sheep don’t actually need to be sheared. Without human intervention, they produce just enough wool to protect themselves.

Australia produces 30% of the worlds wool and holdings consist of thousands of sheep, making individual attention to their needs and even to medical emergencies impossible. In Australia, the most commonly raised sheep are Merinos, specifically bred to have wrinkly skin, which means more wool per animal. This unnatural overload of wool results in more profits for the farmer. Sadly this can cause a serious problem called Flystrike, where flies lay eggs in the folds of skin. These eggs will hatch into maggots and begin burrowing into the sheep.

To attempt to stop this problem, caused by greedy breeding methods in the first place, farmers actually hack off this extra skin (without any painkillers) - leaving a huge gaping wound at the back of the sheep. Such a wound is highly prone to Flystrike anyway! This process is called mulesing.

To make wool profitable, farmers purchase and keep large numbers of sheep, meaning the level of care for each individual is lost. Breeding is artificially forced throughout the wrong time of year, resulting in many newborn lambs to die of the cold and nearly 800,000 sheep enter the live export trade from the U.K. and are slaughtered abroad.

Angora rabbits are strapped to a board for shearing, kicking powerfully in protest. The clippers inevitably bite into their flesh, with bloody results. Angoras have very delicate foot pads, making life on a wire cage floor excruciating and ulcerated feet a common condition. Because male angoras have only 75 to 80 percent of the wool yield of females, on many farms they are killed at birth.



Silk is used for suits, coats, trousers, jackets, shirts, ties, lingerie, hosiery, gloves, lace, curtains, linings and handbags. It is can also be found in cosmetics. Synthetic fibres such as nylon and polyester are stronger than silk and lower in price. In common with western factory farming techiques, the main areas of silk production are labour-intensive, automated and soul-less.

To produce it, silkworms are reared intensively. In order to obtain the silk, however, the silkworms are either boiled or gassed until they die. Approximately 3,000 silkworms die to make every pound of silk, making it both extensively inhumane as well as bad for the environment.

Rather than buying silk, nylon is widely available at a much lower cost. Not only will you have a clean conscious, you will have a fuller purse, too! Plant fibres are capable of producing some amazing fabrics. Fibres from the pineapple, for example, may be made into fabrics as silky as any silk. Synthetic fibres e.g. nylon produced from minerals, polyester from petroleum spirit (Terylene, Dacron) or acrylic from oil and coal (Courtelle, Orlon, Dralon) also have their place.