Monday, February 1, 2010

A letter to the Fur Council, Re: Their "Fur is Green" Campaign

I take a strong contention to your campaign trying greenwash your
product. First and foremost you make contradictory claims regarding
your product. On one hand you claim the product is "natural" and
biodegradable. On the other you make claims that your product is
long-lasting and can be handed down generations. Which is it exactly?

Secondly, you associate yourself with animal agribusiness by using byproducts of the animal agriculture industry (while being an animal agriculture industry yourself). In case you aren't aware, animal agriculture contributes
more greenhouse gas emissions than the entire automotive industry
combined (18% vs 15% respectively). Not only is greenhouse gas
emissions an environmental concern, but there is almost inevitable
waste run-off into ground water, streams, rivers, etc. These create
ecological cesspools and dead zones.

The other point of contention is the chemicals used in your products.
Many are known carcinogens, poisons and environmental toxins designed
to prevent an animal's body from doing what it naturally does when it
dies: decay. Once again, counter-intuitive to the claims you produce a
"natural" product.

The amount of petroleum used to produce a synthetic "fur" is actually
vastly less than producing a real fur product, when you take into
account all the chemicals, transporting, food import, waste export,
etc. of your industry.

Trapping, too, has environmental detriments. While you would like
think you're "helping" populations by extracting them unnecessarily
from their habitats, fur-trapping is a haphazard method of extracting
animal "resources". They can trap creatures that were unintended to be
trapped - including endangered species. Overall, hunting and trapping
practices tend to weaken animal populations as a whole, by targeting
"fitter" animals. Most recreational and commercial hunting practices
result in this as we have seen with many hunting based extinctions and species hunted to the point of having nonviable populations.

These are just the refutations of the claims your product is
environmentally friendly. It doesn't even address the inherent animal
cruelty of using animals unnecessarily to make money. I would be very
surprised if you actually published this. You claim that you don't
post hateful messages, but you posted a rant from an individual who
goes on [i]ad nauseum[/i] about people more compassionate than herself
in a derogatory tone. She also claims to be an animal lover. That's
like a pedophile claiming to love children. Both go on to exploit and
harm them.

Although, if you have any interest in objective and open dialogue, I
suggest you do post my comment and/or send feedback. Not doing so only
proves my point that you aren't interested in absolute disclosure of
your product.

Sincerely,

Stephen Grant


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P.S. For more information on this false advertising campaign check out their website:
www.furisgreen.com

Knowing your enemy is the first step in neutralizing them.