CRUELTY ON MICHIGAN FUR FARM SHOWN TO HOLIDAY SHOPPERS
Activists Urge Customers to Be Kind This Season With Fur-Free Message

Battle Creek, Mich. - Holding posters featuring a beautiful fox with a price tag attached to his ear, members of IDA and All Species Kinship (ASK) will gather in front of Burtrum Furs to show shoppers-on the busiest shopping day of the year-the true price of fur and urge them to shun any garment with fur. Video footage of a recent Michigan fur farm investigation that reveals chinchillas being electrocuted causing painful heart seizures and having their necks broken while they were fully conscious will be screened:

Date: Friday, November 26
Time: 12 noon to 2:00 p.m.
Place: Burtrum Furs, 5568 Beckley Rd.

The demonstration is concurrent with similar demonstrations across the U.S. on the day after Thanksgiving, which has become known as Fur Free Friday. Activists want shoppers to realize that all fur, even the kind inconspicuously used as trim on coats, ear muffs, or gloves, comes from animals raised on fur farms where the standard methods of killing animals for "ranched fur" is gassing, neck breaking, poisoning, or anal or vaginal electrocution. The fur may even come from animals in the wild that continue to be caught in steel-jaw traps where they suffer excruciating pain, often for days, before having their chests stomped on or their necks broken by trappers. Beavers caught in underwater traps struggle frantically for up to 20 minutes before drowning.

Over the past decade, the campaign to stop the bloody fur trade has been enormously successful. Pressure from anti-fur activists was successful in encouraging Macy's West to end its fur sales throughout its West Coast stores. The habit of wearing fur has been exposed and stigmatized as blatant animal cruelty.

"Be it a small bit of fur trim on a cuff or a full-length coat anyone who wears fur is directly responsible for the suffering of animals," says ASK spokesperson Sophie DiPietro. "We hope to remind shoppers that anyone who buys fur supports the suffering of millions of fox, mink, and chinchilla who are cruelly crammed in filthy wire mesh cages simply for greed and vanity:"

Many celebrated designers, such as Stella McCartney, Todd Oldham, and Calvin Klein refuse to design with fur. For more information on IDA's anti-fur campaign, please visit our Web site: www.FurKills.org.