Fur

Last updated 24 November 2017

Summary of Rabbit fur sold in Australia:

Clothes containing fur and Angora sold in Australia come from animals bred either in Australia or overseas.

  • Akubra

 Akubra is an iconic Australian hat. Each Akubra hat is made with an average of 12-14 rabbit skins.

Some of the fur comes from hunted rabbits in Australia while the rest is imported from places such as Belgium, France and the Ukraine.

Suppliers to Akubra include intensive meat rabbit farms in Australia.

Akubra is still legally able to sell its hats as Australian Made. According to the Australian Made Campaign, products that have 50 per cent or more of the cost of making the product attributed to Australian materials or production processes and are manufactured in Australia are considered Australian made.

  • Angora

 Angora rabbits are the only breed of rabbits from which wool suitable for spinning can be harvested. They are the only rabbit whose hair grows continuously throughout the animal’s lifetime.

Angora rabbit production is an intensive animal production agricultural system. China has dominated the angora world market for decades. In the late 1980s, the Western Australian Angora industry used one level wire cage systems rather than multi-level systems used in the dominant Angora producing countries.

In 2014, PETA Asia, alongside one international clothing company and a veterinarian travelled to China to meet up with angora company officials and an auditor to see what was really happening on Angora farms. The group visited five farms in different regions of mainland China. Those visits were all unannounced.

The following are direct quotes from these investigations (http://action.peta.org.uk/ea-action/action?ea.client.id=5&ea.campaign.id=23870):

live rabbits’ fur is ripped out of their skin and that they’re forced to live under horrendous conditions.

Rabbits were yanked out of enclosures by their sensitive ears and pinned under workers’ feet while they were violently sheared

Some sites used a rope for suspending “problem animals” by their forelimbs in order to pluck or shear them more easily dangled from the ceiling

The temperature was over 100 degrees F (37.8C) with 80%, and the rabbits were given little to no protection from the elements

Most of the rabbits were suffering from a severe skin irritation caused by excessive salivation. As a result, these areas of skin had become severely infected. Many animals exhibited rapid, open-mouthed breathing brought on by heat stress or respiratory disease

Veterinary care was grossly inadequate or non-existent. In many cases, the rabbits weren’t offered any treatment for severe and chronic infections, sores, respiratory distress, malnutrition, blindness, or neurological damage. Some were so sick and weak that they lay in their own waste and didn’t respond to being touched

Of the farms that the group visited, rabbits were not euthanized on site under any circumstances, no matter how sick or injured they were. They were left to languish for days, weeks, or even months without relief or treatment before finally succumbing

The majority of angora sold in Australia comes from similar conditions to those investigated by Peta Asia.

Undercover investigations by French Animal Rights Group L214 has uncovered similar angora production facilities in France to those in China.

 

Summary taken from

Ethical Vegan Earth Research Inc. Campaign: Down the Rabbit Holes

http://downtherabbitholes.org/bunny-fur/

http://eversanctuary.org/research/rabbit-farming/