I got this e-mail from the Humane Society. I do trust them, but this sounds odd to me. Have you ever heard of non-fur items being mislabeled? Is that legal?
The fashion news these days reads like a coroner's report: runways and sales racks alike are littered with the pelts of dead fur-bearing animals. And the news doesn’t get any better for compassionate consumers - they can find themselves unknowingly buying this cruelly produced fur or fur trim.
Animal pelts dyed bright colors, sheared, or woven can look deceptively like fabric or faux fur, and labeling loopholes allow a garment with fur to go unlabeled if it sells for less than $150.
That means common retail items, even discounted ones, can be made with pieces of real fur and identified with a misleading label – duping consumers into supporting this industry.
The Humane Society of the United States’ new Fur-Free Campaign is fighting back against the heartless fur industry, and I’m asking you to fight with us. Animals killed for these products suffer terribly, and are killed through horribly barbaric means such as anal or genital electrocution, clubbing, drowning, or neck-breaking.
ETA: I don't know why the last paragraph keeps coming up huge. I keep trying to fix the font and it says it's the same size (shrug).
-- Edited by halleybird at 22:25, 2005-10-19
-- Edited by halleybird at 22:26, 2005-10-19
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"We live in an age where unnecessary things are our only necessities." --Oscar Wilde
indiekitten wrote: Yeah, I'm not going to even click on the link - I usually try to avoid these topics anyway - they upset me too much - it seems a little odd to me that companies would want to pass off real fur as fake ... hrm
me too -- you'd think it would be the other way around.
The fur trade makes me sick anyway. I decided last year not even to buy faux fur, because I don't like promoting the fur "look."
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"We live in an age where unnecessary things are our only necessities." --Oscar Wilde
So halleybird, how do we know if that article is true? Have you been able to find anything else on it? I would never have thought that anything marked as fake fur would be real! I guess I assumed that was regulated somewhere.....
I sent the info to my MIL - she is a relentless animal rights activist, perhaps she has heard something / knows something...we'll see.
-- Edited by laken1 at 09:25, 2005-10-21
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Who do you have to probe around here to get a Chardonnay? - Roger the Alien from American Dad
I did notice that it says that real fur may be "unlabeled"- so that may not mean mislabeled meaning that something can say "FAUX FUR" and it really is faux. *Hopefully*
So halleybird, how do we know if that article is true? Have you been able to find anything else on it? I would never have thought that anything marked as fake fur would be real! I guess I assumed that was regulated somewhere..... I sent the info to my MIL - she is a relentless animal rights activist, perhaps she has heard something / knows something...we'll see. -- Edited by laken1 at 09:25, 2005-10-21
I am not sure how to find out. But the Humane Society is not as radical as, say, PETA -- all the previous news alerts I have received from them have been legit. I guess I believe them.
ETA: I think most of the cases are probably like Seashells pointed out -- unlabeled.
-- Edited by halleybird at 18:45, 2005-10-21
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"We live in an age where unnecessary things are our only necessities." --Oscar Wilde
I think it is true, unfortunately. I've seen several fabric bags with suede components that aren't labeled.
Something similar happened to me. I purchased a white wool coat (I am trying to get away from wool, but it's hard) with what I thought was a faux-fur collar, because it wasn't labeled. The label under the brand label said "100% wool." The coat was not particularly expensive, and was on a steep discount (I think I got it for about $50) so it never occurred to me that the fur could be real, since it wasn't labeled and the coat was so cheap. But when I took it to the dry cleaners, they informed me that they would need to detach the fur collar. I said "Oh no, don't worry about it; it's fake." The woman looked at it more closely and said, "No, it's real." Then she and I scoured the coat, and sewn into one of the seams on the bottom right side, totally out of sight, was a tiny label that said "Lining made with rabbit fur." I thought I was going to throw up. Obviously, this wasn't a case of "nonlabeling" but it was definitely misleading, since the "main" label didn't say anything about the fur.
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Forget, forgive, conclude, and be agreed. - Shakespeare
Halleybird, unfortunately, this is true. About 6 years ago I saw a segment on one of the newsmagazines (20/20 or Dateline - I think it was Dateline) about this exact thing. They singled out a store called (I think) 'Burlington Coat Factory' as one that was selling coats with real fur. It was real fur, but it was dog fur, from China. The American SPCA was the organization that brought the story to light and they interviewed the then-head of the US SPCA (don't know you guys call it!). They also had video footage that to this day I cannot get out of my head, and which I am not going to describe. Suffice it to say it was one of, probably the most awful thing I have ever seen in my life. Dogs are raised in China for their fur and slaughtered in ways that, honestly, make electrocution seem almost humane.
So everyone who is concerned about this, if you are wearing fur, MAKE SURE it's from where you think it's from.
-- Edited by Mia at 20:52, 2005-10-28
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"Don't be cool. Cool is conservative fear dressed in black. Don't limit yourself in this way." - Bruce Mau
Mia...that is horrific. I hate Burlington CF anyway, and now I have another reason. Like I said, I was never that into faux-fur in the first place, but I am going to make sure not to buy it now.
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"We live in an age where unnecessary things are our only necessities." --Oscar Wilde