The images in the following program are highly sensitive and may be as disturbing to viewers as they were to us. However, we have to show the truth about cruelty to animals, praying that you will help to stop it.

Today’s Animal World: Our Co-Inhabitants will be presented in Norwegian, with subtitles in Arabic, Aulacese (Vietnamese), Chinese, English, French, German, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Malay, Mongolian, Norwegian, Persian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Thai.

Today on Stop Animal Cruelty we present excerpts from the documentary “Up Against the Wall: A Critical Look at Fur Production,” produced by Norway’s Network for Animal Freedom. The film reveals the fur industry’s beyond inhumane treatment of innocent animals, who are mass murdered so that their fur can be used for so-called decoration or clothing.

Formed in 2007, the Network for Animal Freedom works to expose animal cruelty and free animals from oppression. The group films the activities of animal-abusing companies and presents them to the public.

In 2010, for the third consecutive year, Network for Animal Freedom and the Norwegian Society for Protection of Animals secretly visited dozens of factory-fur farms in Norway to document the brutality of the industry, where sickening exploitation of animals is the norm. Some of the 800 hours of footage taken during the investigation is included in “Up Against the Wall.”

“Up Against the Wall: A Critical Look at Fur Production”

Nobody wants anything more from their packs?

No.

Now we’re going to visit a fur farm in Sogn and Fjordane where they have foxes and minks. We’ve been there before and we’re going back to see how conditions are now.

When it comes to the treatment of animals, one question that comes up is, “What is the natural behavior of animals?” It’s not just that they like to do it or that they can do it if they have the opportunity, but that they have this instinct to do it.

For foxes it’s necessary to be able to burrow and therefore they have the need to dig. They have big dens with many entrances and exits and you can see that they burrow. I have seen it many times. They just dig down. During wintertime mountain foxes go full bore in the snow, building tunnels at full speed. And also in the summer.

But for animals at a fur farm they don’t have the possibility to do that. That just adds to the general frustration that these animals certainly must feel. It’s the same with running around, hiding, poking around, going into bushes and running across large fields. They aren’t able to exercise any of these instincts.

We are getting closer to the farm, so we’re turning on the walkie-talkies.

We use walkie-talkies because we don’t want to have a confrontation with the farmer or bump into anyone. We just want to get inside the farm, film, document the conditions and get out again without being discovered.

Now we’re at the farm. This is a typical Norwegian fur farm, but this farm has electric wires set up over the whole farm. This is what one sees at Norwegian fur farms now. They do what they can to hide what they’re doing. They do this with alarms, electric fences, anything to prevent people from documenting what is going on.

The way the fur industry is operated today is such that animals aren’t able to satisfy their basic needs. Through observation, one can also see that animals are often restless and have abnormal behavior under such conditions. This says everything about the way the animals are treated.

One must not think of these animals as domesticated. They have a very high level of pure instinct in them and it’s much more difficult for them to adapt to a world that we want to control. So, unfortunately, I don’t think this way of treating them is in the animals’ best interests.

A car just came and we thought maybe we set off an alarm. So we had to run away. Things like that can happen. What we’re thinking now is to drive to the next farm. This is the third consecutive year that we’ve been visiting fur farms around the whole country. In 2008, we visited over 100 farms in all counties that have fur farming in Norway. Last year we visited approximately 45 farms and this year we’ve visited over 30 farms all around the country.

One can see that animals are unhappy and uncomfortable in cages in that they adopt behaviors that they don’t have in nature. We recognize this from many other species as we have seen the same in zoos. They bob and weave their heads, they walk around restlessly, aimlessly. There are no normal movement patterns. This illustrates how the animals live at the fur farms. They don’t get an outlet for their normal behaviors and they begin to do things that they don’t normally do in the wild.

This is quite disturbing. These are animals that like to run and must be able to satisfy their need for activity. And here they only have about a meter to do it, back and forth. The cage wires have pretty big holes. That’s not very comfortable. It’s astounding to me that those involved can look at this every day and sleep well at night and say, “My foxes have good lives, because they hop around the whole day.” No, I don’t want to watch any more of this.

Now we’ve come to the farm. It’s a fox farm. One can see that there are several sheds with tons of foxes. And they just have so little room to move, their whole lives, with just a small shelf. Here are both breeding animals and the pups that are a couple months old. Fox pups live until they are around six to eight months old. They are killed in the winter and born in the spring.

One can see that many of the animals are very scared. They aren’t used to people at all. We always try to walk around the farms very carefully when we are here, so as not to stress them out even more.

Completely unbelievable! That poor white one is missing his ears, there are just some bloody stubs, on both sides! There we see... oh my, oh my... There we see right into the ear canal. Horrible! It looks like that one eye... this is so cruel...

Oh, there’s straw and dirt in...or probably feces, in that wound there. I think this one eye on the white one is completely closed shut and can’t open. Yes, he’s not opening his eye. No, no, no, that one can’t walk normally either. This is some of the worst I’ve ever seen.

It is a general frustration; they have such horrible lives in relation to what they should have that their normal behavior has more or less collapsed here. The whole thing has broken down. This shows the complete obliteration of the animals’ natural behavior. Dirty and horrible. Notice how big the holes are in the cage wires. They manage to move on the cage wires only with great difficulty.

When one is at a fur farm, it’s a very strange feeling that is marked by a very strong stench, because all the feces just go right down to the ground. So it’s a very unique smell that hits you already before you reach the farm. And there are often sounds from animals that dig at the cage wires or run back and forth or animals that scream, bark or howl.

Here is a fox that is apparently very frustrated. He digs and digs at the cage wires, trying to get out, just to have something to do. That is very common to see. We see this kind of behavior at every single fur farm. I’ve even seen foxes that have dug so much that their paws begin to bleed; because they never stop... There is nothing else they can do.

This here is quite awful...

Is that one missing a tail?

I think so.

That one doesn’t have a tail. Here is another one without a tail.

Here we see that all these cages have foxes that are missing tails.

This year we’ve gone out again. And the conditions are exactly the same because this is what fur farming is. This is what is normal. Fur farming is animals that stand in cages, running aimlessly around in a circle, biting at the cage wires, digging, trying to get out. It’s not possible to run a fur farm any other way. This is what happens when you put wild animals in cages.

Here is a fox that’s missing an eye. It looks like that one has very acute eye inflammation. We can’t see that eye. It’s almost gone. We’re going out now. We’re just heading towards the fence so you can sit there a little longer.

We know very well that every time we leave a fur farm there are animals that will be killed and will end up as a fur collar or a fur coat. But nevertheless we also know that by showing what actually goes on there we are getting closer to stopping it. I don’t feel that there are any alternatives for us other than to continue to do this, to continue to show people what’s happening at fur farms and continue to ask people to consider taking action against fur farming.

I believe that the only conclusion I come to as to what we should do is to just say, “This is unacceptable.” We need to do what we have done in other countries. They just said, “This is unacceptable.” And it’s not, because some people in Norway think that it is perhaps possible to regulate it, regulate it in another way, a little better. But that doesn’t work. No, it’s just unacceptable. This industry must simply be shut down.

As we’ve seen today, there is absolutely nothing fashionable about fur. If we all resolve to never purchase fur or any other type of animal product, the outrages against our animal friends will finally cease. Our sincere thanks, Network for Animal Freedom and the Norwegian Society for Protection of Animals for producing revealing, undercover documentaries on the endless savagery and cruelty inflicted on our fellow beings by the fur industry.

We share your dream that fur farming will soon end as humans and animals come to live together in a peaceful, compassionate, vegan world. May you enjoy great success in your future noble endeavors.

Watch “Up Against the Wall: A Critical Look at Fur Production” online at Network for Animal Freedom’s website: www.Forbypels.no/english
To find out more about the Norwegian Society for Protection of Animals, please visit: www.Dyrebeskyttelsen.no/english

Thank you, kind viewers, for your presence today on Stop Animal Cruelty. May all beings on Earth forever enjoy long, harmonious and peaceful lives.