The images in the following program are very sensitive and may be as disturbing to viewers as they were to us. However, we have to show the truth about cruelty to animals.

Fur coats line the racks of clothing stores, with customers purchasing them for thousands of dollars. But the price that the animals have to pay for people to wear fur is the ultimate one – unimaginable torture and exploitation, followed by a brutal, bloody end to their lives. Despite the repulsive horrors behind such apparel, fur is still a part of the fashion industry. Why?

On today’s Stop Animal Cruelty, in the first in a three part series, we feature the new documentary “Skin Trade,” which seeks to answer this very question. The film, which has already garnered several awards, is directed by Shannon Keith, a vegan animal rights attorney from the US and founder of the non-profit animal welfare organization Animal Rescue, Media & Education.

Animals are constantly being tortured and abused for the fur trade, and I couldn’t believe that fur as fashion was actually making a comeback on the catwalks. So I decided to make this film to inform the public about animals used for fashion.

The film’s important message is bolstered by the appearance of an array of prominent fashion designers, celebrities and government dignitaries in the documentary. They include, among others, US Congressman Dennis Kucinich, Academy Award-nominated vegan actor James Cromwell, and four-time US National Basketball Association champion and vegan John Salley. We now present excerpts from Skin Trade.

When you get into the area of furs or animals being killed for clothing, you just removed that level of logic, you removed any level of compassion, you removed the possibility of sustainability. And that’s the problem.

When I first set out to make a documentary about the fur industry, I knew that consumers are being defrauded. But I had no idea to what extent the fur industry would go to, to lie and deceive people in order to get them to buy a fur coat. From history and culture, all the way down to environmentalism, the fur industry will say anything to get people to buy fur.

Fraud

They’re not electrocuted? (No, not at all.)

Foxes are not electrocuted by having a probe put up their anus. It’s almost impossible to do, but that’s what they say. Can you imagine?

Should I keep her?

Can they rest assured that the animals were in fact killed with very humane methods? (Oh, yes. I think yes.)

If we’re spending US$30,000 on a fur coat, we can be assured that the animals were killed humanely?

Yes, only if you buy it from us.

The ranchers have bred them for many years, and have played with the recessive genes and there’re many different colors. And a lot of times people, they think for example that this is an Arctic fox and it’s not. This is actually a Red fox.

I saw the footage that Matt Rossell has taken in that fur farm that he worked at, with that white fox that was being anally electrocuted, for the fur coat and I was, I was shocked. I started crying.

I’ve seen it with my own eyes. I’ve worked on a fur farm. I’ve worked undercover for four months during the pelting season on a fox farm in Illinois (USA).

If you don’t get them the first time….

What were you going to say? If you don’t get them the first time?

Well they’ll get… they know what’s coming. See if you slightly jolt them just a little bit…

When we look at their trade journals, they’re very honest about how they do it. We get our information from their own sources.

Right on their genitals. The other clip on the rear.

And it’s only at the retail end when they’re trying to sell this stuff to the public that they lie, and try to cover it all up.

They’ll try to tell you it’s humane, try to tell you the animals were killed in a nice way or that they’re treated well.

Anything that we see here is raised to be useful, like chickens, like cows like…. They are not in the wild.

Yes. They are not trapped or anything like that?

You got him good?

I got him good.

Whether they’re trapped in the wild in such unbelievable cruelty, the deaths of these animals, or they’re farm raised which is this euphemism for basically little prison cells. These animals are living on top of each other until they’re just at whatever maximum size, that they are perfect for coats.

There’s no good way to make fur coats. Whether it’s harvested, “harvested,” that’s a cool catch phrase, in the wild or it’s “raised on farms,” it’s another cool catch phrase. Whether we raise it on farms, as if there is something at all civilized about that, or humane. No matter where it’s coming from, if you had to really look at it, and where it was and why, I think you might make another choice.

Stop Animal Cruelty will return after this brief message. Please stay tuned to Supreme Master Television.

This is the Stop Animal Cruelty series on Supreme Master Television, featuring excerpts from the documentary “Skin Trade.” We now continue with more from this award-winning film.

They need to know that if they buy something even if it just has a fur trim, that cruelty was a component of the manufacture of that product.

The customers who are asking the right questions and saying, “Well, tell me how are these fur coats produced? Or where are these animals being raised? And how are they being killed for their fur?” And a lot of time, the retailers are giving them false answers, saying: “Oh, they are injected, they don’t feel anything,” and nothing could be further from the truth.

The Federal Trade Commission (oversees animal welfare).

So they are laws? Are there laws that oversee that kind of humane treatment thing?

Yes, yes.

When we set out to try to get some justice for these animals, it took a couple of days just to track down who is responsible for watching these fur farms. Every agency we went to was pointing the finger at someone else. “No, they’re regulating them. No, they’re regulating them.”

There are no laws controlling them. In fact, the trade of exotic animals is second only to drug dealing and fire arms.

It’s a huge industry.

If you saw somebody on the street electrocuting a dog, he’d go to jail for it first of all, and people would, all the neighbors would say that person’s a sick person. The cops would come. There would be… people would be outraged.

When we look at fur coats, we see murder, and we see the people who are wearing it as accomplices and we see the people who do the business as a perpetrator.

There are no laws protecting these animals and there are no inspectors going onto these farms. The only way to find out what’s going on is to get inside and see for yourself.

This is Bear. Bear had been caught in steel-jaw traps, probably set for coyotes. This paw was nearly severed and it will never be the same, it cracks and bleeds still in the wintertime despite the fact that he’s had extensive medical care.

Because no one was checking the traps either on a regular basis, he laid there for about three days, caught in the traps.

And they, just put him to sleep like a dog or something?

Of course.

This is coyote? (Yes.) And all of them are from Denmark or…

Ah no, this is from the United States.

The United States.

Yes, it is made here.

And these are raised or trapped? (This is trapped.)

Trapped, yes.

When I see someone wearing coyote fur, trim, or a coat, to me, they are wearing a dog, they are wearing… how can they (do that)?

The reason why we are putting them in the truck alive, these animals will be killed. But when they are warm, they all will be skinned a lot better, so we are going to be taking them in today alive.

What the industry tries to tell the public about how they take good care of these animals on fur farms, because they wouldn’t have a good product, but, quality fur dictates quality care for the animals.

They treat them better than humans while they’re alive. Because they cannot be scratched. They cannot be damaged.

Right.

It couldn’t be further from the truth.

Now I’m at Dan Ashman’s fox farm, and right now I’m in the process of watering the new barn which is 187 cages of mostly all silver foxes, one male and one female in each cage. And I know they haven’t been watered for over a week. All of the watering dishes are bone-dry. Dan Ashman told me that watering them once every other week is enough. And you can see that they are thirsty.

There’s nothing humane about taking an animal, keeping it in a cage until it grows big enough and it’s got enough fur that you can electrocute it and kill it and skin it. How is that humane?

Did they electrocute the animals on fur farms?

No, I will tell you a straight answer about that. It’s impossible to electrocute them because it would change the… the electricity will change the fur.

There is no way to get fur and have it be humane. There is just no way.

Our deep thanks Shannon Keith and all others involved in the production of “Skin Trade” for allowing us to share your documentary with our global viewers. Let us all do our part to end the heartless fur industry by always refusing to purchase fur and animal skin. May we also lead a life free of animal products by quickly adopting the conscientious and harmonious organic vegan lifestyle.

Hi, I am Shannon Keith. Be Veg, Go Green 2 Save the Planet!

For more details on “Skin Trade”, please visit www.SkinTradetheMovie.com
The Skin Trade DVD is available at the same website
For more information on Animal Rescue Media Education, please visit: www.ARME.tv

We appreciate your company today on our program. Please join us again for part two of our three part presentation of “Skin Trade” next Tuesday on Stop Animal Cruelty. Enlightening Entertainment is next, after Noteworthy News. May Heaven’s light illuminate the lives of all beings on our planet.