There is little point in your reading any of my opinions on things, until you understand what I mean by "good" and "evil", so you should start by reading how I define these, and only then go on to read the rest of my bigoted maunderings.

Not everyone will love everything I have to say, and you will find above a link to a page telling the tale of one attempt to have my views banned, and another about how I was eventually banned.

What's wrong with fur farming?

I live in Newcastle, Great Britain. In the main shopping streets, a common sight is a stall manned by depressed-looking shabby people with conventionally unconventional haircuts. They have banners announcing their intention: to get a local fur farm closed. Fur farms, one learns from them, are cruel and evil.

Why are they trying so hard to get this business closed down, and some people made jobless? One would hope that it is for good reasons, and that the reasons they give are true: that fur farms are cruel, and therefore bad.

So what is bad about a fur farm? When asking them, one learns that fur farms are bad because they are fur farms. But what, one asks, is the key fact about fur farms which makes them bad? They farm fur on them, for goodness sake, is the reply. Fur is disgusting, apparently, and farmers go to some effort to be cruel to their animals. Why? Because they are evil. How do we know them to be evil? Because they are fur farmers. What do they do which is cruel? They pen up animals which should be roaming free. This sounds much like all stock farming. When you farm cattle, you don't want them straying. As for the "should", well, these animals wouldn't exist were it not for the fur farm, surely, so who says what these animals "should" be doing? The reply is that fur farming is evil.

Let me think: fur farms farm fur. If animals are unhealthy, it will show in their fur. If animals fight each other, it will damage the fur, and lower its value. If animals are killed in a nasty messy way, it will damage their fur. So, one can quickly establish these things: that a fur farmer has a very strong vested interest in making sure that his animals live non-violent, well-fed, low-stress, healthy lives, and that their deaths are quick and clean(1). Does any wild animal have such a man looking after their welfare? Also, minks and the like are vicious little predators, and if they were to roam free, would this not encroach on the rights of other animals to live a long and healthy life? Is not a fur farmer doing the local wildlife a favour by keeping the mink in secure accommodation?

More thoughts: all furry animals have fur. Only cows produce milk, only ewes produce lambs. Half the population of other farmed animals gets a short straw from farming. All mink, though, are welcome to join the farm, produce fur, and rut to their hearts' content(2). Other farmed animals are more selectively bred.

So what is evil about fur farming? We are told that fur is disgusting.

This last argument I find the most perplexing. Surely the whole reason for the existence of a fur farm, is the fact that there are people willing to pay very large sums of money for fur coats and the like. These are people who will not freeze for lack of fur coats. They can afford central heating and anoraks. The reason they want fur, is that they think that fur is very nice. I have never owned a fur coat, and don't think I'd pay that amount of money for one. I'd rather buy a cheap coat, and spend the rest on a nice holiday. Once, though, I was in a fur shop in Stockholm, and I felt one of the coats. I never knew anything could feel so fabulous. It made sheepskin feel like sandpaper. At that moment, I understood why some people might shell out the cost of a car to buy a coat. The argument that fur is itself disgusting does not bear even the tiniest scrutiny. Fur is fabulous, which is why it is valuable.

So why do people object to fur farms? My best guess is that it is the acceptable tip of the iceberg. At the moment, political fashion allows, or even obliges, people to believe that fur farming is bad, even though it is no more cruel than any other stock farming. If fur farms get banned, then meat farms will be next. Leather, wool, milk, each will become the evil that the previous one was, until we all have to be vegans, and we all die of misery. Those who oppose it do so because it makes them feel good to do so, because it gives them some political power. There is no other reason, unless there is one as-yet unpresented to me.

Can anyone tell me why fur farming is cruel but dairy farming okay?

Update:

I have done some more research on fur farming since writing the above, and can add these two facts:

In Britain, animals farmed for fur are killed on the farm, to avoid the stress of transportation, by gas which puts them to sleep before killing them. No animal, wild or domesticate, has a kinder end than this.
In fact, even with mink and similar animals, some males are weeded out while young, but the proportion of males of fur-farm animals which reaches adulthhood is still far greater than for other types of farmed animals.

Update: October 2002

Since writing the above, I have learned that fur farming has been made illegal in Britain, and all our fur farms are to close. The state has decided that it is its right to forbid people to carry out an activity that created wealth and harmed no one. The same protesters I encounted in the street now have a new hobby: trying to ban hunting. Each time something like this gets banned, then some other activity will appear to be the most disapproved-of thing, and governments will think that there are votes to be gained by banning it. Where will this end? You may feel safe now, but one day the thing you do will be the most disapproved of thing. Protest now, before they ban you from doing what you like. Boxing will go, then fishing, and eventually the keeping of cats (because they go hunting every time you let them out the back door, so by keeping a cat you are murdering the local population of cute little things).