How much do you love your clothes? Do you buy them to be part of the crowd, to
be an individual, or just to keep covered and warm? What about your shoes, trainers, boots etc.? What do you look for in these? Do you wear
cottons, wools, synthetics or leather and fur?
I don’t particularly have a problem with people wearing
anything they want; however, I do have an issue when obtaining that piece of
clothing comes at the welfare expense and the outright suffering of an animal
for it. When you are buying your little
silver fox fur coat or wrap are you in the know about where that fur came from,
and more importantly, how the animal was euthanised and skinned.
We talk about, and with good reason too, the importance of fair trade and ensuring those in less fortunate countries are paid an honest wage for honest work. But what about the animals? What about their welfare? When figures revealed recently that the illegal trade in animals reached $19 million per year, you have to start questioning where these animals are going, and more importantly why is the trade becoming so lucrative. Too many times over the last five years have I seen pictures and videos of animals being skinned alive, left to bleed to death afterwards. Can you even begin to imagine the tortuous pain that must be? Think of how bad it hurt when you were a kid and grazed yourself, or if you have ever had an accident where you’ve cut yourself. Now imagine someone deliberately removing your skin. It doesn’t bear thinking about does it? It is cruel and abhorrent. Yet, how many actually think about that? Those knock off cheap suede ugly boots you wear, the ones all furry inside, well it has been shown that often the fur comes from animals that have been subjected to just this sort of violence. Nice, huh? Please, I urge you, do take a moment to watch these video’s, just type in animals skinned alive and you will find them I assure you. Watch as they cut the skin and rip it off the animal that is screaming and writhing in agony; watch as it looks on afterwards with nothing but eye lashes framing beautiful pain filled and bewildered eyes as blood oozes out of its body; it’s very life draining from it as it shivers in pain. Then when you next go shopping, I want you to remember that video, the pain of that animal, the beauty of that animal and ask yourself is the money you are paying out really worth it?
We talk about, and with good reason too, the importance of fair trade and ensuring those in less fortunate countries are paid an honest wage for honest work. But what about the animals? What about their welfare? When figures revealed recently that the illegal trade in animals reached $19 million per year, you have to start questioning where these animals are going, and more importantly why is the trade becoming so lucrative. Too many times over the last five years have I seen pictures and videos of animals being skinned alive, left to bleed to death afterwards. Can you even begin to imagine the tortuous pain that must be? Think of how bad it hurt when you were a kid and grazed yourself, or if you have ever had an accident where you’ve cut yourself. Now imagine someone deliberately removing your skin. It doesn’t bear thinking about does it? It is cruel and abhorrent. Yet, how many actually think about that? Those knock off cheap suede ugly boots you wear, the ones all furry inside, well it has been shown that often the fur comes from animals that have been subjected to just this sort of violence. Nice, huh? Please, I urge you, do take a moment to watch these video’s, just type in animals skinned alive and you will find them I assure you. Watch as they cut the skin and rip it off the animal that is screaming and writhing in agony; watch as it looks on afterwards with nothing but eye lashes framing beautiful pain filled and bewildered eyes as blood oozes out of its body; it’s very life draining from it as it shivers in pain. Then when you next go shopping, I want you to remember that video, the pain of that animal, the beauty of that animal and ask yourself is the money you are paying out really worth it?
But it doesn’t stop there.
There are those that want traditional Chinese medicines that use parts
of animals, which are mostly endangered.
Things like tigers testicles, or bear bile. Yum yum!
Then there are those all-important ornaments. Roll up, roll up, get your ivory here! The ivory trade last year had a record number
of cases. Not just from living animals either,
the want for ivory has been so high that ivory has been stolen from
museums. In fact the zoological museum
in Cambridge replaced the ivory of it’s specimens with replicas and put the
real items away for safe keeping. There
have been record numbers of elephants and rhinoceros being poached for their
ivory and one has to wonder what on earth is wrong with us to keep doing
this. Are we really that stupid and
learn nothing? Even the most greedy must
understand supply and demand and that you have to keep a stock if you want to
keep that market…so why the sudden increase?
Why, and I am trying my level best to not insert words of a
cursing nature here, do the governments of these countries not step in to stop
these horrible things happening? Why do
we continue to help prop up this trade by not doing much? We can’t just stick two fingers up at the
countries doing this, as we wouldn’t be able to monitor the situation. Clearly the highly publicised glamorous
campaigns by PETA aren’t getting the message across well enough; and when our
own governments don’t even seem keen on putting money into stopping what is a
growing amount of illegal animal products being imported into this country,
they have yet to decide on funding for the National Wildlife Crime Unit. Only 6 Conservative MP’s even voted in favour
of protecting the environment and biodiversity.
Does that not shout that our government isn’t bothered? Maybe next time we go out and vote we should
boycott the main parties for those that are actually committed to doing
something positive for the future; but in the meantime to make any difference
we need to get the message out to people that this trade is NOT acceptable and
will not be tolerated.
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