Every year, over 1.5 billions animals are being raised, bred and killed for their pelts (skins). These animals include foxes, minks, cows, rabbits, goat, sheep, geese, ducks, etc. They are treated horrifyingly and investigations into several farms have shown several horrible ways they are treated including:

Leather farming: Cows, pigs, goat, exotic animals such as alligators, ostriches, kangaroos, even cats and dogs:

• Workers break cows' tails
• Rub chili peppers and tobacco in their eyes
• Extreme crowding
• Deprivation
• Castration
• Branding
• Tail-docking
• Throats cut
• Skinned and dismembered while still conscious

Fur farming: minks, foxes, racoon dogs, rabbit, chinchillas, etc:

• Tiny cramped cages
• Horrible physical and mental abnormalities due to treatments. Scientific reports have shown abnormalities such as: ‘…infected wounds, missing limbs from biting incidents, eye infections, bent feet, mouth deformities, self-mutilation, cannibalism of dead siblings or offspring and other stress-related stereotypical behaviour.’ 
• Cruel and inhumane deaths such as gassing, head-to-tail electrocution. The electrocution is done generally through the animal's mouth and anus.

Mohair (the soft inner coats of angora goats) farming: angora goats:

• Dragged by horns and legs
• Thrown across the floor
• Mutilated
• Throats cut while still conscious
• Lifted by their tails, likely breaking their spines
• Shearers cut broad swatchs of skin off them and crudely stitch up the gaping wounds on the filthy floor
• Needles punched through the goats' ears with tattoo pliers for identification
• Necks sawed through with dull knives, breaking their necks
• Jolted with electricity
• Hung upside down by one leg
• Slashed across the throat
• Skinned
• Left to bleed

Wool farming: sheep:

• Carless shearing leads to strips of skin and even teats, tails and ears being cut or ripped off during shearing

• Shearers punch, kick and stomp on sheep.

• Shearers hit sheep in the face with electric clippers and stand on their heads, necks and hind limbs.
• One shearer was seen beating a lamb in the head with a hammer.
• Another shearer was seen wiping the sheep's urine off the floor using the sheep's body.
• And yet another shearer repeatedly twisted and bent a sheep's neck, breaking it.
• Lambs are forced to endue a procedure called "mulesing", in which chunks of skin are cut from their backsides, often without painkillers.
• Within weeks of birth, lamb's ear are hold punched, tails chopped off and the males are castrated without any painkillers.

Down (the layer of feathers closest to a bird's skin) farming: geese, ducks, swans:

• Most down and other feathers are removed from ducks and geese during slaughter, however, birds in breeding flocks and those raised for meat may be plucked repeatedly while they are still alive.
• Plucking causes geese and ducks considerable pain and distress.
• They are lifted by their necks or delicate wings, their legs are physically restrained or tied, and their feathers are ripped out of their skin. 
• The birds are plucked so hard that their skin is torn open and hurried workers sew up the wounds using needle and thread with no painkillers.
• Plucking may begin when the birds are just 10 weeks old and be repeated at 6 week intervals until the birds are slaughtered for meat well short of their full lifetime.

Exotic skins farming: snakes, alligators, crocodiles, lizards, etc.:

• Snakes are commonly nailed to trees and their bodies at cut open from one end to the other. Their mutilated bodies are then discarded. However, because of these animals' slow metabolism, it can take hours for the snakes to die.
• Lizards are often decapitated, and some writhe in agony as the skin is ripped from their bodies. 
• Most alligator skins come from farmed animals who are raised in crowded tanks or pools of fetid, stinking water. The animals are shot or crudely bludgeoned with hammers. Workers sometimes use a mallet and chisel to sever crocodiles' spinal cords. This paralyses them, but doesn't kill them. Herpetologist Clifford Warwick, a specialist in reptile biology and welfare, says "There is no scientific question as to whether alligators are capable of feeling pain and sensitivity to stress - they are." Dr. Warwick also found that crocodiles often "develop abnormalities and deformities because they can't walk or swim" in crowded enclosures.
• It is estimated that for every animal who is legally killed for the exotic skins trade, another will be illegally poached.
• In addition to being cruel, this industry is extremely wasteful: It can take up to four crocodiles to make a single bag!

How can I contribute?

To contribute towards stopping this cruelty:

• Sign this petition.
• Learn more about animal cruelty in the fashion industry.
• Increase awareness in your community to improve animal cruelty in the fashion industry. Share this petition and make them aware of the current situation. 

What are our goals?

Our goal is to ban fur-farming in Australia. We plan to do this by getting people to sign this petition, and once we receive a certain number of signatures, we can present it to the government and enact legislatives changes towards the importation and production of fur in Australia. Once we achieve this, we plan to issue bans on other animal skins and pelts such as leather, mohair, down, etc. and transferring towards vegan alternatives. The benefits of these vegan alternatives include: that they are more sustainable and that their production doesn't require as many harmful chemicals as fur, leather, etc. farming.

What has been achieved so far?

Achievements by FOUR PAWS. Several organisations have been working tirelessly towards improving the situation of animal cruelty in the fashion industry and other industries. One of these organisations is FOUR PAWS. FOUR PAWS is an animal welfare organisation based in Switzerland whose goal is to gradually improve the living conditions of animals under direct human influence.

\In May 2022, an alliance of more than 75 animal welfare organisations, including FOUR PAWS, launched the 'Fur Free Europe' ECI. FOUR PAWS had campaigning for an end to fur production and fur sales in Europe for almost 35 years. The petition ran until May 2023 and aimed to achieve an EU-wide ban on the keep and killing of animals for the sole or main purpose of fur production, as well as placing farmed animal fur, and products containing such fur, on the EU market.

After launching the ECI on May 18, the alliance was very happy to see more than 100,000 people support an end of fur farming in the EU within the first month. In June, Finaldn, Denmark and Sweden passed their signature thresholds.

Then in August, Copenhagen Fashion Week sent an important signal to the fashion industry by choosing to ban fur from its runways. Latvia soon followed suit with a national fur ban that will come into force in 2028.

On the political level, FOUR PAWS contributed to a meeting of the Intergroup on the Welfare and Conservation of Animals at the EU parliament in Strasbourg, where fur farming and the ECI #FurFreeEurope were the main topics.

This is to show what has been achieved by companies previously and to motivate us and everyone who wants to end fur-farming that we can really achieve something beneficial.