Thursday, July 31, 2008

HELP DOGS AND CATS ABUSED IN THE FUR INDUSTRY

What you won't see in this week's Olympic coverage

Dear Christopher,

Animals need you to be a PETA member. Please renew your support today.PETA is seizing the international spotlight of the Summer Olympics to help animals by exposing the nightmarish conditions for dogs, cats, and other animals who are unlucky enough to be on Chinese fur farms.

China is one of the world's largest suppliers of animal fur. More than 95 percent of China's finished fur garments are exported for sale overseas, and much of it is sold in North America.

The video footage from PETA's undercover investigations on Chinese fur farms have revealed that dogs—including German shepherds and golden retrievers—and defenseless tabby and Siamese cats were strung up by their legs or tails and skinned alive. Their fur is often labeled as "Asian jackal," "rabbit," or "raccoon" fur and sold to unwitting consumers around the world.

If someone feels uncomfortable wearing the skin of a kitten or a puppy, they should certainly be uncomfortable wearing the skins of rabbits, raccoons, and other animals.

As our undercover video footage reveals, the suffering of dogs, cats, and other animals in China's fur industry is extreme. After spending their lives crammed together in filthy, homemade wire-mesh cages, they are thrown onto trucks and bludgeoned, poisoned, electrocuted, or even boiled alive before their skin is ripped off their bodies. Some animals in the video footage are still conscious and look up at the camera while they are skinned.

I hope that you will make a donation to PETA to help our work for animals who are caught up in China's wretched fur industry. Please help us push harder with our global campaign to stop the torture of animals for their fur. The support of caring individuals like you is the best hope for ending this horrific industry.

As you know, there is absolutely no acceptable use of animal fur in our society: not for jackets, hats, boots, purses, glove linings, trinkets, cat toys, consumer vanity, or corporate greed. Killing animals for their skin is repugnant, intolerable, and cruel.

Yet the slaughter of innocent animals continues.

But working together, we can save millions of individual animals in China and around the world from suffering. Please make your special gift to help animals today.

Because of supporters like you, PETA has been able to reduce the suffering of so many animals already. We've convinced some of the world's leading designers and retailers—including Calvin Klein, Tommy Hilfiger, Polo Ralph Lauren, and Ann Taylor—to adopt permanent no-fur policies, and countless people have agreed to stop wearing and buying fur. But we have much, much more to do before all animal suffering for the sake of fashion ends.

Please help us devastate this industry, which thrives on animal misery. Your donation to PETA today will turn up the heat on the Chinese government to close these cruel fur farms and auctions, and it will help convince more people all over the world to say "No" to fur forever.

Thank you for standing up for animals' rights.

Kind regards,


Ingrid E. Newkirk
President

P.S. PETA's anti-fur campaign is truly global: We target companies everywhere that supply and sell fur, from Chinese fur farms to North American retailers, like the Burlington Coat Factory, that continue to sell fur. But we need your support to get our investigators inside these operations, mobilize our grassroots activists, and conduct our hard-hitting media campaigns. Your online donation to PETA today can help us save animals who are in danger of being tortured and killed for their skin.


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