This is regarding “Fur’s hot again; The animal-rights message has skipped a generation,” by Tribune staff reporter Wendy Navratil (Q, Jan. 18).
I saw an attempt at a fair and balanced report of contemporary views on the current state of the fur industry, but after closer inspection, it was obvious that the report was nothing more than a fluff piece meant to promote fur sales.
While the animal-rights point of view was touched upon, the point of view of those who profit from denying animals the most basic right (a life free from bondage and murder) were obviously given greater consideration in this piece. One has to wonder why Navratil only interviewed young women who embrace wearing fur. Believe me, I know plenty of very fashionable women and men who would never wear the pelts of animals tortured in leg-hold traps or gas chambers or those who died having their neck snapped, their anus or genitals electrocuted or the life taken from them through drowning.
The very pro-fur Fur Information Council has a great reason to convince your readers that they represent a fine and upstanding industry: They make billions of dollars from the violent death of billions of animals. Pro-animal organizations question animal agriculture out of concern for the animals who are enslaved, denied their natural instinctual drives and ultimately killed for human greed; they only profit when an animal is spared a cruel death.
Organizations such as PETA often employ questionable tactics but so does the fur industry by shoving fur down our throats by draping it on vapid Hollywood starlets and on MTV video performers.
Despite activist Tom Regan’s lamenting in the story about the state of the anti-fur movement, there are still many fine organizations willing to fight the good fight.
