Zerba: Compassion is the Fashion

By Alexandra Zerba

Each year, more than 40 million animals are killed for fashion. Whether used as a full-length coat or simple trim, fur represents senseless pain and suffering. Enduring the excruciating pain of a leghold trap or a lifetime of agony in a tiny cage, the animals suffer immensely.

Unable to eat, keep warm, or defend themselves against predators, many animals caught in steel-jaw leghold traps die horrible deaths before the trapper arrives to kill them. Others suffer in the traps for days until they are caught and killed.

Farm-raised fur comes from animals kept in tiny, filthy cages deprived of adequate protection from the elements. There are no U.S. laws regulating how animals on fur farms are to be housed or killed. The techniques used to kill animals on fur farms includes neck snapping, anal electrocution and carbon monoxide or dioxide “gas chambers” that often prolong the death of animals and allow them to regain consciousness while being skinned.

With so many fashionable fur alternatives available today, there is no excuse for wearing animal skins. We are not survivalists. To cause the suffering and death of other sentient beings for pleasure is wrong. In a society that has become obsessed with materialism, we have an obligation to maintain a decent standard of ethics, which at the very least includes preventing animal cruelty.

Please put an end to this suffering. Do not support the fur industry - go faux.

Alexandra Zerba lives in Bow.