For years, animal welfare is our main concern. With the highest regulated standards, Europe can be proud to perpetuate a long heritage of a sustainable activity with responsible practices.

This page is aimed at correcting the commonest misunderstandings of the fur-farming in Europe.

1) Fur animals are different, because their meat is not used
The fur sector wishes openly to point out that it is a form of production animal activity among others. Opposition is certainly permitted, but freedom of opinion and speech are the rights of all Irish, including fur animal breeders.
The public address does not actually question opposition in itself but, rather, the means whereby the objectives are sought. The agenda of the animal rights movement is the prohibition of all production animal activity. It has been easy to start from fur animal breeding because it is not the mainstream of production animal activity.

We wish to say that it is ethically just as sustainable (or unsustainable) to eat steaks and go about in leather shoes as it is to wear furs. As far as the animal is concerned, it does not make any difference what it is used for after death. The most important thing is how the animal is treated during life.

“In a meat-eating world, wearing leather for shoes and clothes and even handbags, the discussion of fur is childish”

Karl Lagerfeld, the Daily Telegraph, January 2009

2) Is fur cruelty to animals?
What is most significant as far as the animals are concerned is that they are cared for well. It is absurd to allege that a producer whose livelihood depends on the animals' welfare would not be concerned about it.
For the producers, the welfare of the animals is paramount. The majority of research on the behaviour of fur animals comes to the conclusion that fur animals are doing well and even better than other production animals in current production conditions (compilation drawn up by University of Kuopio researcher, Leena Ahola, Ph. D., of studies of the welfare of animals).

Video of modern fur animal breeding: (link to EFBA video “our truth on European fur farms”)

3) What about the fur-farming sector and the environment?
Fur animals are fed with slaughter by-products left over from other production animal farming (popularly referred to as slaughter waste), which are problem waste. If fur farms were not to make use of slaughter by-products, they would have to be dealt with according to the regulations on wastes of animal origin in separately approved waste processing plants. In that case, about 160,000 tons of waste would be gathered at dumps each year.

4) What can bring the fur-farming sector to the economy?
Fur production provides work in Ireland for up to 200 people living in rural areas where jobs are hard to come by and supports hundreds of families, It worth € 5 million in exports.

In the context of the global financial crisis and employment insecurity, is the ban proposal of the Green Party the right priority?

5) Prohibition and restriction of fur production in Europe
Even though fur production has been restricted or it has even been prohibited in some European countries, Europe is still the world's biggest fur production area. Nowhere else where production is carried on is there legislation or monitoring that is as stringent as it is here.

Prohibition does not improve the welfare of animals. There is a rise worldwide demand for furs, and fashion favours them. If the breeding of fur animals were to be prohibited in the EU, it would move to areas where the animals' conditions and the legislation on them are at a quite different level from here.
About Fur Breeding in Europe (http://www.efba-eu.com/fact_sheet.html)

In many prohibition legislations that have already been implemented (including Great Britain) or bills, the argument for the ban is not the welfare of the animals but, rather, ”public morality”. But is there one single definition of ethics? This policy means in practice that everything which one does not happen to like could be prohibited.