Minks, Sables Starve At Russian Fur Farm

By ANC Staff

In Russia, minks and sables at a well-known Moscow-region fur farm are dying from starvation, according to Russia’s Green Party.

The fur farm is crippled with debts of as much as 100 million rubles, and can no longer afford to buy the twelve tons of fish required each day to feed the animals it keeps in cages to be made into pelts, said the Green Party, which is pressuring authorities to save the animals.

Russia has traditionally been one of the top global producers of mink, sable and fox fur, but the industry has been declining in recent years, partly due to increased competition from foreign fur imports.

Since the mid-1990’s, the number of Russian fur farms has dropped from 200 to around 40, and the number of Russian-produced pelts has also dropped from 10 million to 2.5 million annually, while the numbers of pelts imported from outside Russia rose to 7 million, mostly minks.

Animal welfare groups worldwide have long campaigned for an end to the fur trade. Investigations carried out by People For the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), and other groups, have revealed that minks, sables, foxes and other wild animals in fur farms spend their lives confined in stacked, excrement-encrusted cages measuring between one and three feet square, packed with up to four animals per cage.

Undercover films by animal welfare activists show that these animals exist in a state of permanent, intense distress, and suffer from gruesome, untreated injuries as a result of self-mutilation. Stress and boredom cause continual, crazed circling and pacing and even the cannibalization of cage-mates.

Animals are eventually slaughtered either by neck-breaking, suffocation, or genital or anal electrocution. Others are merely stunned, and then skinned alive.

© 2003 Animal News Center, Inc.