Please help to try and ban cat and dog fur

[CultureJunky]

Last night on UK television (I live in Wales), there was a documentary about Heather Mills Mccartney's fight against fur and in particular her fight to get a European band on Cat and Dog fur. These animals are treated with ultimate depravity, strangled, stabbed and many skinned alive for their fur. On this particular program the video footage was the most disturbing I've seen, seeing cats and dogs sqaushed into tiny crates, unable to move or breath properly, being kicked around, poked and beaten, with footage on one alsation being skinned alive screaming, though this was very short and didn't show everything, but you got the idea.
I am ulimately sickened by this and simply cannot believe this is going on.
Cat and Dog fur is banned by the US, and also banned in France, Italy, Greece, Belgium and Denmark, but now with the EU every growing other countries are still importing this fur and undertaking this sick depravity themselves to sell abroad. The UK has yet to ban it (which I am shocked by) as they say they have not seen evidence of real cat and dog fur in the UK yet.
I am going to try and write to various ministers in the UK and also abroad about this calling for a ban, there are also petitions to sign and lots of other information on Heather's website which I have put a link to below. There is lots of information about how you can write to various embassies etc and try to get the message across.
Although I think the majority of people on here live in the US, I believe you can still write letters and try to get your voice heard in Europe.
Thanks
Kate

Heathers Website:

http://www.heathermillsmccartney.com/index.php

About the trade in dog and cat fur:

http://www.heathermillsmccartney.com/dogcatfur.php

[Pawsitive Thinking]

Read something about an Alsation being skinned alive so couldn't bring myself to watch the programme. Thanks for the links - I'll be joining the fight!

Have signed the petition and my letter will be in the post today

[Lori Jordan]

OMG! those were herrific,the things people do(Shakes Head)

[IRescue452]

Its not just cats and dogs that go through this torture.

[elizabethann]

I saw a show on this very issue awhile back. Very sad and disturbing.

[Sevaede]

Its not just cats and dogs that go through this torture.

I know, poor things. My sister explained to me (with excruciating detail :( ) about a video she saw on the net. She said that some folks had these foxes and would: chop off their legs, skin them alive, and toss them in a pile of other ones just like it. It was so terrible. =(

[Miss Z]

CultureJunky, I watched that programme too with my friend (cavylove, here on PT). It was so shocking and both of us got quite angry about it, it's so cruel, pointless and totally barbaric.

I felt my stomach drop when the programme showed the clip of about four dogs, cramped in a tiny cage no higher than my computer screen and not much longer than a metre, were kicked by a Chinese man off the back of a truck and went crashing to the floor. The alsatian being skinned alive was terrible, the screams that poor dog made, it made me feel physically sick. Also I can't believe that people like fur. What is so attractive about about a dog's or even a boar's head on a hat, or a fox wrapped around a model's shoulders, that an animal has to be brutally slaughtered for? We are not living in an age where we need to wear skins anymore.

What really shocked me was that a lot of this cat and dog fur is being sold as fake, and people are unsuspectingly buying it. In Britain, there is no official label which proves the fur is fake, so it can be disguised very easily. Fur should just be banned altogether to prevent the problem.

Helen Mills McCartney should be admired for all the hard work she does. I would love to go campaigning with her to end this horrible and violent treatment of animals. CultureJunky, I am glad you are writing to ministers, I think I will drop them a line too.

[CultureJunky]

Miss Z, that part on the truck broke my heart too.
I just felt so incensed by what was on there I thought I have to write a letter, maybe it will do good, maybe it won't, but I just thought to myself I can't sit back and not at least try to help. I have the address of the Chinese prime minister, Hu Jintao, and I'm going to write a letter to him, explaining what is going on in his own country and ask if he'll make fur illegal in China, or at least if they are going to have fur (which people seem to be most stubborn about) then they MUST have some kind of law which states that the animals must be kept humanly and killed humanely (if that can make sense). I think fur is disgusting, and would never have anything like that, but I think the way these animals are treated just goes too far.
Even if there is not a ban on fur, there should be laws and tight restrictions on the way the animals are kept and slaughtered, so at least they don't spend their lives in pain, humiliation and fear.
I am also going to write a letter to Tony Blair and ask if he'll help to get a European Ban on the imports from China and other countries. I have the address of my MEP Glenys Kinnock who I will also write too.
I guess people could even write to a celebrity about it and ask them if they'll join. The bigger the better, if only somebody like say David Beckham would get on board it would give the campaign a big boost of publicity.
I've never written a letter to a politician before, so I don't want to make it too wordy and drone on that they won't listen, but just state the facts and ask for help. Hopefully somebody will at least read them and reply about it.