Israel has become the first country in the world to ban the sale of fur fashion. The ban will be effective in six months but it will include some exceptions for “scientific research, education or instruction and for religious purposes or traditions”. This would allow the sale of shtreimels—fur hats, usually made from sables and foxes tails and traditionally worn on Shabbat and Jewish holidays by many married haredi men. @GilaGamliel
“Commerce in animal fur, imports and exports, will be banned,” the Environment Ministry Gila Gamliel said when she passed the ban into law. After signing the regulations, she also added: “The fur industry causes the death of hundreds of millions of animals worldwide, and inflicts indescribable cruelty and suffering. Using the skin and fur of wildlife for the fashion industry is immoral and is certainly unnecessary. Animal fur coats cannot cover the brutal murder industry that makes them. Signing these regulations will make the Israeli fashion market more environmentally friendly and far kinder to animals.”
Animals exploited in the fur farm industry spend their lives confined to cramped and filthy cages. Most of them are sick and stressed and they live all together in unsanitary conditions increasing the chance to spread zoonosis. Furthermore, farmers use deplorable killing methods against them, including neck-breaking, suffocation, poisoning, and genital electrocution.
We should remember that cases of coronavirus have been recently discovered in mink fur farms in a dozen countries – including Canada, Denmark, France, Greece, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Sweden and the U.S.—resulting in a mass slaughter of tens of millions of animals.
Fur farming has been prohibited or is in the process of being phased-out in numerous countries such as Austria, Belgium, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Czech Republic, Croatia, Estonia, Hungary, Macedonia, Netherlands, Norway, Luxembourg, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, UK. There are also other nations, such as France and Ireland, where politicians are debating about the ban.
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