Horrifying footage showing a cannibalised mink, a decomposing fox and freezing cold cubs at fur farms in Finland has emerged, exposing the sickening nature of the fur industry that sees millions of pounds spent in the UK alone every year.
The video, filmed by animal rights group Humane Society International, was taken in the world’s second-largest fur exporter and shows animals throwing themselves against the side of their cage and a fox’s corpse being trampled.
Fur farms were banned in the UK almost 20 years ago, however animal fur imports were allowed to continue, and have amounted to £820 million according to campaigners.
Warning, this video contains extremely distressing scenes of animal cruelty:
It’s hoped these harrowing clips, taken at 13 different farms between April and October this year, will refresh calls for a full ban on fur imports in the UK.
In one of the clips, a fox had decomposed to the point its bones were sticking out and it was being trampled on by other animals trapped in the cage. In another, tiny babies were hung with all four of their limbs stuck through the wire caging.
According to fur farm investigator and executive director of Humane Society International, Claire Bass, animals in these kinds of cages can be electrocuted, killed and skinned at as young as just eight months old.
As per Mail Online, she said:
Around two and a half million are kept like this and killed every single year for the fur trade of which the UK is a part.
It’s just impossible to imagine how anyone justifies thinking that this is an acceptable way to keep animals.
The suffering is just so totally unacceptable. It’s so unnecessary and that’s why we need to consign the fur trade to the history books.
TOWIE star Pete Wicks visited a fur farm where around 4,000 were being kept and he recalled the smell and noise as being ‘indescribable.’
Alongside his campaign with Humane Society, he said:
To be purchasing anything that is from a farm that is like this what you’re saying is this is an okay way to treat animals.
An investigation by Humane Society International last year found mink, foxes and raccoon dogs forced to tear each other apart as they suffered in appalling conditions.
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Emma Rosemurgey is an NCTJ trained Journalist who started her career by producing The Royal Rosemurgey newspaper in 2004, which kept her family up to date with the goings on of her sleepy north east village. She graduated from the University of Central Lancashire in Preston and started her career in regional newspapers before joining Tyla (formerly Pretty 52) in 2017, and progressing onto UNILAD in 2019.