What language are those people speaking?
And what kind of horrible person would do something like that? Not only does it make your work much harder, it is pointlessly cruel. A dead animal doesn’t twitch and try to scratch you while you skin it, a live one will. Unless you’re aiming from some delicious rabies, it’s better to just kill the thing.
I won’t watch the video but when I lived in Singapore I noticed that the open air markets prided themselves on killing what you were buying right in front of you. Sea turtles cut open with small saws, their hearts still beating. Chickens, etc., This video isn’t really representative of the fur industry so much as it’s probably a local horror based on the idea that the customer wants to make sure what he’s buying is “fresh.” What? Peta misrepresenting something to drive their point home using shock?!?
Still, smack it on the head first goddam it. That’s what I remember thinking when I was 15.
The worst thing I saw was live cats being dipped into a cauldron of boiling water. I think it was for their meat and the water was there to remove the fur easily - my family didn’t stick around. The cats made horrible noises as they were lifted out and re-dipped into the water. Pointlessly cruel. This was across the straits though, in Malaysia. It’s still etched on my brain. So I’m not watching this video, thanks.
I could only watch about 10 seconds. :cry: Though I’ve had to “remove” many raccoons from our area due to fact they were destroying all the other native wildlife… I always did it painlessly (Carbon Monoxide).
What country is that? I’m disgusted by people who can kill stuff so heartlessly like that. I practically cried each time I had to put down a raccoon… and when one of our fish gets sick and we have to euthanize it. :cry: :cry:
Sometimes I think humans are the worst thing that ever happened to this planet.
I think I’d place the (supposed) asteroid that killed the dinosaurs slightly above humanity on the “aw, poor planet” scale.
Bub’s right, this is almost certainly a local thing, and chances are the cameraman was a PETA person specifically requesting those things be done to the animals so they could get that shock video out there. It doesn’t even make sense to skin an animal alive. Far higher chance of damaging or miscutting the pelt while it struggles.
Still, as the video shows, it happened to some poor raccoon out there, and some guy presumably still sleeps at night despite doing that to it. Creepy.
What makes you think skinning for US fur sales is done in the US?
Nothing. But this is clearly an unorthodox practice (the live skinning, not necessarily the dogs and other animals kept in cages). The fur trade is a sordid business no matter how you slice it or where you go, but I find it difficult to believe this video depicts a common thing.
Ok, what makes you think live skinning is a) unorthodox or b) only done for local markets in Asia?
Live skinning is unorthodox, because, as any amateur taxidermist will tell you, it is FAR EASIER to skin an animal once rigor mortis sets it. The process is to kill the animal, wait for rigor mortis, then skin it. Or, freeze it.
There must have been some special reason that this skinner did what he did. The client wanted the skins right then and there, perhaps.
Or they were doing it to make a shocking video, or they were just assholes.
It’s a shame the Administration wouldn’t use its promise to go after terrorists where ever they might hide and have the 101st storm the PETA headquaters building.
It’d probably help his recent slide in the polls.
Ah, ok.
Uh, am I the only one who finds taking the Chinese fur industry’s view as a definitive rebuttal strange?
What the hell?
McCullough- Can you think of why you’d prefer to skin the animal alive as a skinner? What benefit would there be?
Nobody is taking the Chinese fur industries as a definitive rebuttal, but it doesn’t make much sense to skin a moving animal. Their list of “reasons not to skin living animals” makes a lot of sense to me. Granted, I know nothing about skinning, but come on. It’s not as if PETA is a disinterested party.
PETA at their most fanatical are essentially anti-human terrorists. Scary, scary folks.
It also “doesn’t make sense” for a bunch of other things the fur industry and other animal industries do, so I’m not sure how that’s a defense.
The websites I can find talking about this refer to some “are for the Wild International (CFTWI), Swiss Animal Protection and EAST International year-long investigation into Chinese fur farms.” Guess that what it’s based on?
http://www.careforthewild.com/newsstory.asp?apid=65
PDF of report: http://www.careforthewild.com/generalimages/Furreport05pdf.pdf
Animals are slaughtered adjacent to wholesale markets, where farmers bring their animals for sale and large companies come to buy stock. To get there, animals are often transported over large distances and under terrible conditions before being slaughtered. Workers extract animals from their cages using a capture pole with a noose at the end. Sometimes the animals are held suspended by their necks for some time and carried around. Workers then grab the animal by its hind legs and, using a metal or wooden stick, repeatedly strike the fox, raccoon dog or mink on the head. Alternatively, they may swing it head-first against the ground. These actions are intended to stun the animal. The animals struggle or convulse and lie trembling or barely moving on the ground. The worker then stands by to watch whether the animal remains more or less immobile. Many, whilst immobile, remain alive. Skinning begins with a knife at the rear of the belly whilst the animal lies on its back or is hung upsidedown by its hind legs from a hook. In one case, this took place next to a truck which collected the carcasses - for human consumption. Starting from the hind legs, workers then wrench the animal’s skin from its suspended body, until it comes off over the head. We were able to observe and document that a significant number of animals remain fully conscious during the skinning process and started to writhe and move around. Workers used the handle of the knife to beat the animals’ head repeatedly until they became motionless once again. Other workers stepped on the animal’s head or neck to strangle it or hold it down. Animals that had not been fully stunned or regained consciousness during skinning struggled helplessly, trying to defend themselves to the very end. Even after their skin has been stripped off, breathing, heartbeat, directional body and eyelid movements were evident for up to 5 to 10 minutes.
I also am incredulous at the hyperventilating rhetoric about PETA. Yes, they’re anti-human terrorists; that’s why they’re out they’re doing such awful things, like, uh…yeah.
I saw a porn movie called “Chinese Fur Farm.” I also saw one called “China Leather Industry,” but it wasn’t really my sort of thing.
I remember reading once that dogs and other animals are tortured and skinned alive in Korea because the fear and agony of the suffering causes the release of adrenalin, which apparently flavors meat and makes it more of a delicacy. Read that on a site I stumbled across one night while looking for sites on Huskies. Some dog sites have links to anti-animal cruelty sites. Clicked a couple once and discovered some truly horrific pics and videos of how dogs and cats are butchered/boiled in Korea. So I didn’t go anywhere near this link.
And, man, I hate PETA with a passion as well, but it seems crazy to credit it with making clips like this when it’s well known how animals are “prepared” as food in the Far East. If PETA’s making this stuff, then it’s making a fuck of a lot of it, because there are all kinds of sites online documenting how horribly animals are treated in Korea, China, etc. Start looking for general dog sites and you can’t help but find all sorts of pages with videos, pics, and personal testimony.
I’ve never been in a fur factory, but the early parts of my career had me spending far too much time in beef, pork and poultry slaughter operations. Sometimes, the various forms of kill machines/ techniques do stuff up, but those are pretty rare. It’s pretty difficult to handle an animal in a state of pain and panic, so the operators are very focused on quick, clean kills. Otherwise, the product can damage itself, other animals or the operators. I suspect those videos were staged.
Also, pigs scream. Unlike cows and poultry, pigs seem to know what’s happening in an abbatoir. I don’t eat a lot of pork anymore.
It’s something of an open secret that PETA provides both moral and financial support to the Animal Liberation Front, which despite public claims of non-violence, has been responsible for a number of incidents involving breaking and entering, theft, vandalism, arson and threats against individuals who directly or indirectly work for companies or organizations they don’t like. The FBI has gone on record as stating that ALF is the “most active domestic terrorism group in the country”.
Rodney Coronado is a convicted ALF arsonist who’s received more than $70,000 from PETA and routinely goes to colleges to talk about the damage he’s inflicted on corporate and university research centers that use animal testing.
There are other organizations that PETA supports, such as SHAC (Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty) have also been known to promote a terrorist approach towards their cause. Last year seven of SHAC’s members were
arrested by the feds on “terrorism-related” charges. The organization itself received five federal indictments over criminal actions including “assault including spraying cleaning fluid into one’s eyes,” “smashing the windows of one’s house,” firebombing cars, threatening to “kill or injure one’s partner or children,” and “arranging for an undertaker to call to collect one’s body.”
PETA Communications Director Lisa Lange defended SHAC in the New Jersey Star-Ledger, calling them “longtime activists and well respected.” Last year the US Senate held a hearing on animal-rights violence, in which PETA released an official statement warning that, “Those who make peaceful change impossible make violent revolution inevitable.”
True; also a selective application of moral outrage. I don’t give money to PETA, I don’t support violent action, I don’t support property destruction not directly incidental to a moral outrage, and I’m ambivalent when it is, but using the “they gave money or rhetorical support to people who have done X criteria” there’s a limitless number of absurd ways to convert you into a terrorist organization:
I have a bit of a blind spot for the mainstream liberal faction, but I’m sure someone can fill that in for me; otherwise, I think that covers most of the political factions.
Anyway, unless you’re willing to use the criticism uniformally, I think it’s an excuse, not a reason.
As to what else they’ve done that’d justify the rhetoric: nothing I can think of.