Undercover investigation reveals horrific animal cruelty at Swedish mink farms, please help

1. Please sign HERE

2. Pledge and share HERE

3. Protest Swedish fur arms: New York and United Kingdom

4. Tell them how you feel. Unable to protest in person? Please take a few moments to email the embassy(ies) in your country with your own message or copy one of the SAMPLE LETTERS below; modify and shorten if you use one, however, if possible.

5. Watch the VIDEO below and share.

Swedish embassies and consulates listed by country HERE
Swedish embassies and consulates listed by city HERE

From Animal Rights Alliance

For the past year-and-a-half, the Animal Rights Alliance investigation unit has been mapping out the Swedish fur industry. We have combed through environmental inspection protocols, court documents and research reports and what’s more – we have visited one-fifth of the 75 mink farms in Sweden to see them for ourselves. We have discovered major environmental violations by an industry that is already highly-criticized. Above all we have discovered the mink. Clever, beautiful wild mink imprisoned in shed after shed, housing row after row of small dirty cages. Mink that will never see any water beyond what comes out of a water nipple, even though they are hunters that naturally spend half of their life in water. Mink that express so-called stereotypical behavior, endless repetitive motion without purpose, a feeble attempt at dealing with stress and frustration.

We already knew that this would be the case. We were prepared for meeting curious eyes behind bars from animals that are so psychologically-broken that they incessantly circle their cages. We knew that it would be bad, but reality on the farms was worse than we could have ever imagined.

We understood that the mortality rate would be high. Several reports show that one out of every four or five animals die before they reach 6 months of age. But we didn’t know how they die – and how they suffer. Now we know. We have seen pups chewing on their dead littermates, entire litters where every animals has had its ear bitten off; young animals with gaping wounds on their heads; and fully-grown mink that twist and turn in agony, screaming in panic from pain and illness that minutes later ceases but only with their death.

Undercover footage

Vodpod videos no longer available.

It has been terrible to see all of this without being able to do anything about it. On our worst days, we felt completely powerless. But we’ve been driven to continue toward our goal – to make public the horrific animal cruelty that occurs on the farms. This animal cruelty cannot continue in silence.

The fourth paragraph of the Animal Welfare Act clearly states that all animals must be allowed to express their natural behaviours and that they must be protected from unnecessary suffering. But Sweden continues to allow mink to be bred and kept in mesh cages that are no bigger than 30 x 90 centimeters before being killed to produce an unnecessary luxury product that nobody needs. In 2003, the Swedish Commission of Inquiry into the Fur Industry gave Swedish fur farms until 2010 to comply with the Animal Welfare Act. Seven years later we can conclude that the Swedish fur industry has done nothing to improve conditions for mink on fur farms. It is high-time that the fur industry is made history.

The Animal Rights Alliance is a not-for-profit campaigning group that speaks for the animals. Founded in 2005, we have since then brought about the criminalization of bestiality, organized five veggie food conventions and exposed the Swedish pork industry through undercover investigation. Our work for the animals is completely dependent on donations, supporting members and active volunteers.

STEREOTYPICAL BEHAVIOR
“Animals shall be kept and maintained in an environment that furthers their good health and allows them to behave naturally”. – Animal Welfare Act (1988:534), 4 §

We have filmed evidence of stereotypical behavior on thirteen of the fifteen farms that we visited. The stereotypes, by which we mean incessant repetitive motion that serves no purpose, is a feeble attempt by the mink to deal with stress and frustration. It is a common symptom of an animal’s natural needs not being met.

“The majority of mink show typical signs of derangement that animals express when confined to areas that are too constrictive” – Sverre Sjölander, Professor in Zoology.

SICK AND INJURED ANIMALS
“A sick or injured animal shall be given necessary medical attention, if the illness or injury isn’t severe enough to justify the animal being put down immediately”.

Animal Welfare Act (1988:534) § 9.

We have found sick animals with infected eyes and ear; unconscious, convulsive and dead animals were found on two-thirds of the farms. Maimed, bleeding animals with torn-off ears, large gaping head wounds and missing limps were found on eleven of the fifteen visited farms. The horrific injuries are the result of fights caused by crowding in shockingly small cages – in the wild mink interact only to mate – but the injuries are also oftentimes caused by self-mutilation. According to 2 § of the Animal Welfare Act, animals are to be “treated well and are to be protected from unnecessary suffering and illness”.

“If a cow becomes sick, then we’re called immediately. But the mink are so many that if one animal becomes sick, then we’re not called – the animal has too little economic value for the farmer. We only get called if there is an epidemic. But every animal has an intrinsic value and the Animal Welfare Act clearly states that if an animal becomes sick, then it must be treated or euthanised. Large farms like mink farms have so many animals that it can take time before illness is discovered.”

– My Leffler, District Veterinarian who used to work on mink farms.

DEAD ANIMALS IN THE CAGES
On 80% of the farms, we found dead animals in the cages – in most cases, the carcasses were left among other living animals. In many cases, the carcasses had been half-eaten by their mother and siblings.

“ In the natural world, it isn’t normal for a mink to be forced to be around another dead mink. When it happens on a farm, it can lead to cannibalism because they are so under stimulated and don’t know how to react to the situation” – Mark Collins, Veterinarian

DIRTY CAGES
On 67% of the farms, we found cages where large amounts of faeces had piled up, oftentimes in thick layers. Mink avoid their own feces so when the cage fills up with waste, an already small space becomes even smaller.

ILLEGAL SEWAGE RUNOFF
Manure runoff could be documented at 80% of the farms. Mink manure contains high levels of nitrogen and phosphorus and causes contamination of water and soil if leaked out into the environment. Mink farms are therefore classified as environmentally-hazardous operations. By law, manure must be stored in such a way that it is sheltered from rain while preventing soil seepage.

ILLEGAL HANDLING OF CARCASSES
“Carcasses awaiting transport shall be stored in such a way that disease cannot be spread through contact with wild animals. The waste shall be stored separate from living animals” – Board of Agriculture Regulations 2009:6, section K 14.

Dead mink that had been left to rot throughout and around the farm property, or were otherwise disposed of improperly, were found on 73% of the farms, even though all carcasses must be immediately removed and stored, preferably frozen. Many carcasses had been left to rot for at least 6 months, since the pelting season last November.

CANNIBALISM
We have documented cannibalism on half of the farms. Mink females that kill their young and littermates that kill and eat one another is more the rule than the exception. Cannibalism is caused by stress and lack of stimulation. The mink have no release for their hunting instincts and those mink that fall victim to attack have no possibility to take flight or cover in their tiny cages.

“Animals on fur farms have high levels of stress and this can cause cannibalism” – My Leffler, Veterinarian.

SAMPLE LETTERS

SAMPLE LETTER ONE
To Whom It Concerns,

I am writing today to share my concern regarding your country’s endorsement of the fur industry; the industries that engage in the deliberate victimization of animals, their suffering, and their hideous deaths, are regarded not as cruel but endorsed as economically efficient, adopting human-manufactured definitions to exonerate itself.

Although I find it important to establish an understanding in the spirit of respectful dialogue, I will abandon my customary request and instead adopt a more unforgiving approach; your “humane” assertions to ensure that only those animals who are treated humanely are killed for their fur is a self-serving effort to solicit approval on behalf of the savage industry your country commercially supports and promotes. Allow me to correct what I believe is your gross misinformation and erroneous statements. When the fur industry refers to “humane” protocols, it is, indeed, only considering humans: welfare is defined by the butchers and the profiteers of the fur and skin industries. These are neither humane nor compassionate practices and are adopted to serve humans, not animals.

Indeed, the only benefactor of welfarist implements are people who are seeking ethical approval as the result of such as well as the industries who desire relief from the pressure of opponents. Any animal, regardless of surroundings or treatments, who is viciously killed, regardless of age, is treated in an inherently-barbaric manner; humane killing is an oxymoron, a myth, a contradiction of actions: it is impossible to deliberately slaughter an animal for such frivolity and regard it as a humane action. In fact, killing unnecessarily without regard to the animal’s right to life is the embodiment of suffering; a life that is prematurely, egotistically, and violently terminated cannot be characterized as “cruelty-free”, a human characterization you embrace for your advantage, not the animal’s. Are you aware that the accepted slaughtering standard for the fur industry is to skin alive? It imparts the least damage to a pelt, and animals are frequently subjected to this vicious and barbaric slaughter method. Would you consider that a demonstration of a “good life” with no “harm”?

Watch the undercover footage of the industry your country callously promotes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_8Ko-9uKRs

Further depravity as documented on your farms and illustrated in Horror Revealed on Swedish Fur Farms; visit the following link(s):
Swedish version: http://www.sveketmotminkarna.se
English version: http://www.sveketmotminkarna.se/horror-revealed-swedish-fur-farms

Humans are capable, indeed obligated, to acknowledge animals as sentient beings who, like humans, experience love, anguish, pain, and suffering. Human apathy as established by the usage of fabrications and euphemisms reflects a lack of respect, not only for animals, but also for humans, and I implore upon you to examine your role in the suffering of animals and your unscrupulous conduct as host to such a cruel business. As such, as long as you unnecessarily and selfishly capitalizes on the mutilation, torture, and death of animals, I will not financially support your country or your associated products or exports. Furthermore, I will share this information with family, friends, colleagues, and members of online communities.

Please make both the ethical and responsible decision to discontinue your country’s commercial support of fur immediately: join an increasing body of people who are listening to a concerned and attentive social network and consumer population who refuse to be complicit in the inherently malicious industry of fur farming. As such, I hope this letter finds you willing to scrutinize your own involvement and desire to protect rather than harm animals.

NAME
ADDRESS

SAMPLE LETTER TWO
To Whom It Concerns,

I am writing to you today regarding fur farming, and after watching a compelling and disturbing video created by Animal Rights Alliance, the link to which I’ve included, I am encouraging you to enact a complete ban.

Please allow me to elaborate. As is established in the included footage, these animals are given no comforts or consideration, any improvements cost-prohibitive, any laws marginal considering the gross abuse and extensive hellish conditions. As is demonstrated, they are subjected to a variety of cruelties and pain while denied companionship and comfort, their suffering both obvious and prolonged; they are incapacitated, forced to endure disease both internally and visibly, made to exist in a cesspool of conditions. When their lives have reached a concluding growth if not a premature death, in a human culmination of indecency, they are genitally electrocuted, anally electrocuted, gassed, or skinned alive, standard industry killing protocols chosen to inflict the least pelt damage.

To actually contribute to such depravity is so shameful, a waste of human ingenuity and empathy. Human animals possess compassion, but like the moral cornerstone of conscience and decency, it has decayed, eroded by egotism, greed, and self-serving purpose. Contrary to our adopted status of superiority granting ourselves permission to subject non-human animals to global exploitation and suffering, extinction of species, ruination of ecologies, and perversion of thought, all species possess an inherent right to live free from deliberate maltreatment, savagery, and death. Humans perceive the world as our stage, to manipulate parts and roles in creating a production celebrating only our species, but what we have instead written is a tragedy, complete with pain, complacency, apathy, and killing.

I hope you are willing to examine this unprincipled behaviour based on human-defined goals and determine to reject such complicity instead. This is not an ambiguous goal with intangible benefits, this is a fundamental application of justice and our ethical responsibility to extend a gesture of consideration beyond our rigid definition of necessity and validation. To intentionally cause such considerable abuse while disguising it as personal need is not an altruistic pursuit based on an overwhelming concern for humans, it is, rather and indeed, an acceptance of human failure, indifference, and insignificance. We are not made better because of our ability to enslave and kill others, we merely define it as such to justify it; instead, by failing to observe our potential to incorporate non-human animals as deserving of equitable treatments and values, we ignore our capacity to regard human animals as such, too.

Please do not confuse your commerce-inspired toleration with immunity, the victims’ pain and suffering not disposable like your ethics, at will as you design. Not many people outside the wealthy and greedy consider fur as anything other than the bloody business it represents, a cost of maliciousness for the pomposity of the few, and this global collective will voice censure of your country to condemn your actions. Indeed, as long as you capitalize on the deliberate exploitation of animals, I will promote a boycott of your country and products, resulting in both an international rejection of Sweden as a country complicit in the unnecessary abuse of animals. I therefore hope this letter finds you willing to consider your contribution to the violent treatment of animals and decide to instead extend compassion rather than embrace cruelty.

To view Horror Revealed on Swedish Fur Farms visit the following link(s):
Swedish version: http://www.sveketmotminkarna.se
English version: http://www.sveketmotminkarna.se/horror-revealed-swedish-fur-farms

Thank you for your attention to this urgent issue.

NAME
ADDRESS