Backlash awaits if Government back-pedals on fur imports ban
LANDING on my desk this week was a set of pictures that would leave anyone with a shred of humanity furious.
Marked with a warning about their content, they showed raccoons being brutally bludgeoned to death with a baseball bat after having had their legs almost snapped in half by a powerful trap. Other images – as well as video – showed a dead fox in an iron snare that had struggled so hard to free himself that his leg had snapped clean through.
Another displayed the bloody toe of a coyote torn off and left in the jaws of a trap during the animal’s escape.
The trapper added the limb to his gruesome souvenir collection of other previously retrieved toes displayed on the dashboard of his truck.
The pictures and footage had been collected in the States as part of an investigation released by Born Free USA, in collaboration with Humane Society International. Its findings were sickening to look at. What made them all the more reprehensible was the reason behind their release – the UK Government considering U-turning on a bill that would see the ban of fur imports.
Trapping animals for their skins with leg-hold traps has rightly been banned in the UK for more than 60 years, while fur farming has been outlawed since 2003, because it is considered so cruel.
Since then, Britain has shamelessly imported more than £800 million-worth of pelts from countries including America, Finland, China, France and Poland, where tormented animals such as foxes and mink suffer in brutal battery cages.
Coyotes, beavers and other animals are also caught and killed in the wild, often using murderous traps that are banned in the UK. Quite rightly, the Government is facing a backlash over reports it plans to back-pedal on a proposed ban of fur and foie gras imports as part of the Animals Abroad Bill. Such a move would highlight a shameful double standard, given our ban on trapping.
Millions have voiced their outrage, while some MPs, to their credit, have threatened a parliamentary rebellion against Boris Johnson if he overturns current legislation.
Bondi Beach has witnessed less flip flops than this Government – we cannot let the Prime Minister perform another. Mr Johnson would do well to look at the photographs I received this week and see for himself the awful brutality of the fur business.
As long as the UK continues to import and sell fur from animals caught in the wild or bred on factory farms, we remain complicit in cruelty.
As a nation of animal lovers, we can’t be a party to this abhorrent trade.
I know that the Prime Minister likes to keep us all in the dark, but no longer are we living in the dark ages.
VOLODYMYR Zelensky powerfully invoked Martin Luther King telling US lawmakers, “I have a need”, as he pleaded with America to do more to end Russia’s war on Ukraine.
Delivering a heart-wrenching speech to Congress, the Ukrainian President said his country was going through its own 9/11 and Pearl Harbour “every day”.
Imploring Joe Biden to take more action, Zelensky made a passionate case that Vladimir Putin’s invasion of his country was an attack on democracy that deserves US and allied protection. “I see no sense in life if it cannot stop the deaths,” he said via video link from his bunker in Kyiv.
Zelensky continues to provide us all with a masterclass in how true leaders and politicians should conduct themselves.
The White House and Number 10 should take note.
As a nation of animal lovers, we can’t be a party to this abhorrent trade
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LEC Baldwin’s smugness knows no bounds.
Not content with saying anyone was to blame but himself for his accidental fatal shooting of a cinematographer while on set, he now claims his movie contract makes him financially untouchable over the death.
In a filing by his lawyers in a wrongful death lawsuit brought by Halyna Hutchins’ widower, the actor said since he had been assured the gun he held did not contain any live ammunition, he was not responsible.
But irrespective of his role, Baldwin argues his contract means he bears no financial responsibility for legal fees or claims arising from the death.
The whole country had sympathy for this man until he opened his mouth and closed his wallet.