The fur is flying (or is it all fake?)

MEN and women have been wearing fur since the earliest recorded times, just as we have eaten meat and used leather for belts and shoes. That simple fact should make us wary of the recent headline-grabbing report of the Select Committee on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. These MPS suggest that, because some firms have been selling real fur, but labelling it as fake, we should ban the use of fur in clothing and furnishings entirely. The irrationality of this demand can only be explained by a longing for publicity rather than a horror at the flouting of the consumer-protection laws.

Of course, people shouldn’t mislabel goods. Boohoo and House of Fraser, two of the companies named in the inquiry, made things worse by saying they were unaware that they were using real fur. Their comments revealed an attitude that’s totally outdated. Every retailer, whether online or on the high street, has to have a detailed understanding of its supply chain —otherwise, how does it know its products are safe? How does it avoid using slave labour? It’s a matter of trust.

The committee was, therefore, right to attack companies for an offhand attitude, failures to inform trading-standards officers when they discovered the mislabelling and an unwillingness to take responsibility for the products they were selling to the public. However, to jump from that to suggesting that we should ban all real fur is simply ridiculous.

Of course, some people don’t wish to wear fur, but others are happy to do so. What seems particularly odd is that people who object to the real thing want to wear something that looks so like it that manufacturers can so easily defraud them. If it’s wrong to wear real fur, it seems doubly wrong to wear hypocritical fur. If you don’t like it, why on earth wear something that looks like it?

What’s more, it’s a real waste if we don’t use the fur from dead rabbits and foxes. The manmade alternatives involve using polymers that take hundreds of years to break down and have exactly the disadvantages that have made us all so concerned about plastic.

Fur is a natural product that human beings have always worn and we should use it just as we use leather. To outlaw either is to expand the use of alternatives that are damaging to the environment. Some people may think that damage is worth it, but they can’t pretend there isn’t a price to pay if we choose plastic. This brings us to the only real issue about these natural materials: animal welfare. There have been some horrific examples of cruelty in the production of fur, just as there have been in the production of meat, but we haven’t rushed to ban meat eating. We’ve laid down increasingly stringent welfare rules and our labelling systems mean that we can choose even higher standards if we think that right.

In the same way, we must insist that the fur we wear is sourced humanely. The UK already bans fur farming and was instrumental in ensuring that the EU bans cat and dog fur. There is every reason that we should now demand more extensive labelling and require the same standards for imports that we impose on home production.

Ensuring that there is accurate information to give consumers choice is a necessary protection; banning all fur to promote the artificial alternative is not.

If you don’t like fur, why on earth wear something that looks like it?