Editorial: Fur Labels Aren't Needed

February 8, 1999

THE PROBLEMS OF BEVERLY HILLS and its residents who buy $10,000 fur coats at exclusive Rodeo Drive salons normally wouldn't concern us, but stupid ideas have to start somewhere.

A celebrity studded group of animal rights activists has succeeded in putting on the ballot for a May 11 referendum a requirement that furs sold in Beverly Hills bear a warning label:

"Consumer notice: This product is made with fur from animals that may have been killed by electrocution, gassing, neck-breaking, poisoning, clubbing, stomping or drowning . . . "

Hardly necessary. Even the dumbest shopper is aware that an empty pelt means something fatal happened to the creature inside.

The misleadingly named organization behind the label, Consumers for Informed Choices, says it's interested only in "truth-in-advertising," a claim belied by the label's conditional "may have been." In fact, the "consumers" want to put the fur industry out of business.

It's tempting to dismiss this as a squabble among elitists, where a victory by animal rights extremists would lead to similar warnings on shoe leather, chicken wings and -- not to be guilty of species-ism -- how the mold in the bleu cheese met its untimely end.

However, the label issue is more significant. It is politics by harassment and as such trivializes government, law enforcement and the law itself.

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