Rites of Fall: Invasion of the Plastic People

FUR COMMISSION USA PRESS RELEASE, NOVEMBER 24, 1999
Rites of Fall: Invasion of the Plastic People
A Thanksgiving Greeting from FCUSA
AS THE DAYS GROW CRISP AND COLD, Americans celebrate the rites of Fall: Football, Thanksgiving, jumping into piles of leaves, addressing Christmas cards to old friends. In an annual ritual, we put away the cottons and silks of summer and pull out the wools, leathers and furs of winter.
According to the Fur Information Council of America, 20% of American women own a fur garment. For retailers and consumers, the protests of Fur Free Friday, following Thanksgiving Thursday, are a rite of Fall passage. Held on the day after Thanksgiving to coincide with the biggest shopping day of the year, Fur Free Friday includes a smattering of protests against consumers flocking to the stores searching for quality fur and leather garments. For many fur enthusiasts, the day after Thanksgiving is also known as “Wear Your Fur” Friday!
Members of the fur trade refer to the seasonal protesters as the “Plastic People” because the protesters promote “plastic” wraps and disdain fur wraps.
Kim Graf, third-generation San Diego fur and leather retailer, seamstress extraordinaire and well known volunteer organizer of the annual San Diego Quilt Show, comments, “Plastic People wear plastic belts and shoes, some wear masks and black hoods to frighten. Plastic People are clingier than plastic wrap and, like plastic, they just never go away.”
“The Plastic People are welcome to their opinion,” stated fourth-generation Portland, Oregon furrier Mark Schumacher, “but use of ‘toxic’ synthetic petroleum-based products, in place of ‘renewable’ animal or organic-based ‘natural’ clothing, is misguided.”
Over 200 designers agree and utilize fur, this beautiful fabric, in some of the world’s finest clothes.
Gobble, Gobble
It’s ironic that the annual protests come the day after Thanksgiving, when Americans gobble down millions of turkeys at a single meal on a single day.
A good share of the byproducts from the processing of turkeys are fed to domesticated carnivores, millions of mink and fox raised primarily for their pelts and fine oils. In fact, it is not unusual to find fur farms situated right next door to turkey farms.
“Mink consume 20 times their body weight and foxes consume 35 times their body weight every year,” explains Teresa Platt, executive director of Fur Commission USA, representing over 600 fur farming families in over 30 states. “Each full-length farm-raised coat represents over 2 and a half tons of byproducts leftover from the production of our dinners. If you enjoyed that Thanksgiving turkey, eat beef, fish and poultry, wear leather, and sleep on down pillows, fur is part of the same cycle.”
Plastic People and Their Lists of Dos and Don’ts
Plastic People are opposed to animal research, pet ownership and killing for the production of food and clothing. However, Plastic People support petrochemical-based synthetics and plastics,(1) and the unintentional or indirect killing of animals for the production of food and clothing through mono-culture crop production.
Americans use 79.5 million acres to grow corn, 64.2 million acres to raise soybeans and 14.6 million acres for cotton.(2) The US covers 1.9 billion acres, so these three crops take up 8.3% of America’s land – what was once animal and insect habitat.(3)
Let’s not even attempt to assess the costs of crop production in terms of water, fertilizers, pesticides or the animals chopped up in the fields during harvest. This is all indirect take of animals, something the Plastic People support with their every purchase.
As a rite of Fall passage, the people of the fur trade, members of a fraternity as old as Man, will suffer the annual Invasion of the Plastic People, complete with sound bites, street theater, hoods and masks. The pleasure of providing beautiful, warm, real fur to intelligent consumers is well worth the price.(4)
Happy Thanksgiving and a peaceful Holiday Season.
NOTES:
-(1) Total consumption of acrylic fibers worldwide is expected to increase to almost 5.6 billion pounds in the year 2000, according to the Chemical Economics Handbook report on acrylic and modacrylic fibers.
-(2) Corn, cotton and soybean production stats for 1998. For discussion of soybeans and diet, see Soy: Too Good to Be True from Gerson Healing Newsletter Online, Gerson Institute, California. Also, see The Soy Story: Promotions and Marketing Materials.
-(3) Globally, about 10% of the land base can support crops, or about 2.5% of our watery planet. Water, primarily undrinkable salt water, covers about 75% of the Earth.
-(4) The international retail fur trade is conservatively estimated at $4 billion. Although farmed production is currently the mainstay of the fur trade, it complements fur produced through the harvesting of wild animals, an important tool in wildlife management and a vital export for indigenous communities. Production from fur farms relieves market pressure during times of heavy demand, helping to stabilize prices so wildlife caretakers respond to the dictates of biologists, not the marketplace.
See also:
Ho, ho, ho! Plastic Santas? (HTML or PDF format, Part 1 and Part 2) A seasonal look at “Evolutionary Fur” – guaranteed 100% unnatural! FCUSA commentary, Nov. 20, 1998.
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For further information contact Fur Commission USA.
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