Fur Is Murder (SPT article)
The St. Petersburg Times
Issue #1469 (31), Tuesday, April 28, 2009
NEWS
Fur Auction Meets Resistance
By Sergey Chernov
Staff Writer
Sergey Chernov / The St. Petersburg Times
Animal rights activists stand chained to the door of the Fur Palace early on Sunday
before the auction was due to start.
Animal rights activists blocked Sojuzpushnina’s Fur Palace in St. Petersburg on Sunday as Russia’s only organizer of fur auctions was about to start its 179th auction, with 170,000 skins of sable on offer.
Though Sojuzpushnina’s offices are in Moscow, auctions are held in St. Petersburg, where the Fur Palace was built on Moskovsky Prospekt especially for this purpose in 1939. Apart from sable, the skins of 300,000 minks, 6,500 blue foxes, 2,200 red foxes, 1,000 silver foxes, 3,000 raccoons and 1,200 ermines are on offer at the current auction, which runs through Tuesday.
At a previous auction in February, the main buyers were from the U.S., Italy and Greece, “with good support from Russia,” according to a news release from Sojuzpushnina. However, a drop in demand and prices was reported in February.
At 8 a.m. on Sunday, half an hour before the auction was due to open, 15 animal rights activists staged a protest at the entrance of the Fur Palace, with five activists chaining themselves to the doorway, preventing buyers and Sojuzpushnina’s employees from entering the building.
They blocked the entrance for more than 20 minutes until the police arrived on the scene, undid the chain and detained five activists, charging them with violating the rules of holding public rallies. Three hours later they were acquitted in court.
“It came as a surprise, but the judge said they were detained illegitimately,” said an activist, who spoke on condition of anonymity, by phone on Monday.
Animal rights activists, who have campaigned against Sojuzpushnina since 2005, demand that the auction be closed as an “obsolete remnant of the past.”
“The fur industry has long since had its day,” the protesters said in a news release.
“Many people have realized that buying clothes for which dozens or even hundreds of animals had to be killed, and wearing their skins on oneself is not only absurd, it’s barbarism. But there remain those who make money out of it, and we won’t leave them alone until we stop them.”
The fur industry is also criticized by animal rights organizations for mistreating animals, which they say are bred under distressing conditions, poorly fed and killed cruelly by methods including electrocution via the genitals, gassing and having their necks broken.
Fur factory farms are banned in the U.K., while both fox and chinchilla farming are being phased out in the Netherlands, according to the web site of PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals).
Sojuzpushnina declined to comment when called on Monday.
“We have nobody to speak to the press, because we’re in the middle of an auction,” said a woman who answered the phone at the Fur Palace in St. Petersburg.
“We only answer questions by appointment,” said an employee at Sojuzpushnina’s offices in Moscow, before suggesting calling after Wednesday, because “everybody is in St. Petersburg.”
http://sptimes.ru/index.php?action_id=2&story_id=28857