The days are long gone when models and fashion designers stood up to denounce the barbarism of the fur industry. On all catwalks around the world, we are now seeing a resurgence in coats and accessories made from real fur, produced even by those people who criticised them in the past. Over the last nine years the fur industry has seen constant progress despite a poor economic climate. Why? Among other reasons, because today the enslavement of animals for the needs of fashion reassures those who deal in it and especially those who buy these clothes.

What is left unsaid is that many animals are still being taken from the wild even as trapping is legal. And even if these animals come from farms, they suffer no less for the pleasure of a handful of people who want to wear coats which are no longer necessary, given how much the planet is warming up and with the development of attractive, warm and ethical materials.

Stricter regulations are tending to change things in the EU, but the situation is also changing in Canada, the United States or even in Russia – all major producing countries – in the conditions in which animals are kept in farms and the way they are trapped in the wild, or even the species concerned by the fur industry. In France, for example, the importing of dog and cat skins has been banned. Nevertheless, no laws will manage to end the suffering of animals held in conditions that are not adapted to their nature and welfare, nor the agony caused by traps. Or maybe one will: the law which will ban the exploitation of animals for their fur. This is the only law that One Voice defends and for which it is fighting, through its actions to create awareness with the general public, its investigations and its rescues.

50 million animals sacrificed every year for the fashion industry (not including rabbits)
70 % of the fur bred in the world is produced in Europe
Turnover of 15 billion dollars in 2007 for the fur industry
(figures from the International Fur Trade Federation)