by Alan Jacques
LIMERICK animal rights activists have come up with a grisly campaign to ensure that animal skins are the last thing you want to put on your Christmas shopping list this year.
As part of International Fur Free Friday, four members of the Animal Rights Action Network (ARAN) confronted shoppers in the Capital last week with the imitation dead bodies of skinned, bloody foxes. The campaigners who held signs which read , ‘Here’s the rest of your fur coat?’, are now planning a similar protest in Limerick in the coming weeks.
ARAN founder John Carmody said the point of the campaign is to drive home in no uncertain terms that there’s “nothing fashionable about wearing the skins of tormented, tortured animals”. The local animal rights group are now urging the people of Limerick to keep fur off their Christmas pressies list this year.
According to ARAN, every year millions of animals are trapped, drowned and beaten to death in the wild, and are strangled, gassed and electrocuted on fur farms. Mr Carmody claims that in Ireland alone, over 200,000 animals are locked in small wire mesh cages before being gassed to death.
Earlier this year, the relentless Limerick animal rights campaigner vowed to hunt down celebrity couple Kanye West and Kim Kardashian, to show his outrage at the stars’ frequent wearing of fur, on their honeymoon stopover at Ardpatrick’s Castle Oliver. He also staged a protest when Lady Gaga last visited Ireland to show his anger at her “fur addiction”.
“We want fashionistas to know that animals on fur farms spend their entire lives confined to cramped, filthy cages before they are beaten, gassed or anally electrocuted and are sometimes skinned while they are still alive,” claimed Mr Carmody.
“Designers such as Ralph Lauren, Calvin Klein, Tommy Hilfiger and Vivienne Westwood, have publicly sworn off fur because it is so cruel,” he concluded.
