Almost forgotten are the anti-fur tirades of the 70’s, when
outraged protesters slung paint on super-expensive mink coats worn by
Three Christmases ago the ultimate luxury gift for a high-maintenance lady was a full-length fur coat—specifically, one made of the hot new fur called Russian broadtail.
Shortly before that Christmas, my grandson Nick (then 10 years old) and his dad sat together watching NBC’s Dateline. It was a hidden-camera investigative piece done by Chris Hansen to expose the source of broadtail fur.
Brief interview segments with top salespeople and designers verified that this particular fur was indeed a hot item, fast growing more popular as fashion celebrities flaunted the broadtail fur look.
Yes, the fur folks confirmed, this “fur” comes from small lambs. No, they insisted, complaints of animal rights groups that the lambs were just a day or two old—too young to be a meat source—were baseless. Unlike mink and fox, these lambs were slaughtered for food and their pelts were a by-product being used wisely.
Dateline then shifted to an interview with Rick Swain, chief
investigator for the Humane Society. He had posed as a buyer for a chain of
stores and visited a large broadtail production center in
Swain refuted the claim that the lambs were killed for food. Broad-tail fur comes from lambs a day old or younger, Swain said. The highest priced broadtail comes from lamb fetuses, taken from mother sheep killed as much as 30 days before the lamb’s birth.
Swain brought home a videotape of the broadtail production process, showing a mother sheep as she was beheaded and her fetus surgically removed. He and his Dateline interviewers obviously were scandalized both by the sheep slaughter and by the fur sellers’ deceit.
About this time in the show my astute grandson piped up, “Dad, aren’t these the same people who think that aborting a baby is O.K.?”
Indeed, they are. Both the animal rights activists and the media reporters embrace a liberal agenda that demonizes any Christian who opposes unlimited abortion rights. They feel no sympathy for a human fetus.
Kill an unborn baby and they will support you. But misuse a sheep’s fetus and they will raise a holy howl.
No wonder Nick was puzzled.