Animal welfare advocates call for clear fur labelling in Switzerland
The Swiss Animal Protection (STS) is criticising the planned amendments to the fur declaration ordinance, arguing that they would drastically water down mandatory labelling requirements.
With the proposed amendment to the ordinance on the declaration of furs and fur products, the Federal Department of Home Affairs indicated that it intended to clarify individual provisions. In practice, however, what is being discussed amounts to a weakening of the existing mandatory declaration requirements.
In its response to the consultation, the STS does welcome the explicit labelling of items as real fur or faux fur. This makes sense, given that faux fur is nowadays barely distinguishable from real fur by non-experts. However, if the origin of a pelt cannot be assigned to any geographical area, the new proposal would allow the declaration “origin unknown” to be used.
Nadja Brodmann of the Zurich Animal Protection organisation has no sympathy for this approach. “This proposal opens the floodgates to the import of the cheapest fur produced under conditions of suffering”, she says. For Brodmann, the matter is clear: if consumers are to be able to purchase fur from countries such as China, they should at least be required to be informed of this transparently. Helen Sandmeier of the Swiss Animal Protection also criticises the proposal: “This is a capitulation to the trade industry, which frequently has difficulty establishing the origin of its furs”, she says. Weakening the declaration requirement cannot be the solution.
Criticism of the vague wording “
«origin unknown”: this opens the door to inadequate labelling and insufficient consumer information, massively diluting the declaration obligation, as the animal welfare organisation writes. Even the existing ordinance already contains a vague formulation regarding the method of acquisition.
The STS had welcomed the mandatory fur declaration requirement at the time of its introduction as a necessary and meaningful form of consumer information. An adequate declaration must, however, necessarily enable the consumer to find out about the origin and method of acquisition of the fur. This is no longer possible with the designation “origin unknown”.
Furs for which the supplier is unable to provide information about the origin and production of the fur should not be traded, according to animal welfare advocates. The sale of these products must be prohibited.
Production method «group housing»: misleading and euphemistic!
The proposal for labelling production methods is grossly oversimplified: That «cage housing with wire mesh floors» should remain is undisputed. This applies to 85–90% of fur articles, as store research by Zürcher Tierschutz showed. However, labelling everything else as «group housing» is pure consumer deception! The euphemistic term says nothing about whether the husbandry was species-appropriate or not. Many fur animals such as foxes and minks typically live as solitary animals and are completely overwhelmed and stressed in group housing! Only rabbits are social animals, yet they are usually kept individually on fur farms! A meaningful distinction would follow the agricultural declaration ordinance (LDV): «From a husbandry system (not) permitted in Switzerland». «There is no need to reinvent the wheel», says Brodmann, «this designation can apply to fur just as it does to cage eggs and cage-produced meat». What matters above all is whether the husbandry meets Swiss standards or not.
Import ban
Animal welfare advocates would prefer Switzerland to ban the import of fur products produced through animal cruelty altogether. Council of States member Pascale Bruderer (AG/SP) called on the federal government in 2014 to examine such a ban. The government rejected the proposal in its report, citing «legal and practical reasons». It warned, for example, of trade disputes, because such an import ban would «be in tension with Switzerland’s obligations under international law». This refers to the legal framework of the World Trade Organization (WTO), which stipulates, among other things, that foreign goods must not be treated differently from domestic ones. Animal welfare advocates are not satisfied with this justification and point to the existing import ban on cat, dog, and seal furs. However, Switzerland adopted this regulation from the EU. With an import ban on fur products, it would be standing alone in the field.
