IG Wild beim Wild criticises fur market in Altstätten
How such events combine tradition, commerce and animal suffering.
Criticism of fur, pelt and trophy events in Switzerland, exemplified by the traditional fur market in Altstätten (SG) on 5 February 2026.
Wild animals are not commodities for entertainment, prestige and commerce.
IG Wild beim Wild strongly criticises fur, pelt and trophy events in Switzerland. Year after year, such events present killed wild animals as trophies, decorative objects and trade goods. This normalises a treatment of wild animals that is no longer in keeping with the times and clearly contradicts society's expectations regarding animal ethics and respect for fellow creatures.
The organisers sell these events as preserving tradition and as a contribution to so-called wildlife management. In reality, killed wild animals are at the centre, their body parts measured, graded, awarded prizes or traded as merchandise. This practice promotes an outdated trophy culture in which it is not the animal as a sentient individual that counts, but the hunting achievement and the size of antlers, horns or other «signs of success».
It is particularly offensive that such events additionally serve as a marketplace for the trade in pelts. Fox pelts and other hides are bought up, assessed, in some cases awarded prizes or raffled off. This trade ignores the suffering behind each individual pelt and contributes to viewing wild animals as a raw material. While politics and society are taking steps towards restricting the fur trade, in Switzerland a commercialised form of hobby hunting that is barely ethically defensible continues to be celebrated.
In Altstätten (SG), a traditional fur pelt market takes place on 05 February 2026. Such markets are not folklore, but part of a system that places a value on animal bodies. When pelts are traded at unit prices, animal suffering becomes a matter of calculation. It is precisely this logic that is incompatible with a modern understanding of wildlife protection.
The IG Wild beim Wild also points out that the hunting practice portrayed often conveys a whitewashed picture. In reality, missed shots, injured animals and long ordeals of suffering are part of the everyday reality of hobby hunting. These aspects are neither addressed at such events nor openly communicated by those responsible. The claim that trophy shows serve to analyse the state of wildlife populations is hardly tenable. Scientifically based monitoring instruments do not require displayed skulls and antlers, which primarily serve self-promotion. Trophies are a material expression of killed wild animals, whose kill quality, follow-up search and suffering barely feature in the official image.
From the perspective of animal welfare, it is also worrying that children and young people are introduced to such events without being taught a respectful and contemporary way of dealing with wild animals. Instead of imparting knowledge, the focus is on a spectacle that trivialises violence and propagates a romanticised hunting world.
Arms dealers, optics manufacturers, hunting accessories, hunting trips, raffles of hunting kills abroad: a hunting-industrial system of violence is emerging in which kills and animal bodies are part of a marketing system.
Those who kill senselessly do not protect anything, and it is of no use to civilised society. Hobby hunters thus do not ensure healthy or natural wildlife populations, least of all with their abhorrent fox hunting. Such events regularly raise questions about ethical aspects, permit practices and public impact, and they finally deserve to be fundamentally reviewed politically and socially.
IG Wild beim Wild calls on those responsible in municipalities, towns and cantons to fundamentally rethink such events. A civilised society does not need competitions in which dead wild animals are presented as achievements, and it does not need a market on which pelts are traded like any other commodity. What is needed instead is a respectful understanding of wild animals, a scientifically sound wildlife ecology and a turning away from hobby hunting.