Criticism of Fäälimärt 2026 in Sursee
How such events combine tradition, commerce and animal suffering.
Criticism of fur, pelt and trophy events in Switzerland, exemplified by the traditional fur and pelt market in Sursee (LU) on February 10, 2026.
Wildlife are not commodities for entertainment, prestige and commerce.
IG Wild beim Wild sharply criticizes fur, pelt and trophy events in Switzerland . Such events present killed wildlife as trophies, decorative objects and merchandise year after year. This normalizes a treatment of wildlife that is no longer appropriate for our times and clearly contradicts societal expectations regarding animal ethics and respect for fellow creatures.
The organizers market these events as preservation of tradition and as a contribution to so-called wildlife management. In reality, killed wildlife are the focal point, whose body parts are measured, scored, awarded or traded as commodities. This practice promotes an outdated trophy culture in which not the animal as a sentient individual matters, but rather hunting performance and the size of antlers, horns or other 'success markers'.
Particularly offensive is that such events additionally serve as a marketplace for fur trading. Fox pelts and other hides are bought, evaluated, sometimes awarded or raffled off. This trade ignores the suffering behind each individual pelt and contributes to viewing wildlife as raw material. While politics and society take steps toward restricting fur trade, Switzerland continues to celebrate a commercialized form of recreational hunting that is ethically hardly defensible.
Such markets are not folklore, but part of a system that commodifies animal bodies. When pelts are traded at per-piece prices, animal suffering becomes a calculation. This very logic is incompatible with a modern understanding of wildlife protection incompatible.
IG Wild beim Wild also points out that the portrayed hunting practices often convey a romanticized image. In reality, missed shots, injured animals and prolonged suffering are part of everyday recreational hunting. These aspects are neither addressed at such events nor openly communicated by those responsible. The claim that trophy exhibitions serve to analyze wildlife populations is hardly tenable. Scientifically based monitoring instruments do not require displayed skulls and antlers, which primarily serve self-presentation. Trophies are a material expression of killed wild animals, whose shooting quality, tracking efforts and suffering barely feature in the official narrative.
From an animal welfare perspective, it is also concerning that children and young people are introduced to such events without being taught respectful and contemporary treatment of wild animals. Instead of knowledge transfer, a spectacle takes center stage that trivializes violence and promotes a romanticized hunting world.
Weapons dealers, optics manufacturers, hunting accessories, hunting trips, raffles for hunting licenses abroad: An industrial hunting violence system emerges in which kills and animal bodies are part of a marketing system.
Those who kill senselessly do not protect, and it serves no benefit to civilized society. Hobby hunters thus do not ensure healthy or natural wildlife populations, particularly not with their abhorrent fox hunting. Such events regularly raise questions about ethical aspects, permit practices and public impact, and they finally belong to fundamental political and social review.
IG Wild beim Wild calls on officials in municipalities, cities and cantons to fundamentally reconsider such events. A civilized society needs no competitions where dead wild animals are presented as successes, and it needs no market where pelts are traded like ordinary commodities. What is needed instead is a respectful understanding of wild animals, professionally grounded wildlife ecology and an abandonment of recreational hunting.