Consider the origin of your animal products
Most of us try to shop responsibly, but for some items, we don’t know what we don’t know. For example, how many use coyote urine to keep deer out of gardens? How many think about how the key ingredient is acquired?
“People don’t know that when they buy products that they might be endorsing a fur farm, including myself,” Susan Vogt, founder and president of Red Riding Hood Rescue Project in Middletown, told WCPO in Cincinnati.
Vogt was speaking to the news station after having helped save hundreds of animals from an Ashtabula County fur farm in January.
Vogt described the facility as “what hell looks like.”
Grand River Fur Exchange had wolves, wolfdogs, foxes, skunks, raccoons, coyotes, opossums and more crammed into tiny cages.
“This particular fur farm operated as a fur and urine farm, so animals were kept in small wire cages,” said Vogt. “When the animals turned two, when their coats were mature they would be pelted.”
Trays under the cages allowed the urine to be collected and sold.
But according to those who participated in the rescue, which was led by the Humane Society of the United States, some animals were dead — frozen in their cages. Others were sick or missing limbs.
Published reports suggest the death of the facility’s owner escalated “an already-dire animal welfare crisis on the property.”
But before it came to the attention of authorities, it was a business. It had customers. There was a market for what was being produced there.
There are plenty of ways to keep deer out of your garden. There are lots of alternatives to the use of animal fur.
“It was truly shocking that something like that is happening not just in our world but in the U.S. and not just in the U.S. but in Ohio,” Vogt told WCPO. But we can do something about it.
Next time you shop, think about the conditions in which the products you buy may have been produced. Think about what you might be supporting.