Skin is skin regardless of origin

“Skin Trade,” a documentary exposing the fur industry, had its first screening in Utah County this last Wednesday in LI 120 as a part of the Environmental Ethics Symposium on Animal Ethics.

Keith, an animal rights attorney and “Skin Trade” director, was present to explain the film and answer questions.

Keith said that her main motive for making the film was “to get people to stop wearing fur” and to try to get the world to understand that they were being “defrauded” by the fur industry.

She warned the audience prior to the showing that there would be some very disturbing points in the movie which would be difficult to watch, but she assured the viewers that she made the extra effort to balance the hard-to-watch moments, making the film simultaneously “fun, exciting, informative and educational.”

She wasn’t kidding. There were points in the film that brought members of the audience to tears or made them cringe in disgust, but the movie as a whole left a definite impact for reasons other than its shocking footage.

It was enlightening and left those watching with the realization that the murder of animals for vanity’s sake is unacceptable.The film provides a comparison between the disgust and legal ramifications that the senseless murder of a neighborhood dog might entail versus the impunity enjoyed by the fur industry to commit similar brutal animal murders so that consumers can buy into their desires to appear “powerful and rich.”

Retail stores who sell fur will tell customers anything to make the sale. They lie when people ask how they were killed or where the fur came from by explaining it was all done humanely by injection, but the film reveals that this is far from the truth.

Rather, most animals whose pelts are used are killed by anal electrocution, gassing, trapping, beating, hitting them with clublike objects or being stomped to death, and that’s  to name only a few methods.