ANIMAL RIGHTS FOOTAGE WILL KEEP REAPPEARING In recent years, Nordic animal rights groups, now more political than ever, have succeeded in making bans on fur farming political themes by handing activist footage to news hungry media. The activists’ successful strategy is bound to make the films continue to reappear. By Mick Madsen
It went as he predicted. In November 2010, Ulf Enroth, Chairman of the Finnish Fur Breeders’ Association, told the Danish Fur Breeders’ Magazine that, come February this year, the Finnish fur breeders’ would face a new series of footage from Finnish fur farms: footage collected by Finnish animal rights group Oikeutta eläimille and broadcast on national television with headlines suggesting widespread animal abuse in the Finnish fur sector. Ulf Enroth predicted that it would happen on 17 February, two months before the national election, and exactly one
2008 The Norwegian Food Safety Authority has inspected a large number of fur farms during the fall. Only to a small extent, the results correspond with the impression created by the documentary ‘Ett skinn av velferd’ (a skin of welfare). Norwegian Food Safety Authority, December 2008
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year after the Finnish fur breeders took beatings for alleged animal abuse in the national media. He was wrong on that one, however. The footage was released on 16 February 2011, which, however, did not interfere with the animal rights groups’ strategy to make a ban on fur farming a theme for national elections. - The activists want to create a polarization where you are either for or against. They want to put a single theme on the political agenda which activates people. It is easy to set up an electronic voting poll where people condemn fur farming, when the activists are
campaigning together with the media, Ulf Enroth says. Though straight on the gain, Ulf Enroth is no fortune teller. His ability to predict the future is merely a matter of common sense. Since 2008 national animal rights groups have broken into almost 300 fur farms in Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland to film the animals. After every series of trespassing, the vegan groups have succeeded in ‘selling’ the pictures to national media who have published ‘news’ of widespread animal abuse in the sector afterwards. Predictably, the
2009 The conditions in Norwegian fur farms are generally in accordance with the regulations. Norwegian Food Safety Authority, June 2009
Although the Norwegian Food Safety Authority has uncovered deviations during the last weeks of inspection, we have not uncovered issues to the extent and as serious as the material submitted by Nettverket (the Norwegian animal righs group) shows. Norwegian Food Safety Authority, September 2009
KOPENH AGEN FUR NE W S