This is the second installment in our Hypocrite series, aimed at exposing influential figures whose anti-fur arguments are full of holes. Today we're talking about pop singer Pink, a PETA spokesperson and meat-eating "vegan" who loves wearing leather shoes.

The Hypocrite: Pink, pop singer, "vegan", and current model in PETA’s “Rather Go Naked” anti-fur campaign.

The Hypocrisy: Pink helps the animal rights organisation PETA to campaign against fur. PETA, not coincidentally, also promotes veganism. So, depending on the day of the week, Pink describes her diet as "mostly vegan".

And what does this mean? It means she "occasionally eats chicken and fish," and can even "eat entire buckets of chicken wings." She can also eat "an entire cheesecake in one sitting." She may love wheatgrass smoothies and tofurkey, but at the end of the day, she's just an omnivore like the rest of us.

On the subject of fur, Pink entreats us in her PETA poster to "Be comfortable in your own skin, and let animals keep theirs." But she has no problem with a cow losing its skin so she can wear suede boots.

What they say: PETA says, “P!nk has become known for being super-comfortable in her own skin—so comfortable that she teamed up with PETA and photographer Ruven Afanador to make her point perfectly clear: She wants animals to keep their own skin.”

SEE ALSO: HYPOCRITE PROFILE: STELLA McCARTNEY

What we say: Pink, your suede boots are lovely, but they're made from animal skin. So stop asking the rest of us to let animals "keep their own skin" while wearing it yourself.

Also, your diet of mostly veggies, but with chicken, fish and cheesecake thrown in, sounds great, but don't call yourself "mainly vegan", or even a vegetarian, just because you think it sounds cool (or because PETA told you to). You're an omnivore.

You and PETA are clearly a mismatch, so please stop endorsing them immediately.

We’ll eat our steaks, and you can wash down your chicken with a wheatgrass smoothie.

We’ll wear our fur, and you can wear your suede boots.

And we'll all refrain from telling each other what to do and how to live our lives. Fair enough?

Thirty years! The other day I suddenly realised that this is the 30th anniversary of the publication my book Second Nature: The Animal-Rights Controversy. First published by the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. in 1985, this was the first serious critique – and is still one of the very few – of the animal-rights movement from an environmental and human-rights perspective.

The publication of Second Nature changed my life. Until then, my interests as a freelance writer had ranged widely, although curiosity about different people and cultures was often a unifying theme: from promoting the cause of Tibetan refugees to exploring the mystical world of Hassidic Jews. While I was brought up in a Canadian fur manufacturing family, the emerging “animal rights” debate was only one story among many.

Now, suddenly, I was thrust into a quickly escalating battle. I was invited to speak with cattle, chicken and hog producers, medical researchers, science teachers, and many others. My message was that people working with animals should speak out about what they do, so the media and public can hear both (or, rather, the many) sides of these complex issues.

I had the opportunity to put theory into practice when I was asked to serve as executive vice-president of the Fur Council of Canada. In that capacity I directed the industry’s “Fur Is Green” campaign and, more recently, the first full-fledged North American information program under the “Truth About Fur” banner.

So what have I learned in more than 30 years of studying and sparring with the animal-rights movement? Here are 10 important lessons, most of which have implications far beyond the debate about fur.

1. The medium is the message. The frenetic pace of modern news cycles clearly favours sensationalism and emotions, the stuff of animal-activist campaigning. In a world of information overload and attention spans measured in sound bites, it is increasingly difficult to discuss complex (aka “real”) issues in any serious way.

2. A picture is worth a thousand words. So good luck explaining to the television audience why well-regulated trapping helps to maintain stable and healthy wildlife populations while the activists' photo of an animal in a trap is projected onto the screen behind you. What the audience is not seeing is the animal suffering (starvation, disease) that results if we “let nature take care of itself”, as activists propose.

Thanks to decades of scientific research, modern trapping methods are much more humane than nature’s way of regulating wildlife populations. But most of us will never see the fox scratching itself raw for weeks before dying of sarcoptic mange, or the bite scars on beaver that fought each other for survival in an overpopulated pond.

3. “Animal rights” is NOT animal welfare. The animal-welfare movement developed to ensure that animals we use – for food, clothing or other purposes – are treated “humanely”, i.e., with respect and as little suffering as possible. Animal rights, by contrast, is a philosophy that claims we have no right to use animals at all. “Not better cages, no cages!” says the Animal Liberation Front slogan.

SEE ALSO: Mink liberation: 5 facts the ALF doesn't want you to know

I traced the origins of this radical new philosophy in Second Nature, and yet, 30 years later, the profound difference between “animal rights” and “animal welfare” is still not understood by most journalists or politicians, let alone the general public. This allows groups like PETA to masquerade as welfare advocates – attracting media attention and credibility with shocking exposés of animal abuse – although PETA really opposes any use of animals, no matter how humanely it is done.

4. Urban trumps rural. It is striking how often rural people play the bad guys in activist campaigns: loggers, miners, ranchers, hunters. This reflects a widening split between rural and urban cultures; for the first time in human history, most of us live in cities. It wasn’t so long ago that most North Americans still had family on the land – you visited grandparents on the farm at Christmas and learned to respect rural skills and knowledge – but not anymore.

Most journalists also live in cities, and with reduced budgets they rarely have time to seek out the rural side of the story. Not surprisingly, media usually reflect an urban bias with little interest in, or understanding of, rural realities.

5. We have lost contact with the real sources of our survival. We all use paper and wood, but it’s “eco-cide” to cut trees. We need metal and glass, but miners are evil. It’s hard to imagine life without gas for cars and oil for heating, without plastics or synthetic textiles – but no oil wells or pipelines here please! Plentiful meat and milk has allowed even poor children to develop healthy minds and bodies, but activists now want us to believe that animal agriculture is a continuation of the Holocaust.

The remarkable productivity of primary producers has given the rest of us the freedom to do many other wonderful things that make a thriving and cultured modern society. And yet, perversely, we use that freedom to attack the people who feed and clothe us!

6. Animal activism is big business. We have come a long way from “the little old ladies in tennis shoes” whose volunteer efforts supported the SPCA and other traditional animal-welfare groups. Groups like PETA rake in some $30 million annually; the so-called Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) collects more than $100 million. And there are dozens of other such groups.

They attract attention with naked “celebrities" or sensationalist “exposés”; they translate their “brand recognition” into income with sophisticated computer-assisted fund-raising techniques. As one leading activist told me: “You can’t win because it costs your industry money to fight us, but we make our money campaigning. The longer the battle, the more we make!”

7. Animal rights reflects a culture in transition. It was Michael Pollan’s 2006 book The Omnivore’s Dilemma that first drew my attention to this aspect of the animal-rights phenomenon. Not long ago our ancestors lived in societies with clear ideas about how one should live, what we should eat, who we should marry, and so on. With the erosion of "traditional values" by globalisation, multiculturalism and secularism, everything is up for grabs.

A trip to the grocery store triggers a complex ethical calculus: should we buy organic or conventional, local or imports, GMOs, trans fats, low cholesterol, gluten free, and on it goes! In this confusion, philosophies that propose a new moral certitude can be very attractive, especially to younger people.

8. Animal activists show more aggression than compassion! Over the past 30 years, the tone and tactics of animal activist campaigning have become much more confrontational. Check out the comments posted on animal-related articles, the Facebook pages of activist groups, videos of “direct action” demonstrations, not to mention the criminal attacks by the Animal Liberation Front.

Compassion for animals has become a pretext for hatred of farmers, furriers, medical researchers and other people. In part, this parallels the hyper-testosteronization of society in general, from the sex and violence of video games and music videos to road rage. But the fundamentalist core of the animal-rights philosophy should not be ignored: i.e., when idealistic young people are told that raising and eating farm animals is the moral equivalent of the Holocaust, don’t be surprised that butcher stores are vandalized.

It seems ironic, nonetheless, that activists who claim to speak for compassion are so keen to attack the livelihoods and cultures of others. Unfortunately, many animal activist organisations have become politically-correct hate groups.

9. Freedom to protest vs. freedom of choice. Freedom of expression is essential in a free society. For that reason, police in western democracies are generally very tolerant of protesters. Where, however, is the balance between the right to protest the sale of fur-trimmed, down-filled parkas, for example, and the right of consumers and retailers to buy and sell such products?

One store in Vancouver has been subjected to rowdy protests several times a week for more than a year! The activists have vowed to put this retailer out of business unless he stops selling Canada Goose coats. Customers are harassed, neighbours are disturbed, the survival of a legal business that pays taxes and employs many young people is threatened – but the rights of a few dozen activists apparently trump everyone else’s interests. Another store selling fur in Hotel Vancouver was subjected to such frequent and aggressive protests that its lease was not renewed, not because the management disliked fur but because their guests felt intimidated. Can you spell “protection racket”?

It is time to ask whether “freedom of expression” includes the right to protest wherever one chooses. If we think it’s wrong to sell fur, this could be expressed in a public park or square as easily as in front of small, family-owned businesses. Or at the seat of government, since it is government that is empowered to decide whether a product should be banned.

After all: if consumers didn't want to buy fur or fur-trimmed coats, retailers would not be stocking them. Protesters are using the freedom that democracy provides as a weapon to short-circuit it.

10. Time to speak out! There are many reasons why activist voices have dominated this debate until now. Farmers, ranchers and medical researchers are busy farming, ranching, and researching. As my activist friend so astutely observed: “It costs you to fight us; we make our money fighting you!”

The natural bias of the media is also a factor: thousands of farmers doing a good job caring for their animals, day in and day out, is not “news”.

Often, too, activist claims seemed so absurd that the people involved felt no need to respond; they didn’t understand that the public can’t know which claims are absurd if the experts remain silent.

Happily, the people who work with animals are beginning to understand the importance of speaking out. In our case, producer and trade associations across North America have joined to produce TruthAboutFur.com. While still a work in progress, we are already seeing impressive results: e.g., our Facebook page now has more than 23,000 “followers”!

Now it is up to everyone to use these tools to make our voices heard. If you see an anti-fur comment in the paper, write a letter or call the journalist to suggest they check out our website. Retailers can provide the URL to consumers who wonder whether it’s “OK” to wear fur. There are great resources for schools. And the website also provides credible information that politicians need to make responsible decisions affecting our industry.

And, finally, perhaps that’s the most important lesson of all from my 30 years of battling “animal rights”: it’s up to each of us to speak out for our industry. Because, as Irish political philosopher Edmund Burke reputedly said, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”

October 2015 has come and gone, it's time for our monthly Fur In The News roundup. Let's start with trapping since the season is now well under way.

We loved this piece, "Getting permission should be your mission," for its very useful tips on maintaining a good relationship with the owners of the land on which you trap. It may not be at the forefront of trappers' minds, but it certainly is important!

"Trapping is serious business" also features some great tips and reminds us all that the reputation of the trapping industry relies a great deal on how trappers work.

As for this debate, "Does hunting promote conservation?," I'll bet you can guess which side we are on!

We were thrilled to hear about this trapping education program in Ontario for primary and secondary students, which teaches them valuable skills and gets them out into nature. And if you aren't a trapper and run into a coyote by surprise, this article tells you what to do. Best to read it now, since it might not be convenient when you actually need the information!

Not only are we in trapping season, but we are also in fur fashion season. When the weather gets cold, what else could you possibly want to wear?

For inspiration for your fur wardrobe, check out the amazing Fur Now campaign (pictured above.) If you are thinking of reviving an old fur coat to wear this season, then read these fur restoration and care tips. Toronto Life did a great piece on how a Canada Goose coat is made (proudly in Canada!), but if you are just looking for some fur fashion inspiration, then we suggest these Stoffa fur hats, or the Fendi fur sweaters pictured at the top of this page.

Speaking about shopping, when you are making your holiday gift list, be sure to consider some seal skin. We love this seal skin fine art, and here's a great boutique to stock up on shoes, gloves, hats and other items made from our furry sea friends.

No monthly round up would be complete without reviewing what our activist "friends" (enemies) have been doing.

PETA is currently discriminating against pit bulls (apparently some pets are worse than others) and we'd like to remind them that there are no bad dog breeds, only bad dog owners. In other doggie news, a group in France decided to steal a homeless man's dog, claiming he wasn't taking care of it. The video, including the dog owner crying, is here.

Nobel prize winners were announced in October and we loved the graphic above from Understanding Animal Research. Thanks to animal research, we have made great strides in science and this should never be forgotten, or prevented in the future. Speaking of animals in labs, this article about an activist taking a tour of an animal testing lab resulted in something unexpected – for them! It turned out that they were very impressed about how the animals were being cared for!

The Animal Ag Alliance has some great suggestions on how to deal with farm security threats, and if you are only fighting them on Facebook, you may want to repost the graphic above, reminding self-righteous vegans that they probably consume a lot of animal parts, one way or another.

Or you could remind your anti-fur, silk-wearing friends that silk is made by boiling worms alive. That was the topic of our first in a new blog series featuring animal hypocrites, starting with Stella McCartney who claims that killing animals for fashion is wrong, but sells shirts and dresses made from silk.

Now for a few bits and bobs:

• This library in Alaska lends out stuffed puffins, wolf furs, and walrus skulls complete with tusks.

• Want to know what the world's densest furs are? Read our latest blog post to find out.

• This graphic has exposed the truth about Santa's reindeer. They're all ... well, take a look for yourself! And we'll sneak a peek when they turn up on our roof next month!

• There can be no doubt! Canada's new Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, is a huge fan of fur. Here's his 2010 family Christmas card!

And of course we can't end a monthly roundup without a cute animal, so here is a pet fox in a dog bed practising the high jump!

Hair density has always fascinated the fur trade because the densest furs are also the softest and most luxurious. Before the advent of modern conservationism, this meant that the densest furs were prone to over-harvesting. Today, we have learned from past mistakes. Trade in the densest fur of all is still restricted, but the animal's recovery is considered a great conservation success. And due to a remarkable story in the history of farming, the second-densest is abundant and readily available.

To appreciate what makes fur dense, let’s set a baseline: human hair. And because human hair varies depending on ethnicity and hair colour, we’ll choose the densest of all, a pale blond(e).

A blonde’s fine hairs average about 190 per cm2, varying depending on the part of the scalp. That's almost double Afro-textured hair, the least dense.

Now step aside blondie, and make way for that benchmark of luxury, mink.

A mink’s hair density varies by season and body part. Also, farmed mink is denser than wild, and a dressed pelt is denser than a live animal. But as a guide, a dressed, farmed pelt has about 24,000 hairs per cm2. That’s 126 times denser than the thickest human pelage!

Impressed? Well hold on. Prepare for furs so dense and soft that words to describe them are hard to find. Like talcum powder, perhaps?

SEE ALSO: WHY IS AMERICAN MINK THE WORLD'S FAVOURITE FUR?

Chinchilla

Animals with the densest furs live where climates are cold, humid and windy. Size also matters; because small mammals are more vulnerable to heat loss, they generally have denser fur.

And so we find ourselves in the high Andes, home of the long-tailed Chinchilla lanigera and short-tailed Chinchilla chinchilla. Being small and nocturnal makes them elusive. They're also very rare. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) classifies both as "critically endangered".

We can blame the “tragedy of the commons” for that. Though the term was coined for what happens when no one owns common grazing land, it also played a role in the historic fur trade.

Spanish explorers first sent chinchilla pelts home in the 16^th century, but it wasn’t until the late 19^th century that Europeans developed an insatiable appetite for them. Populations collapsed, prices soared, and by the early 20th century a peasant trapper could feed his family for a month with just one pelt - if he could find one!

Only late in the day, in 1910, did the range states of Argentina, Bolivia, Chile and Peru unite to ban the trade, but effective enforcement was still decades away. Extinction seemed inevitable.

Farmers to the Rescue!

And then the cavalry arrived, in the unlikely form of fur farmers.

It all began with Californian miner Mathias Chapman who, in 1923, was allowed by Chile to take 11 live chinchilla home for breeding. (It took him three years to trap them!) Ten survived the trip and one gave birth en route.

Chapman originally planned to breed pets, but he switched to fur farming. Today, chinchilla farms are found from Canada to Argentina, and in many European countries, and almost all their stock are believed to descend from Chapman's original 10.

Farming of animals can help conserve their wild cousins. By meeting demand, it reduces pressure on wild populations, as in the case of mink and fox. But it can also encourage illegal hunting and provide a cover for smuggling - the fear with tiger farming.

In the case of chinchilla, farming didn't just help protect wild populations, it probably saved them. And even if most chinchilla now live in pens and eat hay and pellets, there is absolutely no chance of them going extinct!

Dense Is Desirable

So what is all the fuss about with chinchilla fur? Hair density. No other terrestrial mammal comes close.

Hairs grow from organs called follicles which, in humans, are densest on the forehead – about 290 per cm2. Chinchilla have as many as 1,000.

Then there's the number of hairs per follicle. Hairs grow in tufts, with 1-3 (rarely 4) sprouting from each human head follicle. But a regular chinchilla has about 50 hairs per follicle, while a show “chin” (as pet owners call them) may have 100.

That means a regular chin has 50,000 per cm2 - double a farmed, dressed mink pelt, and 263 times more than our human blonde. So dense is a chin's fur that it's said fleas and ticks can’t penetrate it, and if they could, they'd suffocate!

"Soft Gold"

Amazingly, there is fur even denser than chinchilla - so dense it drove men to endure the harshest conditions nature could throw at them, far from home, for more than 100 years. This was the Great Hunt!

In the early 18th century, Russian fur traders found themselves on the Pacific shores of Siberia. Drawn by a cornucopia of desirable furs, notably sable, they had spent 150 years opening up Russia's vast eastern territory.

Now they took to their boats in pursuit of fur so dense, and so valuable, it was known as "soft gold": sea otter.

SEE ALSO: AMAZING FACTS ABOUT FUR: DRESSING FOR THE ARCTIC

Starting from the Kuril Islands, the traders island-hopped across the North Pacific, harvesting one otter population after another, plus highly profitable hair seals they found along the way. The otter trade in Alaska boomed, and then the traders headed south. There they were joined by adventurers from all over North America and Europe in the great California Fur Rush.

The moniker "soft gold" was deserved. In 1775 otter pelts sold in the Russian port of Okhotsk at up to 30 times the price of sable. In the 1880s, a pelt brought $165 in London, but by 1903, as supplies dried up, made a staggering $1,125.

Thankfully the ground-breaking North Pacific Fur Seal Convention of 1911 put an end to seal otter fever by imposing a moratorium on the hunt. But was it too late? Perhaps fewer than 2,000 otters remained. Could they ever recover?

Yes they could! Sea otters have rebounded in two-thirds of their historic range, and are today cited as a great success story in the annals of marine conservation. As a precaution given the lesson of history, IUCN still classifies them as endangered, but Alaskan fishermen are now complaining the population is growing so fast, they've become a pest!

Exempted from the hunting ban, Alaskan coastal communities are also building a highly regulated trade in sea otter handicrafts and garments.

So what is it about sea otter fur that's so alluring? You know the answer already: density. Not even chinchilla compares.

Sea otters need superb insulation because, unlike other marine mammals, they have no blubber. And unlike that other four-legged marine mammal, the polar bear, they don't leave the water unless they absolutely have to. Imagine, swimming in the North Pacific, 24/7, in winter. Unless you have inches of blubber, or are a halibut, it's almost inconceivable.

And that's why sea otters have the greatest follicle density of any mammal, and hair density that ranges from 100,000 per cm2 on the legs and chest up to 400,000 on the sides and rump.

At its upper range, that’s four times denser than the finest show chin, 16 times denser than a farmed mink, and 2,105 times denser than our human blonde. That is dense fur!

***

FURTHER READING

Alaskan native Peter Paul Kawagaelg Williams, founder of Shaman Furs, is in a special position to bring sea otter to the international fashion scene. By Vanessa Friedman, New York Times, Dec. 1, 2016.

We encounter a lot of hypocrisy here at Truth About Fur, as it seems most anti-fur folk like bacon, wear leather, or think that synthetics don’t kill animals. (Tell that to the families of the birds that died in the Deepwater Horizon oil spill!) Today’s feature, the first in our Hypocrite series, is about one of the most hypocritical fashion designers we know: Stella McCartney.

The list of Stella McCartney’s hypocritical actions is long. Let’s not start on the fact that her company is owned by the same company that owns Gucci, best known for its leather goods. Or that she has several homes and frequently flies around the world for work. That’s not good for the environment, is it?

We also aren’t going to talk about the fact that Stella McCartney has acknowledged the popularity and beauty of fur by launching her own collection of (synthetic, tacky) fake fur pieces. She routinely uses synthetic materials that are not sustainable and are derived from petroleum by-products, whilst preaching about taking care of the environment. But that’s also not what we are talking about today.

Today we are going to focus on silk.

The hypocrite: Stella McCartney, British fashion designer, lifelong vegetarian, and occasional spokesperson for PETA.

The hypocrisy: Stella McCartney refuses to use leather or fur in her collections, and claims “the decision not to use leather or fur is not just because I don’t eat animals or that I think that millions of animals each year shouldn’t be killed for the sake of fashion. It’s because I also believe in the connection between fur and leather and the environment.”

However, Stella McCartney uses a lot of silk in her collections.

Do you know how silk is harvested? Silk worms are boiled alive in their cocoons, allowing the long fibres to be extracted. This gets less media attention than fur because larvae aren’t as cute as mink and fox.

What they say: PETA describes Stella McCartney as an “inspired and compassionate trendsetter” whose “award-winning collections are proudly free of leather, fur, and other skins.” Funny they didn’t mention that her collections include many garments made from animals that have been boiled alive.

What we say: If Stella McCartney wants to make fashion collections without leather or fur, then that is fine. But can she please spare us the preaching about how the leather and fur industries are cruel to animals and the environment, when her own web store is stocked with garments made from non-biodegradable accessories and dresses whose fabric’s production process involves boiling animals alive?

And if she doesn’t think that millions of animals should be killed “for the sake of fashion,” how does she explain all of the silk on her website? Is it because worms’ lives aren’t as valuable as minks’ or foxes’, or is it because Stella McCartney is a hypocrite? I think we all know the answer to that.

Let's start our September 2015 Fur in the News roundup with some fashion news because September sees the launch of the Fall and Winter collections and that means FUR SEASON!!

Usually, when we think about fur we think coats, scarves, jackets, or hats, but this year it is all about the fur shoe. There was uniform experiment's gorgeous sealskin loafers, the "loafur" trend, these kangaroo fur-lined shoes from Gucci and a pair of fur heels that appear to be quite difficult to walk in. If fur shoes aren't your thing, how about mink bikinis?

If you prefer more traditional fur pieces, then join us in salivating over the gorgeous furs in this new Blackglama video, and if you are super traditional, you might be interested in reading about these sealskin garments paired with caribou antler jewelry.

The last fashion story in this month's roundup is the blog post by Mark Oaten, CEO of the International Fur Federation, about Hugo Boss' hypocritical "no fur" stance.

Since we are full swing into harvest season, let's talk a bit about farming. Did you know it is one of the most dangerous jobs in the world? Here is part three in our series entitled A Year on a Mink Farm, now the mink are growing up and leaving the nest, literally. Ever wonder what happens to the rest of the mink after the fur has been taken? This video shows how 100% of the mink is used. And lastly, this blog post talks about the history of fox fur farming on Prince Edward Island, with some commentary from our Senior Researcher, Alan Herscovici.

It's a known fact around here that PETA is pretty evil (they won't even answer any questions about why they kill so many of their shelter animals) and almost all animal rights activists are kinda crazy, especially this one putting kids in cages. But we rarely talk about animal rights vs. animal welfare.

We believe that animal welfare should be a priority in the fur industry, and strongly support initiatives to develop ever better animal welfare practices. However, we do not think that animals deserve rights, like humans.

It turns out the animal rights activists feel exactly the opposite, they hate animal welfare. Their entire history, nicely featured in this article by Protect The Harvest, has been about promoting equality between humans and animals. Well, that's just something we will have to agree to disagree on. And we also don't think that chimps are "persons".

Fur and hunting made the headlines in some great articles last month, including this New York Times piece on the Eat-What-You-Kill movement, this Evening Standard piece contemplating whether fur's controversy will ever fade, and this beautifully written piece by AA Gill questioning the hypocrisy of the anti-fur movement. And lastly, here are some other great reads from last month: a piece on sewing otter pelts, how to grade and size wild fur, and a very interesting piece suggesting humans are "super-predators" and hunting practices should be adapted to better reflect what happens in the wild.

Oh wait, did I just try to end a news roundup without some cute animals? I'm sorry! Click on this for your dose of cute from last month.

P.S. It involves baby bears and a hammock.

As we cross Confederation Bridge – the graceful, 13-kilometer, engineering marvel that links New Brunswick to beautiful Prince Edward Island in Canada's far east – I am invaded by a swell of memories and nostalgia. Our last trip to PEI was six years ago, to attend my son’s wedding, and my Dad travelled with us. This time I am heading for a family reunion, but also in search of the origins of fox farming.

Crossing the Northumberland Strait six years ago, my father, Jack, told us about his trips here with his father – my grandfather, Armand – many years before to buy fox pelts. Dad joined his father’s fur-manufacturing business when he got out of the Air Force, at the end of World War Two. PEI was where fox farming began at the end of the 19th century, and in the early 1950s it was still a leading production centre.

So when we arrived on the island, Dad wanted to stop in Summerside to search for the dry cleaners where he and my grandfather had set up shop to meet the farmers. “There was a bank across the street; they let us store the pelts in their vault overnight,” Dad recalled.

In downtown Summerside we found several tributes to PEI’s fabled fox industry – a statue of a silver fox on a stone pedestal, a huge painted fox mural on the wooden wall of an old building – but no dry cleaner across from a bank. We were about to give up – after all, a half-century had passed – but even at 87, Dad was not one to quit easily.

He went into a small jewelry store and asked the young salesperson if she knew where his dry cleaner might be. She shook her head. But then she picked up the phone to ask her Mom – PEI is that kind of place – and, bingo! The dry cleaner had closed some years before, but Mom remembered where it had been so we could do our pilgrimage. Mission accomplished!

Picturesque Alberton

Fast forward six years. Dad is no longer with us, but my son and his wife now have three young children. We are heading to the farm (dairy and seed potatoes) where my daughter-in-law was raised, to vacation with her siblings and their spouses and kids. My wife and I also take some time on our own to explore beautiful Prince County – and to track down the origins of the fox farming industry that first brought my father and grandfather here.

We find it in the picturesque little town of Alberton. From the wharf you can see Cherry Island, where the world’s first fox farm was built, in the early 1890s. The extraordinary story is recorded in Alberton’s charming little historical museum in the centre of town.

Charles Dalton and Robert Oulton were the pioneers of breeding and raising foxes in captivity. Their foxes were “silver-blacks”, a naturally occurring mutation of the Canadian red fox.

The story began some time before 1890 when a Mr. Lamb dug a few young foxes from their den in the woods near Tignish, not far from Alberton, and sold them to one Benjamin Haywood. Haywood tried briefly to raise the young foxes in a shed adjoining his carriage house before turning them over to Dalton.

After some unsuccessful efforts to raise the foxes in cages in his barn, Dalton formed a partnership with his friend and hunting companion Oulton. Oulton would take care of the animals, while Dalton handled finance and marketing.

Oulton decided to try raising the foxes in a more natural environment; he fenced in a section of spruce and hardwood forest on his isolated Cherry (then Oulton) Island farm. By 1895, Oulton’s farm had produced several foxes, the first to be bred and raised to maturity in captivity.

As Oulton and Dalton worked to develop a consistent strain of silver-black foxes, they began selling the pelts of the animals they did not retain for breeding at the January sale of C.M. Lampson and Company, in London. They shipped the furs from a small PEI harbor in the dead of night, to keep their production secret, and for good reason: in 1900 they received $1,807 for a single fox pelt, an enormous sum at a time when an average Island farm worker could expect to earn $320 for a year’s work!

As production increased, it became impossible to keep their project secret, and in 1900 Dalton and Oulton expanded their partnership into the “Big Six Combine”, with several neighbours. The group pledged never to sell live animals outside the group, but their monopoly was broken in 1910 when the nephew of one of the partners, Frank F. Tuplin, sold two pairs of live silver foxes for $10,000.

During the fox boom that followed (1910-14), fortunes were made. In 1910 Dalton sold 25 pelts in London for more than $20,000. The commissioner of agriculture reported in 1914 that the 3,130 foxes raised on the Island’s 277 ranches had a value of $14 million – an average of almost $4,500 per pelt!

"Million-Dollar Train"

Dalton set up a new farm near Charlottetown, PEI, to supply the Charles Dalton Silver Black Fox Company Limited, a new venture for which he had received $400,000 in cash and $100,000 in shares, in 1912. The fast-growing fox industry was riding so high by then that the train carrying breeding stock from his farm in Tignish was dubbed the "Million-Dollar Train" in the local papers.

With the outbreak of World War One, however, Dalton must have felt that the “soft-gold” rush was peaking; he sold all his fur interests and devoted the rest of his life to politics and philanthropy.

He was elected to the Legislative Assembly in 1912 and 1915, where he served as minister without portfolio. He also donated generously to fund a tuberculosis sanitarium, schools and help for the Island’s poor.

In 1930, at the age of 80, Dalton was appointed lieutenant governor of Prince Edward Island, a position he held until his death in 1933.

Today, there are only a few small fox farms remaining on PEI. But the breeding stock and husbandry techniques developed by Dalton, Oulton and other founding members of PEI’s “Big Six Combine” were used to launch fox farming operations across North America, Europe and Asia.

One last personal note: one of the larger fox farms that my father visited in PEI back in the 1950s was in the tiny community of Birch Hill, just down the road from the farm where my daughter-in-law was raised. Little could he have known that, some 60 years later, his own son, grandson and great-grandchildren would be back in Birch Hill for a family reunion!

The author would like to thank the curators of the Alberton Museum for allowing us to reproduce photos from their wonderful collection. This charming museum is well worth a visit for anyone travelling to Prince Edward Island!

Have you ever visited a mink farm? Would you like to know more about how farmed mink are raised and cared for? Senior Truth About Fur writer Alan Herscovici asked "Les", a third-generation Nova Scotia mink farmer, to give us a personal tour and explain the work he does during a typical year.

In Part 1: Breeding, Les explained how the mink production cycle begins early each spring. In Part 2: Whelping and Weaning, we got an insider’s view of life on the farm through one of the busiest periods, from April to June. This time, we find out how young mink are cared for through the summer.

Truth About Fur (TaF): When we last spoke, you explained all the work involved in preparing and caring for the newly born mink kits. What happens next?

“Les” (Nova Scotia mink farmer): Most of our kits were born towards the end of April or beginning of May. At about one month old they start licking at the fresh feed we put onto the wire mesh of their pen, and a few weeks after that they are usually fully weaned. On our farm we install the nipples of the drinking water distribution system quite close to the nest box opening, to encourage the kits to explore the larger pen and become more independent.

TaF: Is that when you start breaking down the litters into smaller groups?

Les: Exactly. Around mid-June, on our farm, we start moving female kits into their own pens, in groups of four. If there are more than four females in a litter – say, six – we will take two female kits from another large litter to make two pens of four each.

TaF: So the kits are about six-weeks old when they’re separated from their mothers?

Les: On average. You are watching carefully to see when the kits can fend for themselves. If you move them when they’re too small, they may have trouble reaching the water nipples and become dehydrated. If you leave them together too long, they can quarrel and bite at each other to establish dominance.

TaF: What about the male kits?

Les: Some that we select for breeding next season are moved into their own pens in another barn. Most male kits, however, we usually leave, in pairs, with their mothers. Even when fully grown, the males seem to remain calm together with their mothers. And there is research from Denmark that shows they grow bigger and healthier that way.

TaF: So you are already selecting mink for breeding or harvesting at this stage?

Les: It’s a first selection. We do the same when we divide the female kits into groups of four: we are watching for the best fur colour and quality, size, vigour, and the ones from the largest litters. These are moved into a separate barn for breeding next season.

But the female kits don’t remain in fours for long. We leave the pens across the aisle empty, so we can divide each group of four into pairs a few weeks later. Some farms settle their kits into pairs directly. But we find that doing this in two steps – fours and then pairs – helps the kits to adapt with less stress. And because we have developed movable nest boxes (see Part 1), we minimise the need to catch or handle the young mink during the extra move.

During the move from fours to pairs we also vaccinate the young mink. In Canada a 4-Way vaccine is used, protecting against distemper, pseudomonas, enteritis and botulism. We try to get our mink settled into pairs and vaccinated by the first week of July, before the weather gets too hot.

TaF: What happens next?

Les: Through the summer, the mink eat and grow. We feed them at least twice a day, sometimes more. If we see that all the feed on the wire mesh of their pen has been eaten – or if the kits seem overly active – we increase their ration. Within a month, our feed order has doubled!

Traditionally, mink farmers had to source, store and mix their own feed every day – and many still do that. We are lucky because we receive our feed every morning, direct from a central kitchen that services a number of farms in the region. They have a vet on staff and professional nutritionists to ensure that the mink receive the right proportions of fat and protein and other nutrients for each stage of their development.

After the rush of whelping and weaning, and then separating the mink into pairs and vaccinating, the summer is also a quieter time for the mink farmer. We keep the mink fed and clean, of course, but we finally have more time to catch up on maintenance and paperwork ... and for some relaxation.

If you are lucky enough to have good people to help, there may even be some time for a vacation with the family. Which is just as well, because things will get busy again soon enough!

***

SEE ALSO: A YEAR ON A MINK FARM. PART 1: BREEDING, PART 2: WHELPING AND WEANING, and PART 4: FUR TIME

SEE ALSO: WHY IS AMERICAN MINK THE WORLD'S FAVOURITE FUR?

In its 2014 Sustainability Report, fashion brand Hugo Boss said that it was planning to stop using farmed fur in its collections from Autumn/Winter 2016 onwards. According to Bernd Keller at the company, its sustainable corporate strategy should take precedence over the “fast and simple route to success”. Like many companies, it has realised that global consumers are demanding a more sustainable approach to business.

I completely agree that sustainability should take precedence over short-term corporate goals and applaud Hugo Boss for thinking that way, but I would respectfully disagree that moving away from farmed fur is a good method for accomplishing it.

Fur is actually one of the most sustainable materials that apparel brands can employ. Fur farms recycle food waste from other industries and can provide organic replacement for chemical fertilisers, while natural fur garments usually last 20-30 years or more and are regularly brought to furriers for remodelling, which extends their life considerably. And at the end of its life, natural fur will degrade quickly and naturally.

Globally the environmental aspects of fur are strictly regulated in accordance with national legislation. These guidelines cover the handling and distribution of manure and the use of chemicals. This means that the regulated fur industry sets the best standards in the world when it comes to the environmental impact of this type of farming.

Artificial fur, on the other hand, is far from the "safe alternative" some lobbying groups might have us believe. Fake fur, comprising polyacrylates, requires the extraction and fractionating of petroleum, its subsequent conversion into fibres and mass manufacturing into products. These are not only incredibly energy intensive and damaging to local ecosystems, but also produce extremely unpleasant chemical compounds.

Plus, fake fur garments are very much "disposable fashion" and will rarely be kept for more than a couple of years – after which they end up alongside plastic bags on rubbish tips, where they could remain for centuries.

But perhaps most importantly, I’m concerned that Hugo Boss is not respecting consumers’ choice and ability to decide for themselves. Have the vast majority of its customers in regions like Europe and Asia said they don’t want fur products and stayed away in droves? Its most recent global earnings figures would probably suggest otherwise.

SEE ALSO: 5 REASONS WHY FUR IS A GOOD FASHION CHOICE

Also, its 2014 annual report noted that Hugo Boss “has been in dialogue with several animal and consumer protection organisations for many years, to continuously improve in the area of animal welfare”. We certainly welcome intelligent and informed debate on the topics of sustainability and animal welfare.

So I would like to conclude with a request to Hugo Boss. If you’re genuinely keen on sustainability and truly eager to engage in dialogue with interested parties, get in touch with us at the International Fur Federation. Moving away from fur may net the brand some short-term headlines, but it may cause more harm than good in the long run. And the long run is what sustainability is really all about.

Let's start our August Fur in the News Roundup by reviewing what the animal rights criminals groups have been up to. The strangest story came from our friends at Humane Watch, who are reporting that the HSUS are trying to ban bacon and eggs in Massachusetts. We are quite sure they won't succeed in passing this law, but they sure have succeeded in being a total nuisance!

That said, we can't always trust the government to make the right decision when it comes to animals, because California has banned bobcat trapping, despite scientific evidence that the population is growing and could benefit from being controlled. Let's hope the bobcat population doesn't grow to resemble the coyote population there - California residents are on high alert as there have been four reported coyote attacks in the past month.

Speaking of California, it seems like the West Hollywood fur ban has been somewhat reversed; you aren't allowed to display fur in the window, but you are allowed to sell fur from registered trappers. Mink coats are in, Ugg boots are out. Things could be worse!

In other activist news, these animal rights campaigners killed mink by covering them in spray paint, these ones are sending drones out to "protect" seals, and these ones were attacked by a duck-wielding woman. If you loathe these "charities" as much as we do, the best way to stop them is to cut off their funding. Make sure your friends and family make educated choices about charities, using this guide: 5 Questions to Ask Before Donating to Charity.

There have been some great articles recently about animal welfare, trophy hunting, and fashion. Highlights included this great piece about the difference between animal welfare and animal rights, and a very good article questioning why we love leather and hate seal skin. This is a well-written History of Faux Fur, and this article points out some very worrying points about caving in to activists. And a question that has been on all of our minds recently due to some high profile court cases about mink "liberations" was nicely explored here: When Does Animal Rights Activism Become Extremism?

Let's look at some of the highlights from out Instagram and Facebook feeds - including the beautiful fashion images above and the inspirational quotes below.

Let's end this month's roundup with some feelgood factor, starting with two Canadian stories about youth reconnecting with their cultural traditions, firstly in National parks of Yellowknife and then at Mukluk's Storyboot School. And what's a monthly roundup without some cute animal videos? Here is a heartwarming lion reunion, a very beautiful family of deer checking out the neighbourhood, a baby bear giving her mother the cutest of bear hugs, and a young deer making friends with a toddler.

We’ve done our fair share of ranting about two well-known animal “rights” charities on this blog so I thought it was time to talk about donating to charity. There are many wonderful charities doing good deeds for people, animals, and the environment and they need the public’s support. There are also quite a few charities that aren’t very effective at what they do, or mislead the public about their activities.

If you are looking to donate money, and you want to feel confident the funds are going to good use, you may want to ask yourself these five questions about a charity before making a donation.

1. What are the primary services they provide? This should really be the primary reason why you are donating to a charity – because you want to help someone or something. But it is important to know exactly what the charity is doing, especially if it isn’t obvious in the name (or the name is misleading). You may also want to investigate if there are different branches or offices you can donate to. For example, the World Wildlife Fund allows you to donate to help the rhinos, tigers, or other species in need. If you have the choice of directing your funds to a specific project, then be sure to choose the one that is most important to you.

2. Are the programs effective? (And how is effectiveness measured?) This will require a bit of detective work but asking a charity outright how they measure their successes and whether they deem recent programs to have been successful is a great start.

3. What percentage of the dollar goes to providing the services and programs, versus administration or fundraising fees? A good benchmark is 60% - if the charity is spending less than 40% on administration and fundraising then the charity can be considered to be using its donations effectively.

4. How are they rated? There are lots of websites rating charities, using different criteria. Two major websites rating charities are Charity Navigator and the AIP’s Web site, Charity Watch (this site requires a $50 per year membership.)

SEE ALSO: WHY I WISH I DIDN'T LOATHE ANIMAL RIGHTS ACTIVISTS

5. What do the press say about them? A simple online search of your chosen charity can expose you to a lot of positive and negative information about their activities. It’s important to be as objective as possible, which is not always easy. Usually a simple search will help to figure out whether your chosen charity has a good reputation. There are organizations who expose the underhand or misleading activities of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals or The Humane Society of the United States - so if you are considering donating to either of these two charities, you may want to do some research at PETA Kills Animals or Humane Watch, first. Or maybe just donate to your local shelter, instead.

Here's some further reading on the topic, if you are looking to dig deeper:

• Forbes: Choosing a charity

New York Times: How to Choose a Charity Wisely

Charity Law Information Program: How to decide which charity to support

Ask most people what fur is good for and they’ll say it keeps the wearer – animal or human - warm. True enough, but some types of fur are so much warmer than others, and the reasons why may surprise you. In this first of a series to introduce some of the amazing facts about fur, we’ve planned a hunting and fishing trip and now it's time to plan our wardrobe. We’re headed to the Canadian territory of Nunavut, and we need to dress for the occasion!

Nunavut is actually the size of Western Europe, so even though almost the whole territory is classed as having a polar climate, there are considerable differences in weather and hours of sunlight. Time of year also makes a big difference. So let’s narrow it down and say we’re headed for the capital of Iqaluit at 63°N, in late March.

We’ll have about 6 hours of sunlight a day, enough for some good hunting or fishing close to home. But with average temperatures for March at -28°C, and a record low of -44°C, we can forget our birdspotter’s anorak. Heck, with wind chill factored in, the mercury once hit -62°C, so you might be tempted to leave your entire wardrobe at home, but don't. Jeans and sneakers will get a lot of use when we're not actually out on the land or ice.

It’s time to plan our new wardrobe and then figure out how to get it, because it's not going to be from your typical downtown furrier. Mink, fox or chinchilla are not up to the job, plus we'd prefer not to run up a huge cleaning bill on our return.

What we’re after is fur that’s full of holes.

Hollow Hairs Please

One of the key functions of fur in nature is thermoregulation: helping furbearers stay cool in hot weather and, more importantly, warm when it’s freezing. This is achieved primarily by means of insulation, and one of the greatest insulators is air. Or, to be more precise, trapped air.

Heat travels more slowly through air than through solids or liquids, (For comparison, water is 24 times more effective at conducting heat than air.) Furbearers take advantage of this by trapping air between the dense hairs of their underfur, then sealing it in with their long guard hairs. For us humans, it's a case of dressing in layers: two thin sweaters, with a layer of air between, keep us warmer than one thick one.

But some furbearers, mostly species of deer, have taken it to the next level. Not only do their guard hairs help trap air in the underfur, but those guard hairs also have air trapped permanently inside each one! Commonly known as “hollow” hairs, think more in terms of a honeycomb center, with countless tiny pockets of air. (Click here for an example of a scanning electron micrograph of red deer hairs.)

So we’re going to go with a local favourite in Nunavut, caribou fur.

Caribou must endure bitter cold for months at a time, and they don’t even shiver. How do they do it? It's not all in the fur; a highly efficient means of minimising heat loss known as countercurrent heat exchange functions in their legs and nasal passages. But the key is their winter coats, three inches thick and covering them from nose to hooves, all topped off with those hollow hairs. (Interestingly, it is also these hollow hairs that cause caribou to swim so high out of the water, further conserving heat.)

So we’ll start with a couple of knee-length parkas, not for alternate days but to wear as a pair if needed. The outer parka, worn on its own with the fur on the outside, will be for less cold weather or trips close to home when a sudden change in the weather just means a sprint home. The inner parka will be added, with the fur facing our body (yes, we'll need a shirt or other kind of lining!), when the mercury plummets or we're traveling farther afield.

Since we're not dressing to impress but looking for utilitarian wear, we'll go with plain parkas, not the decorated versions commonly associated with Inuit culture. Caribou hair sheds easily and the hollow shafts are constantly breaking, so decorated parkas are for special occasions only (and for sale to tourists).

And since it's not mid-winter, we'll go with summer caribou skins, which are also those generally used for garments. The hair is shorter than winter skins so they're not as warm, but this also makes them less prone to shedding. Summer skins are also easier to dress than winter skins, and while dressing is said to reduce warmth, it does make them more durable.

And if you're ready to go totally native, caribou pants and socks come next, both with the fur on the inside, then caribou mittens and kamik (traditional footwear) to round off your ensemble.

A word of caution though. Unless you're actually out on the land or ice, dressing head to toe in caribou will make you stand out from the crowd. Plus, propping up the bar in Iqaluit will very quickly cause you to overheat! That's where the jeans and sneakers come in.

Hydrophobic Hood

Before you shell out for your parkas, though, pay particular attention to their most important feature: the hood lining. It must be hydrophobic.

OK, we don’t literally want it to be “hydrophobic” or it would be scared of water. What we want is a strong “hydrophobic effect”, meaning it appears to repel water. (There is no actual repulsion involved, just an absence of attraction.)

The hydrophobic effect can be found everywhere and is essential to life on Earth. Observe a droplet of dew on a leaf. The water and the leaf want nothing to do with each other, to the point where the dew forms a sphere. The hydrophobic effect is also seen in all fur, but some types are more hydrophobic than others.

And why is a hydrophobic hood lining so important? Well, here’s what happens if you don’t have one. You’re out one day when a blizzard blows in and the temperature suddenly drops to -30°C. You pull up your hood with its big, fluffy synthetic lining and laugh at Mother Nature. Next thing you know, your breath is freezing on the lining which then freezes to your face. Lesson learned. You’ll never wear a synthetic hood lining again, at least not in the Arctic.

Better to do it right the first time and go with the ultimate in hydrophobic hood lining, wolverine fur. Since that is not always available, northern grey wolf makes an excellent second choice.

Nature’s Raincoat

But we also need a second outfit, still for time on the land, but for days when caribou will make us feel like a baked potato. The sky is clear and the forecast is for temperatures around freezing. There's a chance of rain and slush underfoot, so being waterproof is paramount. It's time for Nature’s raincoat, sealskin.

People from down south often assume sealskin must be the ultimate in cold-weather clothing, but it’s not the case, and that’s because the species used – mainly ringed seals, as in Nunavut, and harp seals – have no underfur. Sometimes known as "hair seals", their pelts are composed entirely of short, shiny guard hairs.

The "flat" fur that comes from hair seals is not as warm as "true" fur (with underfur), like caribou, but it has some real pluses. Because there is no underfur, sealskin is light. It is also incredibly durable, more so than any other flat fur like calf or antelope (which is why it's used to make rope). Its structure resists wind, its oil content repels rain, and its porosity allows it to breathe (which is why it also makes great tents).

And oh yes, it's virtually waterproof, which is why it's used to skin kayaks.

Sealskins, then, are the Arctic's warm, wet-weather clothing, "warm", of course, being a relative term. Mittens, a lighter parka, and most definitely sealskin boots therefore make it on to our shopping list.

Shopping Time

And now comes the hard part. It's so hard, in fact, that if you're planning a quick in-and-out visit to Nunavut, you're not going to be wearing caribou or ringed seal anyway, so just pack the best of the rest. Unfortunately, buying an outfit of traditional Nunavut clothing is, like hollow hairs and hydrophobia, amazing - amazingly hard!

Forget about buying outfits off the peg, in Iqaluit or anywhere else. It's not going to happen, though not for want of trying. Efforts have been made in Nunavut over the years to establish a garment industry with ensured availability from suppliers and standardised sizes and prices, but all to no end. The workforce with the necessary skills - older women, with kids to care for, working from home - have not taken to the idea of a production line.

So what to do? You can sign up for an expensive sport-hunting package and get the clothing, including a decorated parka made of dressed skins, thrown in. Finding someone to make it then becomes your tour operator's headache.

Or you turn up in Iqaluit, ask around, negotiate hard, and be prepared to pay $1,500+ for a plain caribou parka, pants, kamik and mittens - and that's summer skins, probably not dressed. If you're staying a month, it should be ready by the time you're heading home.

The good news is that Canadian harp seal garments can be bought on-line (here or here, for example), provided you don't live in a country that denies you the freedom to import them. Which brings us to the last amazing fact about seal fur.

Nonsensical Bans

Almost all sealskin garments come from healthy populations of either harp seals or ringed seals. So healthy are these populations that the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) classifies both harp and ringed seals as "Least Concern".

And yet two of the biggest potential markets for seal products, the US and the EU, are closed for no good reason.

SEE ALSO: EU SEALING POLICY IS HYPOCRITICAL, ANTI-DEMOCRATIC

The US has banned imports of all seal products since 1972 under the Marine Mammal Protection Act, legislation that is fiercely defended by the nation's animal activist community.

In the EU, the ban went into effect in 2009, since when the European Commission has made a pig's ear of justifying it because it can't. Everyone knows the ban was passed not for any rational reason, or even to satisfy popular demand, but because it was bought and paid for by lobbyists in Brussels working for animal rights groups.

Now, true to their reputation for feeble-minded solutions (like the bendy banana law), Brussels' finest have sought to placate Canada's angry Inuit by exempting them from the ban. Not surprisingly, many Inuit representatives have called the gesture colonialistic and racist, so we'll see how that works out!

Truly, the politics of fur are no less amazing than the science and cultural traditions of this beautiful, warm and sustainable natural resource. Send us a postcard from Iqaluit!