Croatian actor slams fur
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2003:
ZAGREB, Croatia-Born in Sibenik, Croatia, actor Goran
Visnjic posed with his dog for anti-fur billboards posted in Zagreb
and Split on January 3 by Animal Friends Croatia and PETA.
“Civilization is advancing but some people are going
backward,” said Visnjic of fur-wearers. Visnjic has played the
immigrant doctor “Luka Kovac” on the NBC drama ER since 1999.
PETA spokesperson Michael McGraw described the billboard
campaign as the first PETA anti-fur effort in eastern Europe, but
two PETA staffers and a volunteer from the Russian office of
Greenpeace stripped in 1991 for a brief anti-fur protest in Moscow.
Like other nude anti-fur protests outside the U.S., including a
first-ever nude protest in Beijing in October 2002, that effort may
have attracted more attention in U.S. and British media than where it
occurred.
PETA has prominently campaigned against fur this winter in
Britain, but had to change approaches when in May 2002 the British
Cinema Advertising Association rejected a screen ad showing a woman
being beaten and stripped of her fur coat, after which a caption
asks, “What if you were killed for your coat?”
PETA briefly aired the ad in the U.S., but withdrew it from
U.S. theatres after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
Instead, the PETA campaign in Britain has reportedly
centered around a poster showing singer Sophie Ellis Bextor holding
up the carcass of a skinned fox, with the message “Here is the rest
of your fur coat.”
The Fund for Animals met similar resistance in placing
anti-fur advertisements featuring actresses Jessica Biel and Marla
Sokoloff in teen-oriented and fashion-oriented U.S. magazines. The
ads ran in The New Yorker, Avenue, Cosmopolitan, Cosmogirl!, YM,
Teen, and Paper, but were rejected by TeenVogue and-initially-by
the playbill publications of the Kennedy Center for the Performing
Arts in Washington D.C.
The Kennedy Center reversed its initial decision 24 hours
after The Fund disclosed it.
“TeenVogue is apparently the Joe Camel of animal cruelty,
peddling a product to young people without telling them the truth
about it,” said Fund president Michael Markarian.
Other prominent anti-fur campaigns this winter include an
international “Design Against Fur” contest promoted by the Anti-Fur
Alliance; efforts to ban fur farming in various nations, led by
Compassion In World Farming; and pursuit of a European Union ban on
imports of items made from dog and cat fur, promoted by the Humane
Society International division of the Humane Society of the U.S.
[Entry rules for “Design Against Fur” are available from
Canadians for Furbearing Animals at 124-2 Clarendon Ave., Toronto,
Ontario M4V 1H9, Canada; 416-922-4554; ainsleewillock@hotmail.com.]
