Rabbit fur farming exposed

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2007:

The Portuguese animal rights group ANIMAL on December 9,
2006 unveiled a nine-minute video showing conditions in the
Portuguese rabbit fur farming industry.
“The film finishes showing the rabbits in the skinning
factory, tied upside down in a line before being skinned alive,”
said ANIMAL president Miguel Moutinho. Live skinning, Moutinho
said, follows “slaughter without proper stunning, with the rabbits
still conscious when having their throats slit.

“In late October,” Moutinho elaborated, “investigators went
inside the Portuguese rabbit fur trade,” visiting “various rabbit
farms and slaughterhouses in different regions,” where they learned
“how profitable the rabbit fur business really is, and how it is
disguised as the rabbit meat trade. Scared rabbits caged in
miserable conditions are sent to slaughter at only six weeks old,”
if raised for meat, “or three to five months old, if bred just for
their fur,” Moutinho said, mentioning “huge mortality of rabbits
due to the extremely poor conditions in which they are kept.”
“Rabbits are bred and killed in Portugal,” Moutinho charged,
“then sent to Spain to be more cheaply sent from there to China,
where the pelts are very cheaply treated, and then sent back to
Europe.”
Moutinho said the ANIMAL investigation “also reveals how
so-called ‘chinchilla Rex’ rabbits bred in Portugal many times are
sold as genuine chinchilla fur, as only experts could distinguish”
their pelts after treatment.