White House kills EU fur ban
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, Jan/Feb 1998:
BRUSSELS––Hope that the European Union would finally enforce
a ban promised since 1991 on imports of furs possibly taken by leghold trapping
died on December 1, 1997, when 12 hours after the EU threatened to
impose the ban against U.S. wild-caught furs within a week, it accepted a
non-binding deal that allows continued imports of leghold-trapped furs for at
least six more years while individual states set their own schedules for phasing
out or modifying leghold traps to meet so-called international standards developed
by the trapping industry.
The USDA is meanwhile spending $350,000 this year in experiments
to develop alternative trapping methods. Largely replicative of work
done in Canada for nearly 40 years without finding anything acceptable to
both trappers and humanitarians, the experiments call for trapping at least 186
foxes, 186 coyotes, and 1,080 raccoons.