Can fur be ethical if it’s the by-product of the meat industry?
Photos by Matt Kowal
Mention fur and you’ll have most people seeing red, either from outrage or from the paint that PETA has used to mark their couture jacket or boots. The fashion industry has come a long way since the the 50s when a fur coat was a necessary status symbol. Most often you’ll find synthetic fur lining most boots and hoods but this year in its September issue of biblical proportions, Vogue turns the spotlight to real fur. Some might be offended, but in a culture of carnivores the use value in fur moves beyond creating clothing and on to making use of industrial waste through upcycling.
Vogue poses ethical fur as a possible solution to the waste by products of the meat industry, technically making it a form of upcycling. Upcycling is a relatively new phenomenon that uses industrial remnants to make ingeniously new but texturally old consumer goods. Vogue isn’t talking about mink or fox or any other kind of fur where the animal is raised and slaughtered or hunted solely for the purpose of using its skin to make clothing. Instead, they focus on taking leftover animal fur scraps from the meat industry and turning them into useful, albeit expensive, articles of clothing. Maybe it’s just the already-wealthy selling refurbished scraps, which they got for pittances, to us at a ridiculous profit, but at least they’re doing something with the piles of waste that we turn a blind eye to when any fetish capitalist item is fabricated.
It’s ridiculous that a glossy image of some model posed in a shearling coat makes me uncomfortable, even if I know the fur used was going to be thrown out anyway, a by-product of the meat industry in Turkey. But if I watch a hot dog eating contest, I feel more discomfort over people shoving phallic-shaped meat tubes into their mouths than I do about the actual excess and waste. We don’t need animals to live. However accustomed we are to quick and easy animal protein, it’s completely viable to live off of plant-based protein. In a world where mass meat farms wreak havoc on the environment, is killing an animal to eat and wear it any worse than killing it to eat it and discard the skin like it’s garbage?
In this waste-glorifying culture, it seems like the ideal model is to promote consciousness of creative ways to repurpose waste. In the U.S., overhunting of alligators in the 1960s led to dwindling numbers, finding gators a place on the endangered species list in 1967. Government officials developed an egg-culling program that advocated farming rather than hunting, with alligator farmers receiving eggs at $12 each. These farmed gators are raised for their meat and their hides, with their jawbones predominantly used as front-yard tree decorations (if reality television is a reliable source). Enclosures are kept in top condition, and avoid extreme overcrowding to ensure that their skins get as few scratches and scars as possible for a reptile with as many teeth as a piano has keys.
While the conditions on alligator farms seem slightly better than on regular farms, they’re ultimately just stock pens for something that’s living to die. But any animal kept for human use is dealt the same shitty cards by fate; they’re dying anyway, so who cares if someone butchers them and makes alli-burgers, renders the fat and makes artisan alli-candles, and then makes their skin into a purse and a pair of shoes. They are already dead. If we feel no shame in eating a hamburger in public, we should feel no more shame for wearing an upcycled leather jacket.
