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Joined by man’s best friend, Mercy For Animals activists challenged Cincinnati and Columbus residents with a difficult question: why do we call some animals pets and others pelts? Signs asked passersby "Would You Wear Your Dog?" in an effort to uncover the inherent speciesism in wearing fur coats. Footage of animals drowning in underwater traps and pacing endlessly in filthy cages on fur “farms” aired on MFA’s mobile TV unit, showing shoppers exactly what is sewn into every fur coat. News coverage of the events reached countless consumers.

MFA wants consumers to know that minks, foxes, chinchillas, raccoons, and other animals on fur farms spend their short lives confined to barren, tiny, urine- and feces-encrusted cages constantly circling and pacing back and forth from stress and boredom.

To the surprise of many potential fur buyers, no federal law protects animals on fur farms.

Farmers often kill animals by anal or genital electrocution, which causes them to experience the intense pain of a heart attack while fully conscious. Other killing methods include neck-breaking and suffocation. Sometimes animals are only stunned and are then skinned alive. Animals trapped in the wild suffer for hours or even days before trappers arrive to stomp on their chests or break their necks. The trapped animal is left to suffer blood loss, infection, gangrene, exhaustion, exposure, frostbite, shock, or attack by other predators. Every year, traps also cripple and kill hundreds of thousands of dogs, cats, birds, and other animals -- including endangered species -- who are caught by mistake.

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