by Randi J Task

Created on: August 24, 2008   Last Updated: February 19, 2012

Reflections on seeing an animal skinned alive.

I received one of those emails from a friend - an action email about some kind of suffering or other and to send copies of it to friends and sign a petition etc. The sort of email one will either act on or delete without much thought. The enclosed video was harrowing and horrifying showing a Raccoon dog (it looks a bit like a Raccoon but is a dog) being skinned alive in a fur farm in China. At the end, even after all its feet had been cut off, the animal was still alive and had sobered up after its vain struggles. Like something out of a horror film like "The Fly" it raised its head, blinked with its remaining eyelashes and then lay its head down to continue dying for anything from 10-20 minutes. Yes sir, in Chinese fur farms they are skinning cats and dogs alive. Apparently its easier. Why bother doing anything else? It's only part of a a globalized industrial process with China as a major provider of fur lined clothes that are cheap and fashionable. Since then, a petition is going around and the Chinese embassies have sent out a press release about these "isolated incidents" and why they are concerned about it as much as anyone else. There is no evidence anything is being done about it. People who know the Chinese and some other far eastern countries including Japan and Korea are aware that sometimes they seem to have a "cruelty gene" and that expression was supplied by a European lady I know, who was married to a Chinese gentleman. Actually, I think we all have something of the cruelty gene, but according to our culture, will not express this much if at all.

Once upon a time I used to skin dead birds and mammals, typically found dead, to prepare study skins. Skinning animals is quite important when butchering a large animal. The worst bit is when the skin comes off the head and you see these dark eyes exposed against the fleshy head. In Siberia, where people breed and herd reindeer and live off them, animals are slaughtered very fast - a slit to the throat. They are not even aware of their fate just before, and die a quick death. All the meat is eaten and the skin is turned into materials and clothing, especially thick warm boots. In the past more than now, the bones were also used. This is the appropriate use of an animal, an appropriate way of dispatch and use of the skin. The native American cultures of the USA had a similar relationship with buffalo.

The Chinese fur farms offer no comparison. Here the carcasses

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