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Israel's chief rabbi, Rabbi Yona Metzger
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| By israelinsider staff and partners February 28, 2007 |
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PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) has sent a letter to Israel's chief rabbi, Rabbi Yona Metzger, thanking him for the landmark Halachic ruling he issued this week prohibiting Jews from wearing fur from animals who have been skinned alive. Rabbi Metzger's ruling came after he viewed video footage of a fur farm in China -- now the world's largest fur exporter -- showing animals who are skinned alive while fully conscious.
"Your decision to prohibit Jews from wearing fur will spare countless animals from miserable lives and painful deaths," writes PETA Vice President Bruce Friedrich. "We hope your compassionate example will inspire many other people of faith to have mercy on animals by avoiding fur and other cruelly obtained products."
PETA's undercover video footage, narrated by Martha Stewart, shows foxes and raccoon dogs whose heads are slammed on the ground but who remain conscious -- panting and blinking -- as they are skinned alive. Millions of cats and dogs in China are bludgeoned, strangled, and bled to death; their fur is deliberately mislabeled as that of other species. Animals on fur farms spend their entire lives in tiny, filthy cages, where they often go insane before they are killed by poisoning, gassing, anal or vaginal electrocution, or neck-breaking. These crude killing methods are often ineffective, and animals sometimes "wake up" while being skinned.
This isn't the first time that a chief rabbi has condemned fur. In 1992, Rabbi Chaim Dovid Halevy, the Sephardic chief rabbi of Tel Aviv, issued a ruling indicating that Jews should not wear fur. "Why should people be allowed to kill animals if it is not necessary, simply because they desire...fur coats?" he asked.
Continues Friedrich, "Because fur farms around the world are either poorly regulated or not regulated at all and live-skinning often occurs, there's no way to ensure that a particular pelt came from an animal who was killed before being skinned. That's another compelling reason for consumers to avoid buying fur at all."
To view PETA's video about animals being skinned alive, click here. Please be advised that the video is very graphic. |
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