Your cashmere sweaters and scarfs might be made from rat fur.

[mikedt]

BBC News - Italy: 'Cashmere' clothes found to contain rat fur

Clothing being sold as cashmere actually contains rat fur, it appears, as Italian police arrest 14 people and seize more than a million garments.
The Chinese-born suspects were arrested in the Italian cities of Livorno and Rome after a year-long investigation, and have been cautioned for fraud, the Italian news agency ANSA reports.
The clothes claiming to be made of cashmere contained a mixture of acrylic and viscose, as well as "fur from rats and other animals", judicial sources say. Bogus merino wool, silk and pashmina garments were also seized.
Counterfeiting is widespread in China, in domestic and export markets, leading Beijing to step up its efforts to crack down on the practice. Taiwan's Want China Times says fake goods are a "way of life" in many rural areas, with people having "no choice but to accept counterfeit and defective goods".
China's reputation for peddling fake goods may be hurting its legitimate industries elsewhere in the world. According to the Arab News, Saudi consumers may be put off by the "Made in China" label, even on popular brands, because they're worried the goods might be fake.

 

[Clementine_3]

Good thing I don't have any cashmere sweaters at all, especially these. They just don't seem like they'd work well for me on snake feeding day...whoops, that's my sweater not your dinner.

 

[davoid]

One of the best thread titles ever.

 

[lunatic59]

I've never seen a cold rat, so the fur must be soft and comfy. They just need to find a clever name for it. Those silky smooth gloves lined with "fitch" or used in artist's paint brushes is actually skunk fur. If they said "skunk fur" who would buy it?

from an art supply website. :rofl:

Fitch is a traditional and rare hair for oil painting similar to mongoose and sable. Our Fitch is super smooth, ideal for blending and portrait painting.

Sourced in Europe, our Fitch is hand selected and assembled into a solid, more affordable substitute for sable brushes. It

 

[huh]

Eighty-five percent of the fur industry’s skins come from animals living captive in fur factory farms.(1) These farms can hold thousands of animals, and their farming practices are remarkably uniform around the globe. As with other intensive-confinement animal farms, the methods used in fur factory farms are designed to maximize profits, always at the expense of the animals.



To cut costs, fur farmers pack animals into small cages, preventing them from taking more than a few steps back and forth

No federal humane slaughter law protects animals in fur factory farms, and killing methods are gruesome. Because fur farmers care only about preserving the quality of the fur, they use slaughter methods that keep the pelts intact but that can result in extreme suffering for the animals. Small animals may be crammed into boxes and poisoned with hot, unfiltered engine exhaust from a truck. Engine exhaust is not always lethal, and some animals wake up while they are being skinned. Larger animals have clamps attached to or rods forced into their mouths and rods are forced into their anuses, and they are painfully electrocuted. Other animals are poisoned with strychnine, which suffocates them by paralyzing their muscles with painful, rigid cramps. Gassing, decompression chambers, and neck-breaking are other common slaughter methods on fur factory farms.

In an undercover investigation into the dog and cat fur trade investigators went to an animal market in Southern China and found that dogs and cats were languishing in tiny cages, visibly exhausted. Some had been on the road for days, transported in flimsy wire-mesh cages with no food or water. Animals were packed so tightly into cages that they could not move. Because of the cross-country transport in such deplorable conditions, our investigators saw dead cats on top of the cages, dying cats and dogs inside the cages, and cats and dogs with open wounds. Some animals were lethargic, and others were fighting with each other, driven insane from confinement and exposure. All of them were terrified.

Investigators reported that up to 8,000 animals were loaded onto each truck, with cages stacked on top of each other. Cages containing live animals were tossed from the tops of the trucks onto the ground 10 feet below, shattering the legs of the animals inside them. Many of the animals still had collars on, a sign that they were once someone’s beloved companions, stolen to be bludgeoned, hanged, bled to death, and strangled with wire nooses so that their fur can be turned into coats, trim, and trinkets.


Nice...huh?

and this is why I don't wear fur...or leather..

nobody should...it's absurd

and factory farming is why I don't eat meat...truly horrific and inhumane torture...of the animals used for food...

I'm not saying everyone should be a vegan or vegetarian...but I do believe that when an industry has gone so far beyond humane practices in the name of profit...I will have no part in perpetuating the torture and cruelty...it's just so wrong on so many levels.......plain and simple...


ok I'll get off my soap box now....


carry on

 

[huh]

I didn't mean to snuff out the thread
Please
Carry on

 

[mikedt]

I didn't mean to snuff out the thread
Please
Carry on

No problem, huh.

The original story is mainly about deception, rather than animal cruelty. Passing off rat fur as cashmere. Which more akin to buying a cheap iPhone, and then finding it has Android and not iOS. Or what happened in Europe last year, selling horse meat as beef.

One thing sheep or goats don't usually die during making of woollen sweaters. Whether there's cruelty or not...that's another matter I think...and probably is more appropriate for the P&CA forum.

 

[mikedt]

One of the best thread titles ever.

It's not rat, it's filigree Siberian Hamster fur!

 

[davoid]

One thing sheep or goats don't usually die during making of woollen sweaters.

That's what I was thinking - cashmere is wool. It got me to thinking that it would be a tricky job to shear a rat... not very likely.

 

[dontpanicbobby]

IT's about time someone found a use for rats other than eating them.

 

[davoid]

IT's about time someone found a use for rats other than eating them.

I think that's already been taken care of...

Squeaky Farms Brand Genuine Animal Milk - Simpsons Wiki