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For Immediate Release:March 28, 2011
Contact: Ashley Gonzalez 202-483-7382
New York -- After learning that proud yoga devotee Donna Karan uses rabbit fur in her designs, internationally renowned yoga master BKS Iyengar has written to Karan on PETA's behalf to ask the designer to stay true to her discipline and stop causing the painful deaths of thousands of animals a year.
Writes Iyengar, "Being a devoted student of yoga, undividedly practicing my method and compassionate at heart, may I request you to follow the principles of yamas and oblige by dropping furs, which are violently removed from the living animals, so that those animals which have the right to live, live in peace."
Video footage taken on a fur farm in China, where Karan sources rabbit fur, shows workers pulling rabbits out of cages by their ears and stunning the screaming animals with electrical devices. Rabbits watch as other animals have their throats cut and their heads and paws cut off with knives before the skin is peeled off their bodies.
The 92-year-old yoga guru is the recipient of numerous awards and titles, including the Padma Bhushan and Padma Shri from the government of India. He, along with PETA, is calling on Karan to join the many top fashion designers—including Calvin Klein, Stella McCartney, Ralph Lauren, and Tommy Hilfiger—who are 100 percent fur-free.
For more information, please visit PETA.org.
BKS Iyengar's letter to Donna Karan follows.
My Dear Donna Karan,
As a yoga practitioner, may I request you, on behalf of myself and my friends from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals India, take a stand against using the fur of animals that is removed by the cruelest killing methods.
Though I had the chance of meeting you when you hosted a vegetarian party to all members of the yoga family and friends a few years ago and were a number one designer of the world, I was not aware then that your designs included the use of animal fur.
Being a devoted student of yoga, undividedly practicing my method and compassionate at heart, may I request you to follow the principles of yamas and oblige by dropping furs, which are violently removed from the living animals, so that those animals which have the right to live, live in peace.
With my good wishes,
BKS Iyengar