PETA Investigation Uncovers Cruelty on Chinchilla Fur Farm

In the wake of the investigation, PETA wrote to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) demanding that it begin protecting animals raised for the bloody fur trade, but, sadly, animals killed for their skins—including chinchillas, foxes, minks, and raccoons—currently receive no federal protection from the kinds of abuses that our investigators witnessed.
Click here to read the investigators’ firsthand account
From the Investigators’ Notebook: One Day on a Fur Farm
Animals raised for their fur suffer from the time they’re little until the day they are killed.
Inside the breeder rooms, the farmer looked for babies to take away from their mothers. The babies squealed and squealed as he grabbed them and carried them by their tails to the “grower room.” Their mothers were distressed, too; one climbed and pressed against the front of her cage, frantically trying to reach her baby. My partner asked the farmer if the mothers got upset when he took their babies away. “I don’t ask them their opinion,” he said.
At feeding time, the farmer walked down the rows of cages checking if the chinchillas were dead or alive. Many were asleep, since they are nocturnal animals, but the farmer banged on cages to make them move. One chinchilla didn’t move. His hindquarters looked wasted away, completely denuded of fur. The farmer had already told us that his profit margins didn’t factor in veterinary care. He tossed the body onto the festering trash heap he called “Mount Chinchilla.”
Animals who had chewed at their fur (a sign of stress), making them unsuitable for pelting, were housed on a lower rack—”death row”—so that the farmer could scoot alongside the cages in an office chair, killing one after another without exerting himself. He kills these “trash” animals by breaking their necks.
We watched him thrust his arm into a cage, corner the frantic chinchilla inside, and pull him out by his tail. Grasping the chinchilla’s head and jaw, he arched the neck awkwardly backwards. The chinchilla squealed. The farmer then pulled sharply on the animal’s tail, breaking his neck. He tossed the jerking chinchilla to the floor, where the animal writhed in continuous spasms. We asked if he was ever bothered by the killings. “I don’t feel anything,” he replied, and moments later, added, “I could do this all day.”
Other chinchillas are electrocuted so that they won’t thrash around and ruin their coats. Carrying a chinchilla by her tail, the farmer pulled a rusty wire apparatus from a drawer, dipped the sharp clamps into a jar of water, and attached one clamp to the chinchilla’s metal ear tag and the other to her foot. He plugged the device into a wall socket and dropped the chinchilla to the counter. The surge of electricity stiffened her. Her tail stuck straight out, her chest heaved, and a minute later, a yellow trickle ran down the counter—she had lost control of her bladder.
Performed this way, electrocution sends a current through the heart and immobilizes the animal, but it does not stop brain activity. The chinchillas suffer the pain of a full-blown heart attack until their hearts finally stop beating. The farmer admitted that he had been told by a veterinarian to stun the chinchillas first. But he said he didn’t see why stunning them and then electrocuting them would be any different from just electrocuting them, so he doesn’t do it.
After unplugging the device, the farmer clipped the chinchilla’s arms and legs to a pelting board in a spread-eagled position. Slitting her open, he cut her face away from her skull and cut her hands off. Working her pelt away from her body, he pulled her arms out of her skin, which turned inside out like socks. Saying, “She doesn’t need these anymore,” he took scissors and cut off her whiskers, then her ears. Her tail and feet soon followed; they were dumped, along with her naked, skinned body, into a garbage bucket, like so much trash.
Updates Since the Investigation
April 11, 2007: Court Rules in PETA’s Favor
A federal court has thrown out a lawsuit that was filed to stop PETA from showing video footage from this investigation. The lawsuit claimed that the owners of the fur farm were harmed by the investigation, but the court ruled in PETA’s favor on every claim and dismissed the entire case.
U.S. District Court Judge David M. Lawson stated that PETA “has a right to object publicly” to the raising and electrocution of animals for their fur and that “[t]he methods and practices of raising and destroying animals, especially for commercial purposes, has been recognized as a matter of public concern.”
He compared PETA’s use of undercover investigations to that of major TV networks: “Undercover investigations are one of the main ways our criminal justice system operates. In addition, television shows like Primetime Live and Dateline often conduct undercover investigations to reveal improper, unethical, or criminal behavior.”
The court concluded that PETA’s publication of its undercover video footage on its Web site was the “truthful publication of and accurate representations of” the furriers’ actions.
February 2005: MDA, USDA, and Local Officials Investigate
Following our investigation of the chinchilla fur farm in Michigan, a joint inspection was conducted by the Michigan Department of Agriculture, the USDA, and local animal control officers. The fur farmer has agreed to work with a local veterinarian for training in euthanasia and humane handling. He will no longer kill chinchillas via electrocution and will learn how to euthanize them by lethal injection.
Read the letter from the Michigan Department of Agriculture.