Fury over `dog' fur (USA)

[Animal 0]

Fury over `dog' fur

J.C. Penney pulled offending coats after activists protested – then doctored
labels and put them back on sale
January 18, 2007
David Koenig
Associated press

J.C. Penney Co. removed some fur-trimmed coats from its racks around
Christmas after animal-rights activists objected that the fur came from wild
dogs in China.

But the department store company put the coats back on the racks after New
Year's – after directing employees to blot out the line on the label
identifying the trim as raccoon fur.

The fur-collared leather coats were sold under the house brands St. John's
Bay and a.n.a., and within a week of being put back on the sales floor they
were marked down to $74.99 from the original $349.99 U.S. at some Penney
stores.

"We sold a lot of them during Christmas," said a saleswoman at a Penney
store in North Carolina who spoke on condition of anonymity because she
feared losing her job.

By putting the coats back on the racks, Penney is charting a different
course than rival Macy's, which last month pulled Sean John jackets after
they turned out to contain the same fur. Macy's said it has a policy against
selling products with dog fur.

Animal-rights groups are using the incident to pressure Penney to drop sales
of all real fur, including fox. A few clothiers such as Polo Ralph Lauren
and J. Crew Group Inc. have stopped using fur, and designers Kenneth Cole
and Calvin Klein have promised to follow suit.

But Penney, with more than 1,000 U.S. stores catering to middle-income
shoppers, says it has no plans to stop selling fur-trim items.

Penney also downplays any link between Lassie and the animal whose fur is
used on some of its garments. That animal is often called a raccoon dog
because of its full coat and dark eye patches.

"Asiatic raccoon is the species name," says Darcie Brossart, a company
spokeswoman. "It's on the Federal Trade Commission's list of fur that is
legal to sell in the United States. It's not a dog."

Animal-rights advocates counter that although it looks like an oversized,
fluffy raccoon and isn't kept as a pet, it is a canine breed – something
Penney doesn't dispute while noting that foxes are canines, too.

"What's equally important is that they're getting killed by the millions in
the most atrocious way," says Kristin Leppert, manager of the anti-fur
campaign for the Humane Society of the United States.

Activists from Swiss Animal Protection posing as a documentary film crew say
they went to China and photographed raccoon dogs and foxes being killed at
large fur-harvesting operations.

The crew's disturbing video – posted on the Internet – shows animals clubbed
or slammed on the ground, and then skinned alive.

Brossart said company lawyers determined it was legal to sell the coats as
long as they didn't claim that the fur came from a particular species.