It’s Time to Stop Cruel Fur Imports

In November 1999, the Labour government announced a groundbreaking policy welcomed by animal lovers nationwide: the horrific practice of farming animals for their fur was to be banned. This legislation, the Fur Farming (Prohibition) Acts, made the UK the first nation in the world to end this grossly inhumane practice. In introducing the legislation to Parliament, Baroness Hayman, the then Minister of State for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, emphasised that fur farming is simply “not consistent with a proper value and respect for animal life”.

As a Labour MP and longtime supporter of animal welfare, I’m especially proud of this legacy. The ban was on the right side of history. And it had ripple effects throughout the globe: in the two decades since the UK’s ban, more than twenty other countries have enacted their own domestic bans on fur farming, including Austria, the Netherlands, France, Norway, and even Poland – the world’s second-largest fur producer. And now, California, the world’s fourth largest economy, has enacted a ban on the sale of all fur. As a result, the global fur industry is now in serious decline.

But our legislation has a fundamental loophole. While it prohibits fur farming throughout the UK, the legislation applies only to domestic production and not to imports. This is a significant defect: HMRC records show that almost £40 million of fur was imported to the UK in 2023 from countries including China, Finland, Spain, and Italy. As a result, the UK continues to contribute to the pain and suffering endured by tens of millions of animals in the global fur trade. This is unacceptable.

It is for this reason that on Tuesday morning, MPs from across the political spectrum joined me in Westminster Hall to debate the need to ban the import and sale of fur – an outcome that can be achieved by passing my Private Members’ Bill, the Fur (Import and Sale) Bill. I cannot overstate how important it is – as a nation of animal lovers – that we take this measure. Every day I receive emails from my constituents across Newport West and Islwyn expressing great concern about the horrors that are inflicted on vulnerable animals every year in the global fur trade. I share their concerns. Keeping animals such as foxes, mink, and raccoon dogs in tiny cages for their entire lives, and then killing them by gassing or anal electrocution, is not only horrendously cruel – it is also completely unnecessary.

There are many good reasons to put an end to these cruel imports. The public are widely in favour: national polling carried out in April 2022 found that 77% of British citizens think the government should ban the importation of animal products such as fur, where the production methods are already banned in the UK. My bill would honour these beliefs, as permitted under the rules of the World Trade Organisation, by ensuring that Britain no longer participates in a global trade that is contrary to the public’s belief in the humane treatment of animals. Banning the import and sale of fur would also build on the excellent work of this Labour government in announcing the biggest boost to animal welfare in a generation, through the government’s world-leading Animal Welfare Strategy, which already commits to establishing a working group on fur. But a working group should not become an end in itself. Its focus should now be on delivering a pathway to a ban on the import and sale of fur. The evidence is clear, public support is strong, and the case for action is compelling.

And let’s be clear: anything short of an import and sales ban, such as relying on welfare certification schemes, will not work. Fur industry certification and labelling schemes have been widely discredited for merely providing a smokescreen for unacceptably cruel practices. For example, these certification schemes can still allow the keeping of animals in tiny mesh cages and the use of inhumane killing methods including anal electrocution – practices which are regarded as unacceptable by more than 90% of the British public.

A quarter of a century after we banned fur farming domestically, the practice remains inconsistent with a proper value and respect for animal life. By banning the import and sale of fur products, we can close a legal loophole and end Britain’s role in a trade which inflicts severe, and needless, suffering on animals. And in so doing, we can show global leadership – just as we did in 1999 – by treating animals with the dignity and compassion we all know they deserve.