Please ask Amazon.com to stop selling rabbit fur!

Although there is a growing awareness about cruelty toward animals today, the use of animal fur is making a troubling comeback, and Amazon.com is exploiting this. The world’s leading online retailer, Amazon.com is selling more than 100 apparel items featuring rabbit fur, including jackets, ponchos, hats, and gloves. This is even being promoted on Yahoo.com as a sponsored link: when someone types the keywords “rabbit fur” on this search engine, the Amazon.com link appears near the very top of the results page. This is no accident -- the marketing folks at Amazon clearly feel there’s money to be made selling rabbit fur. It even offers fur items targeted at kids.

While the use of any animal skin or fur in any product is abhorrent, we at the San Francisco/Marin chapter of the House Rabbit Society (SaveABunny.org) are speaking out for the millions of defenseless rabbits who are raised and brutally killed each year for their fur.

Rabbits are slaughtered by the millions for their flesh -- particularly in China, Italy, and Spain -- but fur is no longer considered a byproduct of this consumption. The rabbit fur industry demands the thicker pelt of an older animal (meat rabbits are killed at the age of 10 to 12 weeks). The United Nations reports that “few skins are now retrieved from slaughterhouses,” and countries such as France are killing as many as 70 million rabbits a year for fur, used in apparel, as lures in flyfishing, and for trim on craft items.

What you can do:

1. Please write to Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos and express your concern. Ask him to remove items with rabbit fur (or any animal fur, for that matter) from the site. Inform him that whether the rabbit fur “trims” a sweater or lines boots, hats, gloves, bags or anything else, its use has a high price: the lives of hundreds of millions of gentle rabbits each year. Consider telling him that you will no longer shop on Amazon.com until products with rabbit fur are removed. Other points to convey:

· On fur farms worldwide, rabbits are confined year-round to crowded, filthy cages, often with little protection from the elements.

· Many exhibit symptoms of psychological distress, such as self-mutilation and pacing.

· There is no “humane” method of slaughter. To kill the rabbits, fur farmers break the animals’ necks or smash their skulls before stringing them up by their legs, skinning them -- often while they are still conscious -- and cutting off their heads.

· Faux fur is much more stylish, inexpensive and -- best of all -- cruelty free.

· Because compassion for animals is a growing concern among consumers, banning fur makes perfect sense -- both ethically and economically.

Address your letter to:

Mr. Jeffrey P. Bezos
Chief Executive Officer
Amazon.com
1200 12th Ave S Ste 1200
Seattle, WA 98144

2. Use one of Amazon’s online forms to email them about your concerns:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/browse/-/900912/ref=br_bx_c_1_4/103-0206612-4920646

or

http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/contact-us/general-questions.html/103-0206612-4920646

3. Finally, please go on to the Amazon.com site and write a negative review of items using fur. Simply type “rabbit fur” into the search field on the site’s home page to find products containing rabbit fur.

Rabbits are mild, quiet beings who need your voice! If you would like to join us in future anti-fur campaigns, please visit http://www.saveabunny.com/volunteerap.php and select “Anti-Fur Campaign” as your area of interest.

For more information on more campaigns against the fur industry, see http://www.saveabunny.com/activism.php

Thank you!

SaveABunny.org