California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill into law Saturday, making the state the first to ban the sale of new fur products.
Los Angeles and San Francisco have already put fur bans in place, and last month the governor signed a law banning commercial fur trapping.
Newsom also signed another bill Saturday, banning most animals in circuses. Hawaii and New Jersey have similar bans.
The recent bans join other recent California actions against for-profit prisons and immigrant detention centers and small-sized hotel shampoo bottles.
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The new fur law will go into effect in 2023. Animal rights activists have praised Newsom for signing the new law, while the billion-dollar US fur industry has been vehemently against it. The Fur Information Council of America has even threatened a lawsuit. The governor said in a statement:
“California is a leader when it comes to animal welfare, and today that leadership includes banning the sale of fur. But we are doing more than that. We are making a statement to the world that beautiful wild animals like bears and tigers have no place on trapeze wires or jumping through flames.”1
A spokesperson for the Fur Information Council said in a statement the new law is part of a “radical vegan agenda using fur as the first step to other bans on what we wear and eat.”1
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Couture designers like Gucci, Versace, and Giorgio Armani have either stopped using fur or promised to in their collections, and designers like Stella McCartney use absolutely no animal products in their designs.
Kitty Block, CEO and president of the Humane Society, one of the bill’s backers, said:
“The signing of AB 44 underscores the point that today’s consumers simply don’t want wild animals to suffer extreme pain and fear for the sake of fashion.”
“The fur industry causes the suffering and death of more than 100 million animals worldwide each year, and animals on fur factory farms are forced to live in cramped, wire-bottom cages, deprived of the ability to engage in natural behaviors, before being cruelly killed by gassing or electrocution.”1
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The law defines “fur” as “animal skin or part thereof with hair, fleece, or fur fibers attached thereto, either in its raw or processed state.” But the ban excludes used fur, fur used for religious or tribal purposes, as well as leather, dog and cat fur, cowhides, deer, sheep and goatskin, and taxidermy. So, even though this is a huge step in the right direction, there is still work to be done.
