Save the Minks and Our Taxes : Animals: Congress is spending $2 million a year to promote fur sales overseas. Why?

Time and again, Congress expresses its desire to cut unnecessary government spending. I have a suggestion.

Every year, our government doles out nearly $2 million to help the fur industry promote luxury mink coats in Europe and Asia. How? By putting on fashion shows. So far, more than 13 million tax dollars have gone to the U.S. Mink Export Development Council “welfare” program.

The House has voted to kill the export subsidy. Next week, the Senate will consider the issue.

One out of five American children lives below the poverty line. Deep cuts are being proposed in programs with proven track records such as Head Start. Large numbers of poor people are unable to heat their homes in the winter. Can we really afford to prop up the dying mink industry?

There is another ethical dimension to this question. If you think minks lead a pleasant life down on the fur farm until a kindly gent with a needle puts them to sleep, guess again. I have seen videotape of mink farms, each animal in a cage with nothing to do day in and day out but circle the tiny wire floor. Death comes violently from electrocution, gas or drowning or, in the case documented by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, injecting weed-killer into animals’ chests, sending them into prolonged convulsions before they suffocated.

Just one full-length mink coat can take a hundred lives. This means that millions of minks have their skins ripped from their backs every year.

Cruelty to animals notwithstanding, I believe most Americans would find that the money spent for these subsidies could be better utilized on necessary social programs.

We have already said no to furs in this country. Sales have plummeted 50% in the last five years. Why must we subsidize the promotion of furs overseas?