Suspected Illegal Fur Sales in Beverly Hills: PETA Files Formal Complaint Against David Appel Furs

For Immediate Release:
November 30, 2023

Contact:
Moira Colley 202-483-7382

Today, after a PETA staff member tried on what David Appel Furs owner David Appel told her was a newly made fur coat that he tried to sell to her—one of several new coats for sale in his Beverly Hills store despite a statewide fur ban—PETA sent letters to Los Angeles County Deputy District Attorney Kimberly Abourezk and California Department of Fish and Wildlife Law Enforcement Chief David Bess urging them to investigate the store and seek appropriate penalties for every new fur item sold there.

“Californians are overwhelmingly against the cruel practices involved in killing wild and domesticated animals for fur,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “The animals can’t be brought back, but if David Appel Furs is flouting California’s ban on selling new fur, PETA wants city and state authorities to hold it rightly accountable.”

Animals used in the fur industry spend their entire lives inside cramped cages—where they frantically pace back and forth, gnaw on the bars, and mutilate themselves—before they’re electrocuted, bludgeoned, gassed, or even skinned alive. Other animals are caught in steel traps, which slam shut on their legs and often cut down to the bone, causing excruciating pain and blood loss.

Hundreds of major companies and brands—including Alexander McQueen, Balenciaga, Gucci, Michael Kors, Oscar de la Renta, and Versace—have stopped selling fur. Only a few holdouts remain.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to wear”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information on PETA’s investigative newsgathering and reporting, please visit PETA.org, listen to The PETA Podcast, or follow the group on X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, or Instagram.