Historic Victory for Animals: Israel Becomes First Nation to Ban Fur

For Immediate Release:
June 9, 2021

Contact:
Moira Colley 202-483-7382

Today, Minister of Environmental Protection Gila Gamliel signed into law a bill that makes Israel the first country in the world to ban the sale of fur. The historic ban follows years of efforts by local activists, PETA, and PETA Honorary Director Pamela Anderson, which included personally lobbying government officials in Tel Aviv and appeals to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to support a ban on fur. The proposal received overwhelming support from 86% of Israelis.

“Israel has just made history and put yet another nail in the cruel fur industry’s coffin,” says PETA President Ingrid Newkirk. “PETA is popping the cork on the champagne in celebration of this huge step toward a day when no animals are suffocated or skinned alive for collars and cuffs.”

PETA has conducted numerous video investigations into the global fur industry, revealing that animals on fur farms spend their entire lives confined to cramped, filthy wire cages. Fur farmers use the cheapest killing methods available, including neck-breaking, suffocation, poisoning, and genital electrocution. Animals are sometimes still alive and struggling when workers hang them up by their legs or tails to skin them.

PETA (whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to wear” and which opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview) notes that California banned the sale of new fur statewide in 2019 and that numerous top designers and retailers—including Macy’s, Nordstrom, Burberry, Gucci, Versace, Michael Kors, Jimmy Choo, and Giorgio Armani—have banned fur.

For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.