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Shocking Fur Commercial Is Too Much for Cinema Ad Association
A man leaps out, clubs the poor thing unconscious and then rips off her fur. No, she isn’t a baby harp seal, she’s a woman wearing a fur coat in a shocking new commercial paid for by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) but rejected by the Cinema Advertising Association  (CAA). In their letter to PETA, CAA write, ‘[The ad is] likely to cause alarm and distress to those members of a cinema audience who may be wearing fur or leather.’ PETA agree! When people view the ad, they can’t help but imagine what being bludgeoned to death or skinned alive must be like for animals.
Ironically, PETA banned the ad in the U.S. themselves, because of the policy against portraying violence adopted by the group in the wake of the 11th September terrorist attacks in New York and Washington.
‘The Cinema Advertising Association made the best case for showing the ad, not banning it,’ says Dawn Carr, PETA Europe’s London-based coordinator. ‘If fur-wearers have to be alarmed into leaving animal skin on animals’ backs, then we should alarm them.’
The ad, which asks, ‘What if you were killed for your coat?’ isn’t pretty, but neither is the fur industry. PETA undercover investigations of fur farms in the United States—in Illinois, Indiana and California—reveal fur farmers killing foxes and chinchillas via anal and genital electrocution. Animals suffered exposed broken bones, upper respiratory tract infections and cancerous tumours without veterinary care. PETA investigators in Maryland found fur farmers killing minks by injecting them with lethal weed-killer. Because fur farmers care only about preserving pelts—not about humane slaughter—they also kill animals via gassing, strangling and neck-breaking. Trapped animals don’t fare much better, often suffering for days and slowly dying of disease or thirst or predation before trappers return to stomp or club them to death.
The ad was produced for PETA by the Philadelphia advertising agency Earle Palmer Brown and was shot in an outdoor mall in Dublin, Ireland.
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