An animal activist dressed as the Grim Reaper staged a protest near the Hong Kong International Fur & Fashion Fair on Wednesday, urging an end to the “extreme violence” involved in the industry.
An animal activist dressed as the Grim Reaper stages a protest near the Hong Kong International Fur & Fashion Fair on Wednesday, February 19, 2025. Photo: PETA.
Wielding a scythe emblazoned with the words “Fur is dead,” the hooded skeletal figure welcomed buyers as a “ghastly reminder that their fashion choices dole out death sentences to rabbits, minks, and other animals tormented and killed for their skin,” according to a Wednesday statement by the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA).
A protest near the Hong Kong International Fur & Fashion Fair on Wednesday, February 19, 2025. Photo: PETA.
The US-based NGO said that hundreds of major brands had already stopped selling fur, including Burberry, Chanel, Giorgio Armani, Gucci, Jimmy Choo, Michael Kors, Prada, Ralph Lauren, Versace, and Vivienne Westwood, leaving only a few holdouts.
The trade fair’s organisers, the Hong Kong Fur Federation, list 56 fur retailers on their website. HKFP has reached out to them for comment.
The Hong Kong Fur Federation website. Photo: hkff.org screenshot.
“The Hong Kong Fur Fair is a showcase of suffering, where every bit of peddled fur comes from a once-living, feeling being who endured a violent, agonizing death,” said PETA Senior Vice President Jason Baker in a Wednesday statement. “PETA is urging kind consumers to sound the death knell for this vile industry by leaving fur on the animals who were born with it.”
Their statement added that rabbits, foxes, minks and other animals “raised and killed for their fur are often confined their entire lives to filthy, cramped wire cages – where they frantically pace back and forth, gnaw on the bars, and mutilate themselves out of extreme stress and frustration – before they’re electrocuted, bludgeoned, gassed, or even skinned alive.”
According to data from the Census and Statistics Department obtained by HKFP on Wednesday, exports of fur from the city are in decline. Total exports fell 13.7 per cent last year. In 2023, they fell 22.3 per cent, and in 2022, they fell by 41.8 per cent. Imports are also down, falling 49.2 per cent last year.
Animal activism
Earlier this month, activists affiliated with PETA staged a protest outside the Hong Kong Pet Show, urging the public to adopt dogs and avoid pedigree breeds from breeders and pet stores.
Animal rights activists stage a protest outside the Hong Kong Pet Show on February 6, 2025, urging the public to adopt dogs and avoid pedigree breeds from breeders and pet stores which may have trouble breathing. Photo: PETA.
Animal rights activists stage a protest in Wan Chai on February 22, 2024, the opening day of the 2024 Hong Kong International Fur & Fashion Fair at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre. Photo: Kelly Ho/HKFP. Credit: Kyle Lam
They held signs reading “Animals suffer on fur farms” and chanted slogans including “Fur is murder.”
Founded in 1980, PETA is a Virginia-based non-profit that “opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview.”
