The Cottage Smallholder

JoannaS said:

I was chatting with a Latvian friend who wants to set up a sewing business using local fabrics and one of the local by products from a growing rabbit meat industry is of course fur. She was quite keen to use this to make garments or to at least add embellishments but I said that it was not the sort of thing she could sell in the UK, am I still correct in this? After all it is just over 8 years since I left the UK.

I can see the point of not having fur from certain species as they need protecting but animals from those hunted due to over population, or skins as a by product from meat production – humanely raised of course – I don't see a problem. I seem to think leather is okay but turned the other way and have fur does. Daft really!

Faux Fur is everywhere.  It's 'double standard's really isn't it?  It does seem ever so silly that  rabbit meat appears to be having a revival in a big way, all the top chefs seem to be cooking with it, no doubt that'll raise the price of that as is Ox-Tail, Calves Liver, and plenty of other game, meats & offal! 

It does seem rather silly though when the rabbits are a by-product from the meat industry, as you say, it's fine to wear leather & suede. 

I am a firm animal lover, not vegetarian, yet don't eat a great deal of meat, I really have to 'fancy' something first & would never waste any meat or fish, just as that's the way we were brought up I suppose.  Yet even I think it's silly not to utilise the skin what happens to it?  Surely it's better to use everything than to discard it!

I'm afraid I think it is still 'frowned upon', yet seems silly!

Odelle.