taken directly from www.peta.org
Genital Electrocution: A Real-Life Shock-Horror Story
Row after row of tiny wire-mesh cages, stacked four high and about 25 in a row, chinchillas peering watchfully through the wires, a rack of pelts hanging on a far wall, and except for a radio playing softly in one corner of the room, a morgue-like hush. That’s the scene that two PETA investigators found at a fur "factory" farm secluded in a quiet, snow-covered town in Michigan. PETA’s Research & Investigations Department sent two undercover teams into fur "farms" in five states. Our investigators witnessed not only how animals live, but also how they die in the seedy world of fur farming. One method they documented had never been made public before: genital electrocution.
Little Animals, Big Suffering
During genital electrocution, the killer attaches an alligator clamp to the animal’s ear and another to her labia and flips a switch, or plugs the wire into the wall socket, sending a jolt of electricity through her skin down the length of her body. She jerks and stiffens. But, according to biologist Leslie Gerstenfeld-Press, although the electrical current stops the heart, it does not kill her: In many cases, the animal remains conscious. The electrical current causes unbearable muscle pain, at the same time working as a paralyzing agent, preventing the victim from screaming or fighting. A chinchilla farmer who uses genital electrocution told our investigators that he leave the clips on "for one or two minutes" to make sure the heart doesn’t start up again but that sometimes animals revive and those who do remember the pain. In front of our investigators, one rancher unplugged the animal, listened to the heart and said, "Nope, still beating," and plugged the cables back in for another 30 seconds.
Not Killing Them Softly
As one farmer observed, "Sometimes you’ll get one that’ll argue with you." The chinchillas, like all animals, do not go willingly; although they make no noise as they wait—held upside down as the rancher attaches the clips—their whiskers and mouths tremble constantly until the electrical charge freezes all movement. For the benefit of our investigators, the farmer laid the animal’s body on a table, although normally, he said, he would just hang the animal by the tail from a clip.
For small animals, neck "snapping" or "popping" is easy and cheap. The owner of one farm that PETA visited wraps the fingers of one hand around the neck of the chinchilla, grasps the lower body with the other hand and jerks the animal’s vertebra out of the socket, breaking the neck. Neck-snapping takes just a second, but for "about five minutes" afterward, according to one rancher, the animal jerks and twitches. It might take two minutes for an animal to become brain-dead from cervical dislocation; in the meantime, as shown in our investigator’s video, she or he kicks and struggles.
No federal law regulates the killing of animals raised for fur. The methods vary from one company to another, but all emphasize concern for the pelt, not for the animal. It takes at least 100 chinchilla pelts to make just one full-length coat.
Click below to read more about animals suffering on fur farms.
Ranch-Raised Fur: Captive Cruelty