The fur flies
Sir: Petronella Wyatt's ill-informed and big- oted Diary condemning anti-fur activists as `anti-human' (11 January) was rife with alle- gations and insults but — not surprisingly lacked any facts to back up her prejudices.
Having myself gone naked to protest against fur, I can tell Miss Wyatt that it is fur- wearers who are hypocritical. The people dying of hypothermia this winter are home- less people who cannot afford to purchase a fur coat, or any coat to keep them warm. Wealthy women wearing fur in any part of the world do little to alleviate this problem. Miss Wyatt also seems confused about which humans anti-fur activists are sup- posed to hate. She claims we hate 'the rich', yet Miss Tamara Beckwith and the other women who participated in the anti-fur piece in Tatler would seem to fall into that category, and the people who she believes are freezing to death because of our anti- fur efforts would certainly not.
The truth is that there are many warmer, drier and more affordable alternatives to fur. Explorers do not climb Mount Everest draped in fur — they wear lighter, wind- and waterproof materials such as Goretex and Fiberfil. And all wealthy women are not morally bankrupt, as Tamara Beckwith and friends have proved by acting on their com- passion, unlike Petronella whose defensive and irrational behaviour was of course shared by Hitler.
Toni Yemeni
PETA Europe Ltd, PO Box 3169, London NW1
Previous page
