“But the unspeakable misery of their animals cannot be denied.” The Beckstead family is one of the biggest fur farming families in Utah and Idaho. They are said to own two farms, one in each state. One of the Beckstead clan does not support the bloody work of his family. In 2001, son Scott Beckstead published this damning indictment of his family and the fur farming business. The article was published in The Oregonian (the largest newspaper in Oregon), The Oregonian December 9, 2001 Misery on the Mink Farm by Scott Beckstead These cold, gray days stir vivid memories for me, childhood images I shall live with forever. Strongest among them are those of pelting season on Grandpa’s mink farm. My grandfather, gone now for more than a decade, raised minks in Franklin, Idaho. Every fall, my family traveled to Franklin to help my grandparents with what we called “the pelting season.” I remember the smell. Like all members of the weasel family, minks are equipped with powerful scent glands. They sprayed their musky stench while in the throes of death. That smell permeated everything. Our clothes. Our hair. I didn’t have the manual dexterity to do the skinning, so I helped with the killing. We killed the females by breaking their necks. The males were not so lucky. They were too big to have their necks broken, so they were gassed. It took them a long time to die. I remember hearing their gasps and screams, and I remember having to pry their jaws from the wire mesh once they went silent. After they were killed, I piled their warm, soft bodies into a wheelbarrow. I wheeled them to the mink shed just outside the pelting shed and positioned their bodies so as they stiffened, they would be easier to skin. I remember how the minks within eyesight or earshot reacted to the cries of their dying mates, how by the hundreds they bobbed and paced frantically inside their tiny pens. One mink, a beautiful smoky gray female, died as she was pulled from her pen. She screamed, and then simply went limp. In the preceding hours, she had watched and listened as...

A 1986 article gives details on the Aeschleman fox farm in Illinois. A 1990s PETA undercover investigation on an Illinois fox farm is today the best (and most horrific) footage ever obtained on fur farm. It showed the electrocution of foxes, foxes living in squalorous conditions, and badly sick and injured animals living in small cages. Today, that fox farm is still in operation. The Aeschleman fox farm, outside Peoria, Illinois, imprisons an estimated 1,000 foxes. At one time, it was said to be the largest fox farm in the country (and may still be). The below article was published in the Chicago Tribune in 1986. It goes into the history of the farm, as well as many details into fox farming – an industry shrouded in secrecy. The article reads, in full: ROANOKE, ILL. — Soybeans and corn are the primary products of Woodford County farmers, most of whom are in the fields now. Not Dan Aeschleman. While his neighbors plant, he pours. Yipping calls of the wild and a pungent musk odor burst through the seams of a 150-foot-long metal building on Aeschleman`s farm about 130 miles southwest of Chicago. In the dim light that seeps into the barn, an elevated thicket of wire mesh cages is visible. Each cage contains at least one set of wary, luminous eyes. “You`ll have to be quiet, if they get excited, they might kill their young,“ warned Aeschleman`s wife, Soni. The caged animals are silver, amber, pearl and “bastard red“ foxes bred for their color and coat texture. There are about 150 adults here and hundreds of uncounted young curled, kittenlike, in boxed dens. Aeschleman, 37, hopes to have about 600 foxes by the end of the breeding season. He normally would kill and pelt many of them for their fur. But this year, he is more interested in their flow. “With the urine business peaking now, I probably won`t be pelting this year,“ he said. “We need to keep the foxes to generate urine.“ These days, there is less demand for nature`s coats than for nature`s call; especially as answered by old Reynard. The animal`s effluent is valued by trappers and hunters, who use...