“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...

CAFF has obtained a list “wild fur receiving depots” in the United States. This list is provided to trappers and provides them with contact info for people who will take their dead animals and send them to North American Fur Auction (NAFA). The people and businesses on this list function as middlemen between the trappers and NAFA. View the list of wild fur receiving depots here. NAFA Fur Trapper Receiving...

We were very excited to obtain a copy of the the United Vaccines employees-only newsletter. However, we found the newsletter, titled “United InFURmation”, to be incredibly disappointing and banal. The newsletter includes: *Fourth of July safety tips. *Word puzzles. *How to properly shop for a fur coat. …and more similarly uninspired filler. Still, it is a rare piece of documentation from inside a very important company, and we hope you are able to extract something of value from it (we failed to). Read a PDF of the United Vaccines newsletter here.United Vaccines Newsletter This is the United Vaccines mission statement, from the newsletter: “It takes quality people to manufacture a quality product. At United Vaccines, Inc., it is our mission to incorporate quality into eve rything we do; from superior staffing to excellence in manufacturing and testing, it is the extra steps that we take that ensure that every dose of vaccine shipped out of our plant is the best in the...

CAFF has obtained a bulletin sent out to fur farmers and other members of the fur farming trade group American Mink Council, announcing a June 2012 conference call. View a scan of the bulletin here. American Mink Council Conference Call Bulletin You can view a scan of the bulletin by clicking the link above, or read the text of the bulletin below. “American Mink Council Conference call ~June 7,2012 AMC Directors, there will be a conference call Thursday June 7,2012. Herman Jansen will be commenting on the recent CMBA Code of Practice Meeting held in Toronto on this coming Tuesday & Wednesday, we will have him start it off the conference call, and share with us what the CMBA proposals are. Then we will excuse Herman from the call and have a brief discussion on the recent May Sale. We realize what an extremely busy time ofyear this is so we will make this as brief as possible. If any AMC Director is unable to make this conference call please let me know in advance, Thanks. This Conference Call will be earlier than usual, 6:00 pm Eastern time, 5:00 pm Central time ~ 4:00 pm Mountain time ~ and 3:00 pm Pacific time. Toll Free 1-888-204-5987 ~ Your access code is 8413189 Conference Call Agenda * CMBA Code ofPractice Meeting Discussion (Guest, Herman Jansen) * May Sale discussion American Mink Council P.O. Box 548 ~ Morgan, UT. 84050 Phone & Fax 801-829-6753″...

On June 12, at a restaurant in midtown Manhattan, in the heart of New York’ s shrinking fur district, a crowd of over 150 fur retailers and industry insiders gathered to honor one of their own. Keith Kaplan, executive director of the Fur Information Council of America, was awarded a Lifetime Achievement award. The honor was given to Kaplan in front of family and friends who flew in from California for the event. The evening also featured a special video tribute to Kaplan by the comedian Joan Rivers. One month later, Kaplan was out of a job. His contract runs out in mid-October. The Fur Information Council of America (FICA) is one of two national trade associations for the fur industry. Fur Commission USA works with fur farmers. FICA focuses on the retail and manufacturing side of the industry. According to information leaked to Coalition Against Fur Farms, the decision to fire Kaplan was due to serious financial problems at FICA (Kaplan’s six-figure salary was the organization’s biggest single expense). The problems are so serious that FICA is having trouble paying its debts and there are fears that the organization will not survive. A big problem for FICA is that fur retailers are either unable or unwilling to financially support the organization. According to its tax returns, income from membership dues fell more than 50% between 2005 and...

We are posting an excerpt from a recent issue of “NAFA News”, the newsletter of North American Fur Auction, the large auction house and pelt processor. While the newsletter is largely dull and devoid of anything useful (although, still more interesting than the United Vaccines newsletter), we felt one particular excerpt was interesting: A page dedicated to “animal rights extremism”. View a PDF of this article here. NAFA on Animal Rights Extremism (click to enlarge) (Click to...

The North American Fur Auction processing plant in Stoughton, Wisconsin (south of Madison) is one of the most important pillars of the US fur industry. This is a list of some of their key employees in processing, as of September 2012: Mike Balaam: Manager Craig Oler: Maintenance / Supervisor Laura Chicaizza: Assistant Manager Brett Johnson: Maintenance Manager Virgil Schroeder: Wild Fur Coordinator Jim Posch: Mink Technical Manager Dave Mengar: Shipping Carmen Torres: Receiving Amanda Bujosa: Ticketing Mark Kubitz: Mink Joe Poquette: Mink Tom Gibson: Mink Brian MacMillan: Wild Fur...

Posted below is a link to a letter from Dale Lawson of Northwest Farm Foods (formerly Northwest Fur Breeder’s Cooperative) in Burlington, Washington. The letter is to the FDA, challenging a proposed law that would raise the cost of manufacturing feed for mink farms. There are three significant pieces of information in this document, useful for anyone with a serious interest in dismantling the fur industry: 1) Feed is the largest cost associated with raising mink. 2) A significant increase in feed costs would “totally eliminate the mink industry in the United States”. 3) Phone numbers at the bottom of the document reveal two production plants that were unknown at the time this letter was made public (approx. 2 years ago): one plant in Cle Elum, WA; and another in Astoria, OR. The Cle Elum plant is no longer believed to be in operation. The Astoria plant is likely to still be in operation, and is also the location of the mink farm owned by Glade Wilkinson.Northwest Farm Foods Document View a PDF of the letter...