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Banning the Sale of Fur (Massachusetts) – Animal Legal Defense Fund
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An Act Prohibiting the Sale of Fur Products (H.849/S.590)
Bans the sale of new fur products, including clothing, fashion accessories, and home décor, in the Commonwealth.
Updated
November 20, 2024
Work Type
Status
Inactive
An Act Prohibiting the Sale of Fur Products (H.849/S.590) would ban the sale of new fur products, including clothing, fashion accessories, and home décor, in the Commonwealth. The prohibition also includes fur products being sold into the state, including online sales.
In 2019, California became the first state to ban the sale of new fur products. Since 2020, several Massachusetts municipalities have passed fur-free bylaws, including: Wellesley, Weston, Brookline, Plymouth, Cambridge, and Lexington.
On fur farms, animals like foxes and minks are confined to tiny wire cages for virtually their entire lives. Unable to engage in most of their natural behaviors, animals on fur farms routinely resort to self-mutilation, obsessive pacing, and infanticide. Undercover investigations on fur farms have uncovered egregious cruelty — including animals being skinned alive. To maintain the integrity of their skin and fur, animals on fur farms are usually killed via suffocation, electrocution, gassing, or poisoning. Sometimes, they are bludgeoned in the head or face repeatedly.
Please help protect the millions of animals exploited by the fur industry every year and urge your Massachusetts state legislators to support this legislation.
Whenever animals are intensively confined without regard for their health or welfare, public health is also endangered. Fur farms often confine thousands of animals to small barns or open-air cage systems. Sanitation is typically poor, and veterinary care is almost non-existent. As a result, these fur factory farms are breeding grounds for pathogens that can result in zoonotic diseases. Mink fur farms in the U.S. and around the globe have become hot spots for COVID-19. Minks are the only animal known to both catch the virus from people and transmit it to them. To protect public health, European governments killed nearly 20 million minks in 2020.
The bill is sponsored by Representatives Jack Patrick Lewis (D-7th Middlesex) and Josh Cutler (D-6th Plymouth), and Senator John Velis (D-Second Hampden and Hampshire). It has been referred to the Joint Committee on Environment and Natural Resources.
Learn more about fur sale bans.
If you live in Massachusetts, please urge your representatives to support this important bill.
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