Clothing retailers have been told they have to take immediate action to ensure items they advertise are faux fur and are not made of real fur.
ASA
The UK’s advertising watchdog has given them a deadline of February 11th, if they are found with real fur items after this date there will be a penalty. This comes after online retailer Boohoo had sold a pompom jumper which used real fur, most likely rabbit fur. A pompom headband sold by Zacharia Jewellers, trading on Amazon, was also found to have broken the no real fur rule. The items were spotted by animal welfare charity the Humane Society International as part of an ongoing investigation into the trend. They were tested by HSI and it found to contain real fur.
Real fur can sometimes be cheaper than artificial fur, as a result manufacturers have used fox, racoon or rabbit fur on items without accurately labelling them as real fur. The findings of the two brands selling items with real fur pushed the Committees of Advertising Practice (CAP) to issue an enforcement notice. It requires retailers to ensure they are not misleading consumers and provides some advice on how to go about examining products and supplying chains more closely.
Laboratory testing was the most reliable method for finding real fur but the CAP said customers and retailers could also check items themselves using easy methods. These include looking at the base material to see it is a natural leather or a woven fabric, and burning some of the fur to see whether it singes or melts.
Guy Parker, chief executive of the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) said customers thought they were buying faux fur and could find it “deeply upsetting” to find it is real fur.
Claire Bass, executive director of HSI, said consumers had “the right to be confident that when they buy faux fur they are not being duped into buying the exact animal cruelty they are trying to avoid.”
Boohoo said they had “robust” policies and procedures in place to ensure they did not sell real fur products. They added they had received the jumpers from a supplier who was aware of Boohoo’s commitment against the sale of real fur and had signed a supplier acknowledgement form to not supply products that contain real fur. Boohoo said it got its quality control team to inspect a proportion amount of its stock and said it contained faux fur.
Claire Bass, executive director of HSI UK, said: “It’s completely unacceptable that compassionate consumers setting out to buy fake fur are being misled into buying animal fur.
“These two examples are the latest in a long list of ‘fake faux fur’ items we’ve found for sale, so we hope that the ASA’s rulings will send a strong message to the industry and make retailers work harder to give consumers confidence in avoiding cruel animal fur.”
