Interests for Animal Lovers ~ Pawprints and Purrs, Inc.

"A man is ethical only when life, as such, is sacred to him, that of plants and animals as well as that of his fellowman, and when he devotes himself helpfully to all life that is in need of help." - ~ Dr. Albert Schweitzer, Humanitarian

Hartz Mountain Sells Cat and Dog Toys Made of Real Fur
Reported on PETA's website.

Hartz Mountain sells cat toys made of real fur. The toys come in a variety of shapes, including mice and balls, and are labeled as being made in China. You may recall that Dateline did a story of the HSUS's investigation into the slaughter of cats and dogs in Asia to provide fur products to the United States and Europe. For more information, please see the HSUS report on global trading in cat and dog fur. It goes without saying that one shouldn't buy these toys; the very idea is too macabre for any animal lover. But additionally, Hartz and anyone else selling these toys should be informed that we who love animals do not appreciate having real fur - potentially cat and dog fur - foisted upon us unawares. Hartz should stop buying these toys from China immediately, or risk losing their credibility forever.

The email address for questions or comments about Hartz Products is: Hartz.

Additionally, here is a snail-mail address provided by PETA. If you have a postcard laying around, dash off a few pithy sentences and mail it to:

Hartz Mountain
Leonard Stern, CEO
Hartz Group
667 Madison Ave.
New York, NY 10021 USA
Fax: 212-644-5987

A bill approved by the House on Tuesday, October 24, 2000 banned the import of products made with dog and cat fur.

The ban is contained in the Senate version of a trade package, H.R. 4868, which passed the U.S. House of Representatives on October 24 and the Senate on October 26, both by unanimous voice votes. The dog and car fur legislation, originally introduced last year by Senator William V. Roth, Jr. (R-DE) and Rep. Jerry Kleczka (D-WI), garnered broad bipartisan support in Congress.

There is a huge international trade in dog and cat fur and pelt products, including clothes, accessories, figurines and novelty items. The manufacturing sites are usually in China and other parts of Asia, and they are sold (often unknowingly) by retailers in the U.S. such as the Burlington Coat Factory, Hallmark and Ben Franklin stores, airport and mall novelty shops and similar.

It has been estimated conservatively that more than two million dogs and cats are slaughtered each year for their fur. Dog fur products are often marketed under misleading product names including 'gae-wolf', 'sobaki', 'Asian jackal'; cat products are often sold as 'wildcat', 'goyangi' and 'ketzenfelle'.

It is hoped that Congress' action will set an example for countries in Europe and elsewhere to adopt similar prohibitions.

The final version of the dog and cat fur legislation negotiated between the House and the Senate did not include the requirement sought by animal activists for labeling of ALL fur products regardless of their price. Under current law, products with fur valued at less than $150 do not have to be labeled.

Dog and cat fur products which sell at the low end of the market are commonly mislabeled or sold without labels to disguise their species content so that American consumers and retailers will not realize what they are buying.

Animal activists are disappointed that the labeling requirement was dropped in the final bill. This denies consumers the right to know what products are made of, and requiring accurate labels would significantly bolster enforcement of this ban.

However, it is felt the legislation awaiting the President's signature will go a long way toward stopping the gruesome dog and cat fur trade in this country.

In 1998 the Burlington Coat Factory, the nation's largest coat retailer, pulled hundreds of men's parkas from its stores after learning that the Chinese made coats included fur from dogs.

UPDATE: An animal advocate inquired of Hartz whether they used real animal fur in their pet toys. They gave this answer:

From: questions@hartz.com
Sent: Tuesday, June 19, 2001 5:31 PM
Subject: Re: Hartz.com Feedback

Thank you for contacting us. We, like you, are concerned about the welfare of all animals.

For the record, the use of animal fur in our toys is minimal and does not involve any cat or dog fur. In fact, none of our dog toys use animal fur of any kind. The few cat toys use only rabbit fur which is available as a by-product of the food industry in China, where some of these toys are made - and not harvested for our toys.

Again, we appreciate your concerns and will keep them in mind in the planning of our future toys.

Hartz Mountain Corporation
Consumer Relations
400 Plaza Drive
Secaucus, NJ 07094
(20l) 271-4800

The use of ANY kind of fur in ANY animal toys is another extension of the CRUEL fur industry, and should be stopped. Drop Hartz a line and tell them what you think. Send a letter, an email or use the Feedback feature of their website.

Pawprints and Purrs, Inc. is
a proud member of ICG.

Do you what declawing entails? Do you know WHY a cat comes with claws? Or is your mind firmly shut against the horrors of declawing? Are your material possessions worth more than your cat or are you willing to clip your cat's claws weekly and train alternate scratching behavior? Learn the truth and prolong your cat's good health! This site is an excellent source of documented facts and figures. Check out this message board to help educate others. Don't Amputate! Educate!! NOTE: ICG graphic created by Lisaviolet of LV Designs.

Please Note: We are a very small organization, this is not a paying job; it's volunteer work that we pursue because we care about animals and want to use some of our free time assisting those who need cat and dog health care information and to help end animal cruelty. We are currently spending every free minute we have on the projects we've already undertaken. The bottom line is we simply don't have time to research matters for others. If your cat is not acting him/herself or is ill, please, please, take the cat to your vet immediately. If you are interested in having an internet campaign seeking letters from the public to the judge or prosecutors about a cruelty case you are concerned with, we suggest you get a free home page from one of the various sources on the internet like Geocities. This page, Starting a Campaign, has excellent tips on how to begin your effort and make it successful.

Animal Abuse on the Net: According to what we've been seeing on the Internet, there are more and more sites which take a disturbing "glee" in throwing up pages of gory abuse to animals, especially cats. We've received a number of emails regarding these sites and asking that we direct our visitors to them (i.e., the awful catscan, the Bonsai Kitten sites, and the even worse, let's-see-how-many-creatures-we-can-stomp-to-death sites are just three that readily come to mind). After long and careful consideration, we've decided that this is exactly what these so-called "webmasters" are wanting ... traffic to their sites and the generation of email. The more angry and stunned correspondence they get, the happier they appear to be - one even posting the responses on his site with his rebuttal to the comments. We strongly suggest that when we are forwarded URLs belonging to these kinds of abusive sites, that we DO NOT email our protests to the webmasters. Instead, let's check out their websites with a fine-toothed comb and email the providers to their site, guestbook, counter, etc. with our protests. If these providers are worth their salt, the webmasters will not, within a day or so, have a counter or guestbook, muchless a website to flaunt their abuse directed to animals. See them back elsewhere?? Let's simply do it all over again. Let's get them off the web and keep them off without even acknowledging their existence to the abusive site owners.

And Speaking of Animal Abuse...
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Zoe Foundation

Shortly after we put this site up in January 1997, we met a charming cat by the name of Zoe and a wonderful man she owns named Jason Savage, one of the first people to visit Pawprints and Purrs, Inc. outside of friends and family. Due to his generous encouragement and unfaltering kindness, this site has more or less become the site it is today. However, somehow we lost contact with each other - not long after the terrible crime against Noah's Ark, his link no longer worked due to his change of servers. We never removed the link because we felt he was still out there somewhere. Earlier this year we found him again and encourage all to visit Zoe Foundation and A Tiger's Cat. Give him support by linking and helping to spread the word of the magnificent tiger.