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Text 13A IGCSE FLE

The document makes the case for wearing fur by arguing: 1) Humans have worn animal fur for warmth and protection for over 100,000 years as part of our evolution and heritage. 2) Fur farming can be done ethically and humanely, such as the mink farms in Iceland that use gas to painlessly kill the animals. 3) The fur trade supports communities in northern countries like Greenland where sealing is an important means of subsistence. Banning fur could devastate these communities.

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214 views

Text 13A IGCSE FLE

The document makes the case for wearing fur by arguing: 1) Humans have worn animal fur for warmth and protection for over 100,000 years as part of our evolution and heritage. 2) Fur farming can be done ethically and humanely, such as the mink farms in Iceland that use gas to painlessly kill the animals. 3) The fur trade supports communities in northern countries like Greenland where sealing is an important means of subsistence. Banning fur could devastate these communities.

Uploaded by

biboboynotgay
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Cambridge IGCSE First Language English Directed Writing and Coursework 1

Text 13A

Embrace your heritage!


Our most distant ancestors came through the Ice and ethically compromised bit of the First World.
Age without going black with frostbite because they The virulence and viciousness of fur vigilantes mean
wore second-hand skin: fur. We are, as I’m sure that few of us now brave the spittle-flecked venom
even the least perceptive of you will have noticed, of self-righteous pressure groups and dim, new-age
nude underneath our pyjamas. Naked apes. We absolutists. The argument against fur has always
don’t have enough hair, fur, fluff or feathers to deflect been more about class and money than about dumb
even the finest drizzle. We shiver in pathetically bald critters. Fur, restricted to the point of prohibitive
bodies for a reason – and the reason is that we look expense, is now symbolic of wealth and power.
better in suede than cows do. Enough. A number of furriers are now taking
We shed our thick, short and curlies because it back the morality of skin. They are mostly from the
was our natural selection, our destiny, our personal north – Scandinavia, Greenland, Russia, Iceland and
ecology, and instead gained those uniquely human Denmark – where fur has always been a practical
attributes: taste and vanity. We wore other species’ business in a most practical part of the world. Of all
skins when they had no further use for them, and the animals that we kill for our personal use, mink
we’ve been doing it for a long time. How fur went have by far and away the easiest passing: well fed
from being practical and chic, stylish and sensible and unstressed, they’re gently gassed.
for 100 000 years, and then all of a sudden became One of my favourite shops is a remarkable furrier
the coat of shame in the past decade, is one of the in Reykjavik. Eggert Johannsson makes beautiful,
oddest about-faces in all civilisation. sensible clothes out of pelts. He is a missionary for
There have always been people who are funny what he calls ‘ethical fur’: well-sourced, responsibly
about their relationship with animals – vegetarians farmed and humanely culled. Seals, for instance. The
who got religion, a few people who swept the street European Union is debating whether to ban sealskin
in front of them so as not to hurt a flightless fly – on anyone except a seal. In Greenland, hunting them
but the majority of us, the vast, vast majority, have is the subsistence income of the east coast. It’s what
gone on eating anything dumb enough to taste good they do. It’s what they’ve always done. There is
with chips, and squashing cockroaches wherever nothing else to do. There is nothing else. They can’t
possible. But that odd prejudice, the ban on fur, grow cut flowers instead. In Iceland, parts of the shore
has become automatic and universal in our select where the seals congregate were sold as agricultural

Unit 13 Fur and against © Cambridge University Press 2018


Cambridge IGCSE First Language English Directed Writing and Coursework 1

assets. Farmers would facilitate the natural seal deforestation or any city’s urban sprawl: the murder
colonies, protecting them from predators, and once of the Aral Sea in central Asia by the drying-up of the
a year they’d cull them. But since the seal market Oxus River, reducing an area the size of Denmark to
has collapsed, so have the care and value of the a toxic, salted dust bowl – and all caused by cotton.
shoreline, and so have the seals. All over the North Compared with a cotton shirt, a fur coat is morally
Sea, their populations are fluctuating. They’re caught blameless.
in fishing nets, shot by fishermen. They hang around The most poignant argument for fur is not where it
ports and fish farms like water foxes. The seals have comes from, or who first wore it; it’s what it looks like
gone from being valuable, protected and plentiful, to and how it feels. A polyamide coat connects you to
being waterborne vermin and endangered, because an oil well and a factory; fur joins you to your heritage.
we have removed their value thanks to ignorant It is 100  000 years of history and culture. We wear fur
squeamishness and class politics. because it is our story. If you haven’t put on a fur coat
The argument goes that once we may have needed recently, or ever, try it. Cast aside your prejudice and
fur, but now we don’t; we have, instead, technology. feel it. You can sense it’s not simply a statement of
Well, leaving aside the attraction of the real thing, I fashion, wealth or even warmth; the connection is
assume you all know how polymers such as nylon, ancient, truly visceral. Fur is the cover, the binding, of
polyester, Terylene and so on are made. That they our long, long, story. And if you’re still not convinced,
use fossil fuels, and intensely polluting processes then would you for a moment consider your own
that involve some of the most toxic chemicals on cushions, your pillow. The feathers inside, the bird fur,
the planet … I’ve been there. I’ve seen the greatest where do you imagine that came from? How do you
environmental disaster on the globe, greater than imagine all that duck and goose skin was gleaned?
an armful of runways or nuclear bombs, worse than I’d hate for you to be a hypocrite. Sleep well.

Adapted from article, 'Fur and against', by AA Gill, The Sunday Times.

© Cambridge University Press 2018 Unit 13 Fur and against

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