I have slowly been going back to being a vegetarian over the past year, and have finally been on it for about 2 months. I eat a vegetarian diet for health reasons. However, with doing so, it's hard not to start seeing the ethical side of the meat and fur industry.
This article could be labeled as adult content due to the video that I am about to link to. It is a video that greatly disturbs me. It shows an animal being skinned alive for fur. If you have a weak stomach, or get nightmares easily, please do not watch it. It is implied that it will be used for J.Lo's fur line. This is the link:
http://www.petatv.com/tvpopup/Prefs.asp?video=j_lopez&feat=j_lopez&pos=fp1
There is no reason for modern man to use fur. Fur is nothing more than a useless luxury. Animals are raised specifically for fur and killed in brutal ways before their hide is harvested. The bodies of these animals are typically not even used for food (unlike cow hide).
But, I have a much wider ethical issue with fur and the mass slaughters in the meat industry. If people become numb to killing animals in violent ways, or harvesting hides from living animals, is it really that big of a stretch to start doing harmful things to humans? If a person can club a screaming, helpless animal to death, what keeps them from stepping over the line and doing it to a human? (There is a book called "slaughterhouse" that talks in depth on the meat industry and also talks to some of the people who left the meat industry after being desensitized to the violence. You can read excerpts of the book at: http://www.goveg.com/feat/r-shouse3.html However, make sure you don't read it when eating or directly after eating.....)
These fur farms are typically not in the US, so we can't exactly enforce any laws. However, we can stop the need for the farms by simply not buying fur.