Zac Goldsmith, MP for Richmond Park and North Kingston, spoke out in Parliament to support a petition calling for a ban on the import into Britain of fur. Zac described the trade as “one of the grimmest of human activities.”

The petition that triggered parliamentary debate received almost 110,000 signatures and highlighted that many of the nations that supply Britain with fur have weak or non-existent animal rights laws. Opinion polls have shown that about 80 per cent of Britons believe that it is unacceptable to buy and sell fur in the United Kingdom.

Fur farming has been banned in England and Wales since 2000 and Scotland since 2002, but the UK imported almost £75 million in last year alone.

Zac said: “As we leave the European Union whatever barriers may have prevented us from raising standards on imports at the point of entry will have gone. We will be free to decide whether we want to continue to import the proceeds of one of the grimmest of human activities. I suspect that, like people who have signed the petition, the majority of Members would support such a move.”

On June 4th, 2018, posted in: Food, Farming & Animal Welfare by Zac Goldsmith