New Year Brings Fur Ban in California

It’s a new year, meaning lots of new laws are taking effect throughout the land, including a ban on fur in California. More accurately, a ban on the sale and manufacturing of new fur products. This kind of thing has become par for the course in California, so it shouldn’t be a surprise – though it should be troubling to you, regardless of whether or not you choose to wear real fur. The hubris of a congresswoman from sunny Glendale, California announcing to the rest of the world that fur is over – and further, that it has no place in a “sustainable future” (how many hundreds of years will it take for that faux fur coat to biodegrade, again?) would almost be laughable if there were no real-world consequences or precedents from her bill.

Which is fur? Which is faux? Come back in 500 years to find out!

Unlike animal issues related to things like food production or pets that virtually everybody has a stake in, fur can be exploited by its opponents by tying it to displays of ostentatious wealth and its lack of functionality in many climates of the world (see: Glendale, California). Combining divide-and-conquer tactics with a side of pragmatic-sounding “and do we really even need this?” can be really effective. This means that as far as cause-marketed issues go, fur is fairly low-hanging fruit. Opponents of the ban were correct in saying it ultimately boiled down to one class of people wanting to tell another class what they could buy/wear…. which, again, should be highly concerning, regardless of one’s feelings about wearing fur.

New California laws in 2023 include a fur ban, new state holidays


Resources
★     Prop 12 Enforcement Will Wait in California for Supreme Court Ruling
★     Appeals Court Upholds Limit on California’s Foie Gras Ban