Fur flies over Beverly Hills coat warning

TRYING TO tell the pampered citizens of Beverly Hills not to wear fur coats is like trying to tell Romans not to eat pasta. But that does not mean, in this land of limitless possibility, that someone isn't going to try.

Thus it was that a group called Beverly Hills Consumers for Informed Choices interrupted a city council meeting on Tuesday night with a demand that all furs sold there should carry a warning tag detailing the gruesome way in which coats make their way from the backs of mink to the racks of fashion boutiques.

Since the consumer group had collected the signatures of 3,300 registered voters - about 10 per cent of the Beverly Hills population - the council had no choice but to put the issue to the people in a special ballot to be held on 11 May. If passed, the furriers of Beverly Hills will have to attach the following note to every coat they sell:

"Consumer notice: This product is made with fur from animals that may have been killed by electrocution, gassing, neck breaking, poisoning, clubbing, stomping or drowning and may have been trapped in steel-jaw, leg-hold traps."

Naturally, the shop-owners of Rodeo Drive and the other prestigious addresses of Beverly Hills are getting a little hot under their pelt and sable collars. "This is just one more attempt by the extreme animal activists to generate publicity to hurt the fur industry," said Douglas Fine, manager of Somper Furs on Canon Drive.

The consumer group has more than righteous rage up its sleeve, though: it also has a surreptitiously recorded videotape in which several Beverly Hills shop assistants are caught telling customers, misleadingly, that the furs' original, animal owners were killed by humane means such as lethal injection.

"The label lists a variety of methods by which the animals may or may not have been put down," said Teresa Platt, executive director of Fur Commission USA, which represents fur farmers. "Imagine if such a label were required for meat or medicine - the list is endless."

Alarming warnings are nothing new in southern California, however. Visitors to Beverly Hills' Four Seasons Hotel are confronted with this startling announcement at the front entrance: "Warning: this area contains toxic materials known to the state of California to cause birth defects, cancer and other reproductive harm."

Although left unexplained, this notice - imposed on all public buildings by a recent state-wide ballot - refers to the fact that smoking is permitted inside. Next to cancer and deformed babies, who can object to the mention of a little animal stomping?