Raccoon Dogs - hats, pom-poms, and more.

The Hats You’re All Wearing Are Made By Killing This Poor Creature – A Raccoon DOG

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They've been all the rage in fashion over the past year. Those beanie hats you've been wearing with the super soft fur baubles. But you probably didn't know that those supposedly "faux-fur' balls are actually made from killing this beautiful creature : a raccoon dog.

Now whilst most of you may have seen a raccoon out the back door, filtering through your trash can, we bet you've never seen a raccoon dog. Unsurprisingly, these gorgeous creatures suffer from a few identity issues – they do look remarkably like raccoons, but they are actually completely unrelated. In fact, they are genetic members of the dog family.

Raccoon dogs are native in East Asia, where some are kept as domesticated pets and their non-domesticated counterparts are known as 'tanuki'.

Although not an endangered species, they are soon becoming one since humans are now killing them for their fur. And that fur might well be on the top of your beanie.

In 2008, the Humane Society of the United States filed a false advertising claim against at least 20 U.S. retailers after finding that 70 percent of faux fur garments they analysed actually contained raccoon dog fur.

Six years later, and the industry is only growing. The hat you see everyone wearing down the street might well have been made out of these dogs' fur.

Kit and Ace, a Vancouver-based fashion brand, is under fire after the National Observer report revealed the company is selling a hat topped with a pom-pom made out of raccoon dog fur. They said it was "Asiatic Raccoon", which is in fact the canine fur.

On the company's website the super soft fur is merely listed as "fur pom pom" under the fabric details, a sketchy description which may be similar to the one describing your own hat.

Unlike many other western countries, Canada has no restrictions on the importing of dog or cat fur. But in the US too, major retailers like Macy's and Kohl's have been caught selling products made out of raccoon dog fur under the labelling of "faux fur".

Meet Tun, a sweet raccoon dog who was rescued as an abandoned pup by a Japanese Twitter user. And this week, the world has gone crazy over how cute he is. Little do they know that they might be promoting the killing of these adorable creatures by wearing their so-called "faux fur".

Millions of animals like Tun are now being killed for their fur each year. Please help us stop this horrific industry from spreading and share this with your friends so that they stop to think before they buy that new hat.

"To all you shifty merchants out there, I put you on on notice, I don't want to see your recycled pom-pom goods down at the markets No More." Dogs are Mans best friend, and One day those dogs will come back to haunt you in their misery, and bring bad Kama."

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Comment by cheeki kea on July 27, 2022 at 5:37am: https://www.express.co.uk/news/science/1646526/covid-origin-breakth... ~~ Oh isn't this just find dandy and Now After All This Time you the MSM start to mention raccoon dogs when problems have been known about since 2009 ! Is it possible some of these poor creatures escaped from the lab got caught by others and were sold at the wet market for the greedy fur trade? Well it seems possible now doesn't it.

Comment by cheeki kea on February 7, 2020 at 5:34am: S T O P T H E F U R T R A D E

Comment by cheeki kea on February 7, 2020 at 5:29am

Format: Abstract

J Gen Virol. 2009 Nov;90(Pt 11):2695-703. doi: 10.1099/vir.0.013490-0. Epub 2009 Jul 22.

Angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) from raccoon dog can serve as an efficient receptor for the spike protein of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus.

Xu L¹, Zhang Y, Liu Y, Chen Z, Deng H, Ma Z, Wang H, Hu Z, Deng F.

Author information

1: State Key Laboratory of Virology, Wuhan Institute of Virology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan 430071, PR China.

Abstract

Raccoon dog is one of the suspected intermediate hosts of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV). In this study, the angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) gene of raccoon dog (rdACE2) was cloned and sequenced. The amino acid sequence of rdACE2 has identities of 99.3, 89.2, 83.9 and 80.4 % to ACE2 proteins from dog, masked palm civet (pcACE2), human (huACE2) and bat, respectively. There are six amino acid changes in rdACE2 compared with huACE2, and four changes compared with pcACE2, within the 18 residues of ACE2 known to make direct contact with the SARS-CoV S protein. A HeLa cell line stably expressing rdACE2 was established; Western blot analyses and an enzyme-activity assay indicated that the cell line expressed ACE2 at a similar level to two previously established cell lines that express ACE2 from human and masked palm civet, respectively. Human immunodeficiency virus-backboned pseudoviruses expressing spike proteins derived from human SARS-CoV or SARS-CoV-like viruses of masked palm civets and raccoon dogs were tested for their entry efficiency into these cell lines. The results showed that rdACE2 is a more efficient receptor for human SARS-CoV, but not for SARS-CoV-like viruses of masked palm civets and raccoon dogs, than huACE2 or pcACE2. This study provides useful data to elucidate the role of raccoon dog in SARS outbreaks.