Our investigators witnessed not only how animals live, but also how they die in the seedy world of fur farming. During genital electrocution, the killer attaches an alligator clamp to the animal's ear and another to her labia and flips a switch, or plugs the wires into the wall socket, sending a jolt of electricity through her skin down the length of her body. She jerks and stiffens. The electrical current causes unbearable muscle pain, at the same time working as a paralyzing agent, preventing the victim from screaming or fleeing. For the benefit of our investigators, the farmer laid the animal's body on a table, although normally, he said, he would just hang the animal by the tail from the clip.
Ranchers also breed foxes, beavers, and rabbits for fur.
In the U.S., fur farms produced approximately 50,000 fox fur pelts last year. Some of them came from a place not far from the Eastern Seaboard where dead animals and animal parts litter the grounds in various states of decay. Their food containers are rusty cans, feces is piled up to boot-rim height, and the buildings groan in disrepair. The owner showed our investigators a wheelbarrow full of blood and skinned minks' bodies and, not far off, two cages dripping with the corpses of foxes newly killed and skinned. One fox's body, stripped of fur except around the ankles, lay in the dirt.