Fur or Fur Trim

We’re getting ready to launch year five of HRC’s Animal Tracker annual survey of the public opinions and behavior of adults in the U.S. This year’s survey, which will field in March, addresses opinions toward various social movements, who people trust to provide information about animal welfare, opinions about the adequacy of animal protection laws, attitudes toward the importance of animal welfare in various situations, and the frequency with which people discuss animal protection issues. We asked the exact same questions in 2008 and 2009 and will be able to analyze changes over time. When the results are available in April, we’ll also refresh the Animal Tracker graphing tool so that the results will be easy to access and interpret.

Today we are launching our new Humane Trends report and the accompanying website, www.HumaneTrends.com. Put simply, Humane Trends is a barometer of the status of animal protection in the United States. The study brings together a collection of 25 diverse indicators to assess the status and progress of animal well-being, providing a comprehensive view of animal use and abuse in the United States to help inform animal advocates as well as policymakers and the public.

Every year, the Gallup company measures the attitudes of U.S. adults on 16 social issues, including buying/wearing animal fur, medical testing on animals, and animal cloning. The results immediately brought to mind two questions. First, why is it that we have not made significantly more progress convincing people that buying and wearing animal fur is wrong? How frivolously cruel does a behavior need to be for more than half of people to say it is wrong? But an even bigger question is, are advocates having any impact at all on the perceived morality of these issues?

A recent Gallup Poll found that U.S. adults generally believe the country has only “poor” or “fair” moral values. However, opinions seem to be improving slightly, and there is an increasing number of people who think that that the state of moral values is “good” or “excellent.”

Every year, the Humane Research Council conducts an annual survey of U.S. adults that we call the "Animal Tracker." The survey enables advocates to track and understand how public opinion and behavior is changing over time, with respect to a wide variety of critically important animal protection issues. HRC has just completed year four of the Animal Tracker and the report is now available (for free) on HumaneSpot.org.