I recently watched some very disturbing video footage documenting the horrific practice of skinning live animals in China for their fur. I have visited various internet sites of animal protection groups to confirm that what I had seen was fact. The eight paragraphs below explain the graphic details that I witnessed in the video at www.animalsaviors.org The video began with a zoomed-in shot of an animal (which the report revealed was a raccoon dog), vacantly staring out from its cage. The next scene showed a raccoon dog on the ground being repeatedly beaten with a large stick until it was rendered senseless. Soon after, a raccoon dog was hauled from its enclosure as it desperately tried to hang on to the bars with its front paws. It was brutally slammed to the ground twice to immobilize it. That being done, it was tossed down a metre or so away, next to two other animals, one of which was wildly convulsing. The camera then zoomed-in to the head and face of a newly beaten raccoon dog. It was still conscious with eyes wide open. It was moving, but in a weakened manner due to its severe injuries. A raccoon dog, presumably the same animal, was then hung up on a hook and incisions were made in its lower abdomen. A man began cutting and stripping the coat from its body as it continually writhed whilst hanging upside down. Its fur was eventually ripped from its body in one piece as you would remove a pullover. Except, unlike our human pullovers, this poor creature had the skin from its head and face fully removed as well. A freshly skinned animal was shown trying to raise itself up. It was just a living mass of skinless bloodied flesh, its eyes open and teeth fully exposed. The only hair left on its body, were the eyelashes at the end of its blinking lids and tufts of fur around its feet. Very slowly and feebly, it looked down at its own body, and seemingly in shock, collapsed back to the ground again. According to the reports mentioned in my opening paragraph, it is very likely that that animal remained alive in its agonised state for 5 to 10 minutes. An animal which looked like an arctic fox was shown desperately scratching at the bars of his cage trying to escape. It was noosed, dragged from its cage and then beaten into unconsciousness with a large heavy stick. It became conscious again when the skinning began, and so too began the yelping, so therefore more beating. It was skinned whilst still alive and writhing on the ground. It was continually yelping and writhing whilst the skinning took place. Supposedly to silence or asphyxiate the animal, the offender stood heavily and deliberately on its throat, and then stood on its head and face with the other boot, grinding them into the ground. The camera panned to show a multitude of caged animals in close vicinity to this slaughtering site. Many of them were hysterically leaping up at the walls of their cages, trying desperately to escape. Thereâ