[FEL-L] The sour smell of perfume

[GemOJungle at aol.com]

The sour smell of perfume
 
 




 
 
If you are serious about saving the world , remember that more  than half of 
it is being destroyed for products we do not need. Let me show you  some 
killers used by the perfume industry.

Ambergris, a much prized ingredient from whale intestines, is  used as a 
fixative in perfumes because it is the slowest of all perfume  materials to 
evaporate.  It is actually bile secreted by sperm whales to  help them digest food. 
A substance that looks like dung, perfume companies claim  that it is vomited 
out and floats on water until it is either pulled in by  fishermen or washed 
up on land. That is completely untrue. No one running a  perfume industry that 
needs tonnes of the stuff is going to wait till bits of  whale vomit are found 
by lucky beachcombers. 

In actual fact it is obtained by killing sperm whales –  something forbidden 
by the entire world since 1977 but still done by Norway and  Japan. While the 
French may condemn whaling by these countries, France has the  only facility 
in the world that processes ambergris and they buy it from are  these two 
countries. 

4 tonnes per year is the demand,. Ambergris is banned for  trading in America 
and Australia but European perfume makers escape by  pretending that either 
the ambergris is very old ( when I banned ivory trading  in India many ivory 
merchants claimed they were selling the tusks of  mammoths  who had died 2 
million years ago and whose tusks, strangely  enough,had been dug up in Siberia.) 
or it has been found on the beach of faraway  islands like Vanuatu or Falkland 
islands. In fact 96% of traded ambergris came  from sperm whales and only 4% 
from shore wash-ups.

There are French companies that trade in ambergris  all  over the world even 
though trading in this animal product is strictly forbidden  . It is listed in 
 Appendix 1 of CITES which specifically excludes trade  for commercial 
purposes in parts or products derived from the wild for. So even  if someone found 
ambergris on the beach they would be unable to legally sell it.  The sperm 
whale was declared an endangered species in 1970. 

In the US the passing of the Endangered Species Act in 1973  consolidated 
protection for the Sperm whale and its products.The Act states that  it is 
unlawful to possess, sell, deliver, carry, transport, or ship by any means  
whatsoever any parts or products of an endangered species within the United  States. 
This means that perfume companies in the United States are not allowed  to buy 
or sell it or perfumes containing it. Australia has also banned it. Since  
1981, importation of sperm oil and other sperm whale products has been banned by  
the European Union.

However companies that sell "natural perfumes" and "essential  oils" even in 
the US however continue to use ambergris and internet websites  sell it 
openly. They ignore the argument that the  demand for this  commodity means that 
unscrupulous hunting countries  kill more whales. It  is estimated that there are 
now only 360,000 sperm whales remaining, compared  with a Greenpeace estimate 
of 1,500,000 in 1978.

Castor or castoreum is a creamy substance with a strong odour  found in two 
sacs between the anus and external genitals of the beaver, a  playful creature 
found in streams in Europe and North America. These "pods" are  used as a 
fixative in perfume. The odour is used by male and female beavers to  mark their 
territories but has become a single main reason for their genocide.  In fact 
the word castrate comes from the Greek word of beaver, Kastor.

There are only two species of beaver left , both being hunted  extensively 
for these anal sacs. They are dried, ground and put into alcohol to  obtain the 
Castoreum perfume. Even though they are illegal they are advertised  openly on 
the net.

Hyraceum comes from the Hyrax, an extraordinary animal who  resembles an 
over-grown guinea-pig and is the closest living relative to the  elephant. A 
hyrax's brain is like an elephant's, while its stomach is like a  horse's. The 
skeleton, is  akin to a rhinoceros's. The hind feet are like a  tapir's. 

The upper incisors from rodents' teeth, upper cheek teeth from  rhino's and 
the lower cheek teeth like a hippo's. They even have two teeth in  their upper 
jaw that resemble elephant tusks. 

Hyraceum is formed from the urine of a Hyrax . The urine is not  fluid, more 
like  a jelly like substance. Hyraceum is the crystalised form  of Hyrax urine 
and the animals are kept in cages till they die. The tincture is  obtained by 
infusing the powdered raw material into alcohol for a few  weeks.

The Musk Deer is another severely endangered  victim of  the perfume trade. 
At the rate it is being poached , that should be about 5  years from now..It is 
a small deer without antlers , large rounded ears and  protruding canine 
teeth. Male deer have a scent sac which becomes active when  they are about two 
years old. This sac secretes a substance known as musk which  the stag uses it 
to mark his territory and to attract females. Each musk pod or  kasturi weighs 
about 15 gm . This tiny pod is what the perfume trade  wants.

About 4,000 adult male deer are killed annually. The  French  perfume 
industry alone used 15 % of the world's  musk .All  musk deer species have been 
protected by the International CITES pact since  1979. Inspite of that all Asian 
wild populations are down by 80% in the last 10  years. 

In India there were 30,000 in 1986 , there are less than 3000  today. Three 
to five musk deer are trapped and killed for every male deer. Since  an average 
of 40 male deer with sufficiently large glands are  necessary to  produce 
each kilogram of musk, this means the killing of about 160 deer.  

Poachers use steel wire snares to trap musk deer. These kill musk deer  of 
all gender and age as well as other species. They cut open the live animal,  
take the sac and leave it to die in agony.

Hundreds of snares lie scattered over the Himalayas .As the  population 
dwindles, the poaching increases, Since almost all the older males  have been 
killed ,  the size of the pods is getting smaller and smaller  as  younger males 
are being killed. Which means more males have to be  killed for the same weight.

Cites also bans  i.e. the scraping the glands of civet  cats to produce civet 
etc. But perfume companies couldn't care less. Another  fixative used is the 
excretion of the civet or pole cat  found in Africa  and Southeast Asia, a 
relation of the mongoose with a spotted body and a ringed  tail. The excretion 
comes from the perineal glands, next to the civet's  anus  . It is taken by 
either killing the animal and removing the glands,  or by scraping the secretions 
from the glands of a live animal. The latter is  the preferred method today. 

According to the World Society for the Protection of Animals  which has 
investigated civet harvesting for perfume in Ethiopia, the animals are  kept in 
tiny cages for years. Every few days the keepers scrape the civet out of  the 
anal sacs using a small horn spoon or spatula, a painful procedure. The  belief 
that an angry animal secretes more persists and civets are tied by their  legs 
to the bars of the cage and teased and irritated in the hope of increasing  
the yield.. Chanel ( specially Chanel No 5), Cartier, and Lancome have all  
admitted to using civet in their products.

The muskrat is an aquatic rodent which resembles a large house  rat with its 
tail flattened on either side and webbed hind feet. It lives in  reed huts 
built cleverly  in marshy shallows with underwater entrance  tunnels. It is 
killed and its anal glands are used in making perfume.

Even when these species are not used , an average perfume uses  pig and other 
animal fat. In Grasse, the largest manufacturing centre of perfume  in France 
, the flowers are spread on glass sheets coated with animal grease.  The 
flowers are changed until the grease has absorbed their  fragrance.   The grease 
and fats are dissolved in alcohol to obtain  the essential oils. It is the 
ratio of alcohol to oil that determines perfume,  eau de toilette, and cologne.

Synthetic oils are freely available eliminating the need to  extract oils 
from animals. But the perfume industry is not going to change  unless you force 
them to do so.  I have never used perfume. Do you need to  ?

-By Maneka Gandhi

To join the animal welfare movement contact _gandhim at nic.in_ 
(mailto:gandhim at nic.in) 





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