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Investigation: Vancouver's Kit and Ace claims canine fur hat is made from "raccoon"

A reporter's investigation not only found canine fur in a Kit and Ace product, but caught its customer service agents trying to pass it off as "raccoon." 

Kit and Ace, Gastown, cashmere, raccoon dog, fur industry, animal rights
Kit and Ace uses raccoon dog fur in its Berkeley toque, but claims the product is made from raccoons. Photo by Elizabeth McSheffrey and Tambako the Jaguar, Creative Commons.

“I can guarantee it’s raccoon fur (not dog),” reads an email from a Kit and Ace customer service agent. The statement is in response to an inquiry about the Canadian retailer’s new Berkeley toque, which has a fur pompom labelled "100 per cent real Asiatic raccoon.”

“It is raccoon fur,” reads another email from a different Kit and Ace agent in response to the same query. In both cases, the agents believed they were addressing customers, rather than a National Observer reporter.

A quick look online however, reveals that ‘Asiatic raccoon’ is the fur industry’s name for the raccoon dog, a member of the canine family that resembles a raccoon, but is not genetically related.

Does Canada need stricter labelling laws for fur? Is Kit and Ace deliberately misleading customers?

Read more about this investigation on National Observer.

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