China is the world’s largest producer and exporter of fur, with exports totalling over US$2 billion in 2004. The fur business is also experiencing explosive year-on-year growth (123% from 2003-2004). (More recent statistics are not available, but will have increased dramatically.)

Much of what is passed off as "faux fur" is actually real fur, often dog and cat fur. Dog and cat fur appears as fur trim on jackets, shoes, scarves, trinkets, toys, hair bands, and sometimes even full fur coats. Real fur is routinely dyed unnatural colours and sheared, which gives it the appearance of faux fur to the untrained eye.

Many of the victims of China’s dog and cat fur trade are stolen pets.

Fur "trim" is no longer made up of cast-offs from larger pelts, but instead has become a booming industry in its own right, often inextricably linked to the dog and cat meat industry.

Many countries have extremely vague labelling laws, meaning that items containing dog and cat fur are often deliberately mislabelled as faux fur, or under exotic sounding names such as gae-wolf, goupee, Asian wolf, China wolf, Mongolian dog fur, Sobaki, Pommern wolf, dogues de Chine, and loup d’Asie. Cat fur is frequently passed off as rabbit, maopee, goyangi, katzenfelle, natuerliches mittel, chat de Chine, and gatto cinesi.

In addition to causing the suffering and deaths of millions of animals each year, the production of wool, leather and fur contributes to climate change, land devastation, pollution and water contamination.