Wal-Mart pulls slippers after revealing they use real rabbit fur

No longer will your tootsies be kept tender by Wal-Mart’s “all man-made” Tender Tootsie slippers. The main problem, apparently, is that while Wal-Mart advertises that its slippers use 100% man-made materials, it turns out that in reality those slippers are lined with real rabbit fur.

So, either Wal-Mart is claiming to be the inventor and subsequent mass-producer of the bunny, or Wal-Mart’s packaging is inaccurate. I say it’s a coin-flip, but either way the mass retailer and uber rabbit farmer has pulled all of its Tender Tootsie slippers from store shelves in Canada after the Animal Defence League of Canada discovered the products were incorrectly labelled and contained real fur.

Marley Daviduk, a spokeswoman for the Vancouver branch of the national organization, found the slippers while shopping last week and the Ottawa and Vancouver branches of the Animal Defence League immediately contacted both Wal-Mart Canada and the product’s London, Ont.-based importer. “I knew right away it was real rabbit fur, but it said on the tag that there were no man-made materials,” she said.

The slippers, manufactured in China, apparently slipped past Wal-Mart’s quality control despite the fact that the company states it has a strict no-fur policy. Maybe next we should start checking the fur coats, to see if, ohhh, perhaps a real mink got slipped in there every so often?

Wal-Mart pulls slippers after animal-rights group complains [CanWest News Service]

The Animal Defence League of Canada is celebrating a “major victory” after Wal-Mart Canada agreed to pull a type of Chinese-made slippers that contained real rabbit fur from its shelves.

The retail giant pulled the Tender Tootsies slippers, which advertised “all man-made materials,” on Monday morning after a member of Vancouver’s Animal Defence League discovered the products were incorrectly labelled and contained real fur. Wal-Mart has a no-fur policy at all of its stores.

“They have been pulled from the shelves, and what we were told is that if there’s any still on the shelves, their UPC code won’t go through at the till while they’re in the process of taking them out of their stores,” said Marley Daviduk, a spokeswoman for the Vancouver branch of the national organization.

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Posted by Corey Himrod on Tuesday, January 06, 2009