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Road kill used for Badger kilt sporrans

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4 August 2010 - BBC News

A taxidermist is using wild animals killed by the bloodsports and farming industry (as well as those claimed to have been knocked down and killed on roads) to make sporrans. Controversial Kate Macpherson, of Beauly, Inverness-shire, says she has collected badgers, foxes, deer and stoats from verges. She claims that she uses animals that would otherwise have lain rotting by the side of a road.

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Mother of three Ms Macpherson claimed to have been "inspired" by the the badger skin sporran worn by her father's Army regiment. Her sales pitch is along the lines of: "If I didn't pick up these dead animals they would be rotting in a ditch. I'm creating something useful from them rather than allowing their beauty to be wasted." She added: "But they're not for everybody I admit. People seem to either love them or hate them."  Her own web-site says she makes sporrans from crocodiles, goats, horses and sheep; and you don't really see these laying dead in a ditch in the UK.

Not surprisingly, Macpherson has faced complaints from animal welfare groups. One person, who saw her stand at the Scottish Game Fair in Perthshire, were well within their rights to call the police who sent an officer to see her and how she uses the fur and face masks of protected mammal species to make sickeningly expensive purses. Animal welfare campaigners have rightly criticised the pathetic-looking product, claiming it will lead to the deaths of other animals. Lynda Korimboccus, head of the Scottish Animal Rights Alliance, said the use of the animals - even if they were killed on a road - was wrong. She added: "Using a dead animal for clothing perpetuates the idea that that's what animals are for. That will lead to the deaths of other animals which will be killed to satisfy the market for fur."

Badgerland say: Macpherson claims that if she did not pick these animals up they would be rotting in a ditch and that she is creating something useful rather than allowing their beauty to be wasted. The beauty of an animal's fur is when the animal is wearing it; not when it has been cut from the animal to be used and abused for nothing other than a pathetic fashion statement. When people wear fur across their shoulders or a glass-eyed badgers face to draw attention to their inadequate wedding tackle region it just demonstrates that they can probably be outwitted by their own pets! With all the hyped-up snappy working terriers and lurchers you see in the countryside, you wouldn't really want to put a foxes face across your groin - it's just asking for an eye-watering injury.

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