While Australia has no domestic fur farms, it still imports millions of dollars' worth of real and faux fur products each year. Fur sold in Australia is primarily rabbit and fox, but it can also include native animals, including brushtail possums. 

In 2004, Australia banned the import and export of cat and dog fur however, clothing has been found to be made with cat fur as recently as 2025, despite being labelled differently. 

Clothes containing fur and Angora sold in Australia come from animals, generally bred overseas. The largest fur farms in the world are in China where millions of foxes, mink and raccoon dogs are bred in intensive, factory farms.

Akubra

Akubra is an iconic Australian hat. Each Akubra hat is made with around 12 rabbit skins.

While Akubra used to source all their rabbit skins from Australian farms and wild-caught rabbits, they now source their materials from Russian fur farms. 

Akubra is still legally able to sell its hats as Australian Made. According to the Australian Made Campaign, products that have 50 per cent or more of the cost of making the product attributed to Australian materials or production processes and are manufactured in Australia are considered Australian made.

Akubra use over two million skins a year and sell 150,000-160,000 hats a year.

Angora

Angora rabbits are the only breed of rabbits from which wool suitable for spinning can be harvested. They are the only rabbit whose hair grows continuously throughout the animal's lifetime.

Angora rabbit are bred in intensive factory farms. China has dominated the angora world market for decades. Angora rabbits used to be bred for fur in Australia, however now all fur is imported.

In 2014, PETA Asia, alongside one international clothing company and a veterinarian travelled to China to meet up with angora company officials and an auditor to see what was really happening on Angora farms. The group visited five farms in different regions of mainland China. Those visits were all unannounced.

The following are direct quotes from these investigations:

"Live rabbits' fur is ripped out of their skin and that they're forced to live under horrendous conditions.

Rabbits were yanked out of enclosures by their sensitive ears and pinned under workers' feet while they were violently sheared

Some sites used a rope for suspending "problem animals" by their forelimbs in order to pluck or shear them more easily dangled from the ceiling

The temperature was over 100 degrees F (37.8C), and the rabbits were given little to no protection from the elements

Most of the rabbits were suffering from a severe skin irritation caused by excessive salivation. As a result, these areas of skin had become severely infected. Many animals exhibited rapid, open-mouthed breathing brought on by heat stress or respiratory disease

Veterinary care was grossly inadequate or non-existent. In many cases, the rabbits weren't offered any treatment for severe and chronic infections, sores, respiratory distress, malnutrition, blindness, or neurological damage. Some were so sick and weak that they lay in their own waste and didn't respond to being touched

Of the farms that the group visited, rabbits were not euthanized on site under any circumstances, no matter how sick or injured they were. They were left to languish for days, weeks, or even months without relief or treatment before finally succumbing "

The majority of angora sold in Australia comes from similar conditions to those investigated by Peta Asia.

Undercover investigations by French Animal Rights Group L214 has uncovered similar angora production facilities in France to those in China.