Thanks to many awareness-raising campaigns by animal welfare organizations, fur products were frowned upon for a long time in large parts of Western society. However, fur has had a comeback in recent years and now more than 100 million animals are killed for their fur every year.

Even though the common fur production methods must be considered cruel when measured against Swiss animal welfare standards and are clearly rejected by the majority of the population, imports have again risen sharply in Switzerland. The fur declaration ordinance, which was introduced in 2013, did not manage to reduce demand. For this reason, politicians are also calling for more effective measures to prevent, or at least substantially reduce, the the use of cruel production methods in the countries of origin encouraged by Swiss demand. Consideration should therefore be given to a possible ban on fur imports and/or the placing on the market thereof. In volume 16, the authors demonstrate that such a measure is imperative for the protection of public morals and the animals concerned and is also compatible with Switzerland's international trade obligations, in particular with the GATT agreement.

With its publication series "Schriften zum Tier im Recht" TIR aims at providing the broad public with a selection of monographs, expert opinions, and scientific papers on legal and ethical aspects of the human-animal relationship.