Brian May joined protestors calling for a ban on the import of real fur into the UK at Downing Street today. The musician accompanied members of Humane Society International (HSI) to hand a petition with 425,834 signatures to Prime Minister Theresa May.

Earlier this year, 31 celebrities including Dame Judi Dench, Paloma Faith, Alesha Dixon, Ricky Gervais and Sir Andy Murray signed a letter to Prime Minister May to call for a ban across all real fur imports. 

Though fur farming has been illegal in the UK since 2000, the UK has still imported over £650 million worth of fur states HSI. However Queen guitarist Brian believes the petition proves that the public supports a ban on imported fur.

“This is a very big petition, I don’t think people realise that 400,000 people have actively signed this,” he said. “It’s been coming for a long time. You cannot have millions, literally millions suffering in cages and then being killed and sometimes skinned alive.” 

Brain also stated some steps we could take to ensure this animal cruelty doesn’t continue to happen: “In the meantime we’d like everything to be labelled. Because some people are buying what they think is fake fur and it’s actually real fur because it’s cheaper because they treat the animals appalling badly it’s actually cheaper to make real fur.”