Please allow me to respond to your editorial about People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals' new anti-fur flier (Outdoors, "Wildlife," Dec. 28). Because our flier exposes the extreme violence of the fur industry, we are not distributing it to young children -- we're handing it out to kids 13 years and older only or directly to their mothers. But the message of compassion is one that children of all ages need to hear.

As a mother, I do everything I can to teach my daughter that cruelty and violence are wrong. That's why I cannot understand why any parent would ever choose to wear fur.

Perhaps they don't know that animals caught in the wild for their fur face days of agony in traps, tearing flesh and breaking bones in a struggle to get free. On fur farms, animals spend their entire lives confined to cramped, filthy cages, constantly pacing back and forth from stress and boredom. They are killed by being poisoned, gassed, strangled or electrocuted.

As parents we can choose to teach our children cruelty or kindness. Let's choose kindness by shunning products, such as fur, that involve the unnecessary suffering of so many innocent animals.

-- Liz Welsh, Staff Writer / People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) / Norfolk, Va.