Natural Civet

Originally Posted by Torvo

When perfume industry stopped use natural civet? 60's? pre II WW?

Has someone smell natural and artificial side by side? Is there significant differences?

Originally Posted by farno

You can buy 100% natural civet in solid form and tincture. They claim to get it without killig the animal.
check this website. www.profumo.it
take care.

Originally Posted by bbBD

I hate cats.

Originally Posted by silverbullet

I believe that in 1998 Chanel started synthesizing the natural civet which was of lately harvested by scraping the secretions from the glands of the animal which is considered inhumane.

Originally Posted by mrclmind

There is no longer any reason, perfumisticly speaking, for using natural civet. The synthetics do the job extremely well. The reformulation of the older perfumes which contained natural castoreum which now use synthetics to get this note could be a big reason for people perceiving big differences in these fragrance.

I agree there have been so many new innovations in perfumery which are creating newer leather and animalic notes that many might argue that even though the recreation of true castoreum may not be spot on yet, that the newer leather/animalic notes are actually more interesting and versatile than castoreum was. So it just depends on how you look at it. If a true castoreum note is important to you than the newer leather notes will be a disappointment; however, in my opinion the fact that in some ways fragrance vistas are much more wide open then they were in the days of natural castoreum helps to mitigate my disappointment in the disappearance of notes which were the result of animal cruelty.

Originally Posted by farno

You can buy 100% natural civet in solid form and tincture. They claim to get it without killig the animal.
check this website. www.profumo.it
take care.

Originally Posted by Primrose

Now that we have synthetic animalic ingredients, there is no more need of cruelty in using natural civet or musk.

Originally Posted by veillettecathy

I would prefer the natural scents versus the sythentic, We Americans tend to get a little overboard and aggressive with industry such as companies that sell fur coats or perfumes from natural sources. I agree that there is always a few rotten apples in any culture that will take anything to a extreme like slaughtering large herds of elephants for the ivory and letting the remains to rot when maybe it could feed the poor and then there are the fanatics that will pour paint on a person wearing a fur coat just to make a statement. I lived in northern Maine and Quebec border and can tell you fur is the warmest material in cold climates.

Originally Posted by Primrose

What do furs and animal hides have to do with animal ingredients for perfume? This is now getting off-topic.

I hope this discussion does not disintegrate into a discussion on beaver meat. One thread that was locked finally had a poster reveal she ate beaver meat. This from a discussion of castoreum.

By-products of the food industry or hunting are one thing. Inhumane methods of raising and slaughtering fur animals, which include electrocution and steel traps. This happens in all countries, where animals are skinned while still alive.

BTW, my signature quote comes from fashion expert Tim Gunn. Anyone considering wearing furs should see his film showing an animal stripped of his skin--still alive and blinking, covered in blood.

I maintain that synthetic perfumer fixatives are the way to go. In the U.S. beavers are not a huge food crop, nor are musk deer and civet cats, for that matter.

Originally Posted by maitiu

Please forgive me for getting off the main subject. I merely started talking about my time in Minnesota after reading about the other posters experience of living in the cold climate. I do apologize.

I do totally agree that animal cruelty is just horrendous.

Originally Posted by MonkeyBars

thanks for the cool informative links RP!

Originally Posted by veillettecathy

Well I knew my statement would draw controversy and I have to disagree with you about synthetic fragrances as I have found synthetic Ambergris not the same as the real tincture. Why I brought furs into my comment which may be inappropriate except for we have friends that do legally trap animals for the fur and they use all parts of the animal and nothing is wasted, some of the parts are used as scenting agents.

Originally Posted by mrclmind

I believe the switch to synthetic was rather gradual. I think that even though they might not admit it, some houses still use some animal products. Of all the synthetic animal notes, synthetic Civet is by far the one that is the most consistently right on the money in my opinion. I have smelled more than my fair share of the real thing.

Originally Posted by Redneck Perfumisto

Yes, the synthetic creation of natural macrocyclic musks and their analogs is definitely one of the success stories of the chemical sciences. Leaving aside questions about some of the other, non-natural types of musks, the scientific pursuit of civet and deer musk was both good for science and good for the fragrance industry (and good for the animals, too!!!)

Some interesting links on the interplay between fragrance and science vis-a-vis musks:

http://sandwalk.blogspot.com/2009/07...d-ruzicka.html

http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_priz...9/ruzicka.html

http://www.chemistry.illinois.edu/re...tract_SP05.pdf

Originally Posted by stuigi

FYI- Any discussion of trapping will inevitably lead to one regarding hunting. These discussions tend to get very heated. Previous discussions of civet have also gone in this direction. Just a word of caution.

Originally Posted by Chris Bartlett

I agree both that the switch was gradual - through the 50s and 60s mainly - and that modern synthetic civet provides an excellent substitute.

I personally do not use natural civet because the means of production seem to me to be cruel: The animals are not slaughtered for the product, but captured and caged and have it taken from them repeatedly - several times a week. A bamboo spoon is used for the purpose with the animal held, still in it’s cage, for the duration. The cages are tiny, the animals are kept in over-heated conditions because this increases the yield and, according to some authorities, they are repeatedly aggravated in the belief that their distress increases both the quantity and quality of the resulting secretions.

Since there are effective synthetic substitutes I don’t want to be party to that sort of treatment of animals. I don’t believe there is a moral equivalence in this with the killing of animals (for meat, leather or whatever else) as long as those animals either live wild or are farmed humanely and in either case are killed quickly, I’m comfortable with that.

As a result I am OK with the use of natural castoreum, which is taken mainly from Canadian beavers killed in the course of annual culls considered necessary to prevent environmental destruction resulting from overpopulation of beavers. These culls currently produce so much castoreum that the fragrance trade does not consume it all and as a result it is quite cheap.

These are complex moral judgements as we’ve been exploring in the closely related thread on natural deer musk, and as I’ve said there I don’t presume to impose my own moral judgement on anyone else. I do think it is helpful to have all the facts before forming a view however.

Originally Posted by MonkeyBars

I've smelled a synthetic civet. It came of as very barnyardy . . . very horsey and a little poopy. Similar to Untitled No. 8.