BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Trade in fur from cats and dogs to make toys and blankets is becoming more widespread in the European Union and should be banned, Heather Mills McCartney, wife of ex-Beatle Paul, said on Thursday. Mills and other campaigners said there was evidence that the snaring and skinning of domestic pets for fur was taking place in the Czech Republic, which joined the EU in May last year.

"We need to get a ban," she told a news conference in the European Parliament.

Cat and dog fur was being used to make little figures of pets as well as scarves, stoles and blankets, she said.

Holding up dog pelts, some still with teeth and paws, she said that forcing manufacturers to specify what type of fur was being used in a product was not a way to restrict the practice.

"Labelling is not going to work. It puts the onus on us and the taxpayer to check every bit of fur that comes in," Mills said.

"Nothing short of a ban is going to make this go away. It's the most horrific domestic animal trade at the moment. It's absolutely gross."

Mills McCartney made a similar appeal in March, when the main target was fur imports from China, but senior EU lawmaker Philip Whitehead said the problem had now become more widespread and moved nearer home.

"There is now evidence this is going on in the Czech Republic as well," said Whitehead, who is chairman of the parliament's internal market committee.

Trading in dog and cat fur is banned in Belgium, Denmark, France, Greece and Italy, but Mills said a total EU-wide ban was needed to have an impact.

Whitehead said the assembly will ask EU Health and Consumer Protection Commissioner Markos Kyprianou again for an EU-wide ban. Kyprianou has already said he is looking for a legal basis to introduce a ban.

"Commissioner Kyprianou finds this practice abhorrent and is committed to stopping it," his spokesman, Philip Tod, said.