Fur farming

Fur farming is the practice of breeding or raising certain types of animals for their fur.

Most of the world's farmed fur was produced by European farmers^{[citation needed]}. In 2018, there were 5,000 fur farms in the EU, located across 22 countries; these areas of production collectively accounted for 50% of the global production of farmed fur.^[1][2] However, by 2023 only 11 countries in the EU still farmed animals for fur, and three of these countries had issued a legal ban on the activity effective within several years.^[3]

The EU accounted for 63% of global mink production and 70% of fox production. Globally, the top fur producers were China and Finland.^[4] Denmark was also leading, accounting for approximately 28% of world mink fur production, until its government culled all of the farmers' stocks without legal authority in 2020.^[5] Finland is the largest United States supplier of fox pelts.

The United States is a major exporter of fur skins. Major export markets include China, Russia, Canada, and the EU. Exports to Asia as a share of total exports grew from 22% in 1998 to 47% in 2002.^[6] As of 2012, Russia was reported to be the world's biggest sales market for fur.^[7][8] China has been the world's largest importer of fur pelts and the largest exporter of finished fur products.^[9]

Fur farming has been banned in the United Kingdom (since 2000),^[10][11] Austria (since 2005),^[12][13] Slovenia (effective 2015),^[14] Croatia (effective 2017),^[13][15][16] Luxembourg (effective 2018),^[16] the Czech Republic (effective 2019),^[17] the Netherlands (effective 2021),^[18] Republic of Ireland (effective 2022),^[16] Italy (effective June 2022),^[19][16] Malta (effective 2022),^[16] Belgium (effective across the country 2023),^[16] Slovakia (effective 2025),^[14] Norway (effective February 2025),^[20] Estonia (effective 2025), Lithuania (effective 2027) and Latvia (effective 2028).^[21][3] In Switzerland and Germany, the regulations for fur farming are very strict, with the result that there are no fur farms.^[13][14] Denmark (2009), France (2020) and Hungary (2021) introduced a ban on fur farming of certain species, while Spain announced a plan in 2022 to close down all fur farms by 2030.^[3] Fur farming was not present as of 2023 in Portugal and Cyprus.^[14]

Demand fell in the late 1980s and 1990s as a result of a number of factors, including the efforts of animal rights campaigners and the failure of designers to come up with exciting new lines. Since the turn of the millennium, however, sales worldwide have soared to record highs, fueled by radically new techniques for working with fur, and a sharp rise in disposable income in China and Russia. This growing demand has led to the development of extensive fur farming operations in China and Poland.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, mink turned out to be very susceptible to human–mink infection, sparking fears of widespread outbreaks and mutations in the mink farm populations of many countries that could in turn infect humans with different strains of the coronavirus, making it potentially immune for a COVID-19 vaccine.^[22] Several mink farms in the Netherlands have been entirely culled since June 2020, and in August 2020 the phaseout of fur farming was accelerated from 1 January 2024 to 1 March 2021.^[18][23] In July 2020, Spain culled 100,000 mink.^[22] On 6 November 2020, Denmark announced it would cull its entire 17 million mink population as an emergency to prevent the spread of a mutated strain of COVID-19, of which at least five cases were found.^[24] On 11 November, the Netherlands again moved the phase-out forward, now putting 1 January 2021 as the target date to limit the risk of mutation.^[25] Kopenhagen Fur (accounting for 40% of mink production worldwide) announced mid-November it would gradually cease operations in 2–3 years because the circumstances had critically undermined the future of the global fur trade.^[26]