Mink fur farming involves keeping highly active, semi-aquatic carnivores in small wire cages with no access to water for swimming. This represents a fundamental mismatch between species needs and production conditions.
Mink fur farming represents one of the most widely documented cases of systemic welfare failure in animal agriculture. The species is ill-suited to cage confinement in almost every biological respect. Their need to swim is so strong that mink denied water access show persistent water-seeking stereotypies. Their hunting motivation leads to persistent pacing in the absence of prey to pursue. The high rates of self-mutilation, inter-animal aggression and stereotypic behaviour across all farmed mink populations indicate that welfare failure is not a management issue that can be resolved within the cage system - it is a consequence of the fundamental incompatibility of the species with intensive confinement.