The Netherlands completed its phaseout of mink farming in 2024 after a COVID-accelerated political shift. Its experience offers lessons for other countries still operating mink farms.
The Dutch mink phaseout demonstrates that politically difficult welfare reforms are achievable when the right combination of public health emergency, political will, and industry consultation aligns. The COVID link was catalytic — it transformed mink welfare from an animal issue to a public health emergency that commanded mainstream political attention. The lesson for welfare advocates is to identify co-benefits of welfare reform that expand the coalition beyond animal welfare supporters alone. Mink welfare and pandemic preparedness, AMR resistance and factory farming welfare, climate change and livestock system reform — these combinations are more politically powerful than welfare arguments alone.