Mink farming confines semi-aquatic wild-natured animals in small wire cages, causing significant welfare harm. Growing legislative bans reflect both welfare evidence and shifting public values.
Mink farming welfare has been extensively studied, and the conclusions are consistently unfavorable: the species characteristics of mink — semi-aquatic, wide-ranging, solitary predators with strong motivation for water access and complex environments — are fundamentally incompatible with cage production conditions. This is not a matter of cage size optimization that could resolve the welfare concern; the incompatibility is between the behavioral biology of the species and the economic constraints of intensive production. Mink showing stereotypic behaviors at rates of 30-60% represent animals experiencing chronic motivational frustration — the neural architecture for natural behaviors is activated without environmental affordance for their expression. Legislative bans in the Netherlands, UK, and growing numbers of European countries reflect political acceptance of this welfare evidence, combined with shifting public values about the acceptability of fur as a luxury material. The remaining fur-producing countries — China, Poland, Finland, Denmark — continue production in the context of declining market and growing legislative pressure.