Mink farming for fur involves housing highly active semi-aquatic predators in small wire cages, causing severe behavioral restriction and chronic welfare harm to millions of animals.
Mink farming represents one of the clearest cases where the fundamental welfare requirements of an animal species are incompatible with viable commercial production. Mink are active, wide-ranging predators with strong drives for locomotion, swimming, and hunting that cannot be met in small wire cages. The resulting chronic welfare compromise — evidenced by very high stereotypy rates — is not a management failure but a structural consequence of the production system. The growing wave of national bans on mink farming, driven by both welfare and public health concerns, demonstrates that the policy response to this evidence is feasible. Welfare advocacy has been central to the legislative progress on mink farm elimination across Europe.