Mink farming for the fur industry has been banned or phased out in many countries due to welfare concerns, with debates about the welfare costs of intensive mink production continuing globally.
Mink farming represents one of the clearest cases of a production system fundamentally incompatible with the welfare of the animal involved. Mink are not domesticated in the behavioural sense: they retain strong drives for swimming, hunting, and ranging that cannot be met in wire cages. Stereotypic behaviours in farmed mink populations are nearly universal and are accepted as indicators of chronic stress by welfare scientists. The welfare case for phasing out mink farming entirely is strong, and an increasing number of governments have reached this conclusion through democratic legislative processes.