Fur farming confines highly mobile, semi-aquatic, or wide-ranging wild animals in small wire cages for their entire lives, creating welfare conditions recognized as severe by scientific consensus.
The scientific evidence on fur farm animal welfare is among the clearest in farm animal science. Mink are semi-aquatic predators adapted to patrolling large territories and swimming regularly. In wire mesh cages the size of a newspaper page, they cannot express any of their natural behaviors - no swimming, no foraging, no territory. The high rates of stereotypic behavior - repetitive, functionless movements that develop only in severely deprived environments - confirm that the welfare of farmed mink is profoundly compromised. Foxes in fur farms, with cage areas representing a fraction of a percent of their natural territory, show similar behavioral pathologies. The consumer pressure and legislative bans that have shuttered fur farms across Europe represent recognition of this evidence.