The environmental and economic cost of fur farming By: Helene Kristiansen The fur industry has long been a topic of controversy. On one hand, animal welfare organizations, like PETA, have raised awareness of the miserable living conditions breeding animals endure. On the other hand, fur industry associations advocate that fur is a natural product that eventually will return to nature over time. In this article, I will present Denmark as one of the largest producers of mink skins, and how Covid-19 has affected the industry. Furthermore, I will present how there has been a shift in consumer values, and the environmental effects of fur farming. Animals were originally hunted or trapped for food, and their pelts were rendered to provide protective clothing. As civilization developed, furs became less a necessity and more a luxury. The finer and more exotic furs were a symbol of wealth and status in the ancient societies of China, Greece, and Rome. Over the century’s furs remained a prized and commercially important commodity, and the trapping and trading of furs became a major business enterprise among early North American settlers. Today the fur industry is a profitable international market among major producers such as the United States, Canada, and the Scandinavian countries. Denmark is the world’s largest producer of mink skins. Danish mink skins are the most expensive on the market because Danish farmers produce a higher quality of fur, which is in high demand by consumers. Kopenhagen fur, which is the largest fur auction house in the world, sells 19 million Danish mink skins and around 7 million mink skins from other countries annually. Mink skins account for about one-third of Danish exports to China and are the third-largest Danish agricultural export items of animal origin, representing an annual export value of approximately EUR1.1 billion. Statistics show that in 2019, there were almost 800 mink farms in Denmark, and that the value of the production was just over 2.5 billion DKK. This was created based on 2.5 million adult minks, each giving 5-6 puppies who were being turned into skins.
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Historically there have been fluctuations in the business cycle for the mink industry. In 2012, the value of production reached almost 10 billion DKK, but in recent years it has gone down to a production value of 2.5 billion. This is due to an imbalance between supply and demand that comes from fur houses in China.
The Danish mink scandal
During a press conference on November 4th, 2020, the Danish Prime Minister announced that all the Danish minks on fur farms should be killed due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) as the virus had mutated among the minks and had spread to humans. The Danish Prime Minister, Mette Frederiksen, justified the decision with the fact that the mutated virus had been shown to react slowly to antibodies, and this would jeopardize future vaccines. The mutation of coronavirus (COVID-19) had been found on five different mink farms and had since been detected in 214 people among 5102 samples that had been collected between June and October in 2020. Out of the 214, these mink variants have been found in 200 people in North Jutland. Following the government’s decision, the Armed Forces, the Danish Emergency Management Agency, and the Home Guard were deployed to help euthanize 17 million minks, both those who were infected with the virus and those who were healthy. A lot of mink breeders during this time were losing their life’s work, some of which had been passed down by generations, therefore the Danish government promised to aid and compensate the affected mink breeders. While killing the country’s minks was done to secure the wellbeing of Danish society against Covid-19, it has had many serious repercussions, not only for the Danish mink breeding industry but also for the Danish economy. Following the government’s decision, the Armed Forces, the Danish Emergency Management Agency, and the Home Guard were deployed to help euthanize 17 million minks, both those who were infected with the virus and those who were healthy.
