Watch: Minks Driven Insane on Maggot-Infested Canadian Fur Farms
A new exposé has revealed that minks on five fur farms in Canada are subjected to conditions so miserable that many go insane. The footage was captured by animal rights activist Malcolm Klimowicz.
The minks were forced to live in tiny, wire-floored cages covered with cobwebs and encrusted with faeces. Food was dumped on top of the cages, and mountains of waste and maggot-infested puddles collected underneath them. One mink’s head had an open sore, and several others were missing ears. One was lying motionless, while others had to climb over the decomposing corpse of a cagemate.
Minks are intelligent, extremely active animals who are excellent climbers and swimmers. In the wild, they forage for food, move between multiple den sites, and have a home range of several miles near a waterway. Intensive confinement with no chance of escape causes some minks on fur farms to exhibit symptoms of “zoochosis”, or captivity-induced insanity, including frantic pacing, circling, and gnawing on cage bars.
Klimowicz entered these farms because, like many people, he’d simply had enough. Animals, he said, are suffering to make “stupid clothing decorations”, yet the industry continues to mislead the public by saying that fur farmers “take animal welfare very seriously”. We can all take matters into our own hands by choosing compassion over cruelty with every purchase and refusing to buy or wear fur.
What You Can Do
Fur farming has been illegal in the UK for nearly two decades, but up to 200,000 minks continue to suffer and die on Irish farms every year. Please send a message to Ireland’s Minister for Agriculture today and ask him to make shameful fur farms a thing of the past in that country:
