12 Reasons Why Ireland Needs to Ban Fur Farms ASAP

Compassionate people the world over are dead set against fur. Killing an animal for his or her skin is just inexcusable. But did you know that 73 per cent of fur farms are located here in Europe and that in Ireland minks are still having their skins ripped off every day to feed the global demand for animal pelts?

Here are 12 reasons why this shameful situation needs to end right now:

1. Banning fur farming in Ireland would save an estimated 150,000 mink each year from being imprisoned, abused and slaughtered.
2. Fur farms are factory farms – and like all intensive industrial farms, they put profit first and animal welfare last.
3. Minks are naturally solitary. Being kept in a small filthy cage, where they are in full view of, or surrounded by, other animals at all times, is horrifically stressful for them and often drives them insane.
4. Fur farming is illegal in the UK, Austria, the Netherlands, and other progressive European countries.
5. Speaking about fur farming while he was Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Simon Coveney said, “[T]his isn’t an industry that I like”. Yet in 2011, he failed to ban the bloody industry, despite a recommendation from the previous government that it be outlawed.
6. In the latest review of the law on fur farming, animal welfare didn’t get a fair hearing. In 2011, the Irish Agricultural Minister’s review group was lobbied by wealthy representatives of the skins industry, such as the European Fur Breeders Association and the International Fur Trade Federation. As a result, the group’s final report spent three pages parroting the fur trade’s phony claims about “humane treatment” and included just one page detailing the legitimate concerns of animal-welfare advocates about the suffering of animals on these farms. The ethics of raising and killing animals for their skins was not even addressed.
7. In the wild, mink always live near water and love swimming and diving. On fur farms, they are never even let out of their tiny cages to exercise and have no opportunity to fulfil any of their natural behaviour.
8. A European Commission report about animals on fur farms found that “the typical mink cage with a nest box and wire mesh floor impairs mink welfare because it does not provide for important needs”.
9. Fur farms in Ireland have created only approximately 60 jobs but cause hundreds of thousands of animals immense suffering every single day of their lives.
10. Fur farming is opposed by the Irish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and by hundreds of thousands of compassionate people in Ireland and beyond.
11. Mink on fur farms are killed when they’re around 6 months old, having been confined for their entire lives. The frightened animals are yanked from their cages, shoved into a box filled with the bodies of up to 70  other dead and dying animals and gassed with carbon dioxide or carbon monoxide.
12. A recent study found that real fur is much worse for the environment than humane faux fur, partly because of the toxic waste produced by factory farms. The climate-change impact of mink fur turned out to be five times greater than that of textiles.

Please take a moment to e-mail Ireland’s Agricultural Minister and urge him to ban cruel fur farms now!