On 30 July 2025, the European Food Safety Authority (Efsa) quietly published its long-awaited scientific opinion on the welfare of mink, foxes, raccoon dogs and chinchillas farmed for fur production.

The opinion had been requested by the European Commission to support the decision-making process launched following the European Citizens' Initiative Fur Free Europe, which had garnered widespread support.

The Commission's aim was to assess whether animal welfare problems associated with fur farming could be prevented or significantly reduced.

For decades, there have been serious concerns about the conditions of extreme suffering in which animals farmed for this purpose are kept, and about the industry's shameful failure to meaningfully alleviate their suffering.

The crucial point is that fur farming relies entirely on intensive systems. Animals belonging to species with complex ethological needs are confined in small metal cages, crammed side by side with others of their kind, for the entirety of their brief and miserable lives. The rows of cages restrict the animals' movements so severely that they are prevented from expressing their natural behaviours, such as foraging, exploring or socialising. These animals frequently develop obvious stereotypies — pacing back and forth, circling, biting their own fur or tail — unmistakable signs of a compromised mental state.

As long as twenty-four years ago, the European Commission's Scientific Committee on Animal Health and Animal Welfare had already raised the alarm about the systemic failure of the industry to ensure the welfare of species farmed for fur.

The Committee's landmark report recommended working towards the design of farming systems capable of meeting animals' ethological needs, acknowledging that the animal welfare problems associated with fur farming could not be resolved through incremental improvements or welfare certification schemes.

Europe's stance on fur farms

Combined with growing public opposition, those conclusions prompted several European countries to take action and phase out the industry. The United Kingdom and Austria were the first: their national bans came into force in 2003 and 2005 respectively. To date, 17 EU member states have already chosen to ban the farming of animals for fur production.

https://x.com/humaneworldeu/status/1760263162840985717

Nearly a quarter of a century on, the industry — significantly scaled back by the legislative measures adopted — has failed to effectively redesign the intensive cage farming systems already criticised in the 2001 report.

Despite proclaiming its commitment to animal welfare, the sector has done little more than introduce a voluntary certification scheme, based on the same inhumane farming methods. For the six million animals confined in small, bare cages on European farms, this represents no real improvement: it is the equivalent of putting a plaster on a broken leg.

It should come as no surprise, then, that Efsa's recent opinion amounts to a damning indictment of the entire industry. The agency's expert panel concluded that confining mink, foxes, raccoon dogs and chinchillas in small, bare metal cages is incompatible with an adequate level of animal welfare.

Efsa makes clear that the cage confinement systems currently in use should be replaced by enclosures — solutions not currently employed in commercial fur production — in order to provide animals with the space and stimulation necessary to meet their basic ethological needs.

How will the European Commission respond to Efsa's conclusions?

It is no secret that the Commission is considering several regulatory approaches to fur production. The first would be an outright ban on the farming of mink, foxes, raccoon dogs and chinchillas, with a transition period. The alternative would be to introduce legislation to establish "more stringent, species-specific harmonised standards, so as to better address the welfare needs of animals farmed for fur".

In light of strong public opposition, Efsa's unequivocal conclusions and the well-documented environmental, biodiversity and public health impacts of the fur industry, it would be absurd for the Commission to become bogged down in complex discussions about new species-specific welfare requirements.

Unlike other livestock sectors, such as poultry or pig farming, where more welfare-friendly husbandry systems have been introduced, the fur industry has never chosen — nor deemed it economically viable — to use alternative systems for the commercial farming of mink, foxes, raccoon dogs or chinchillas.

Some countries, such as Germany and Switzerland, have put an end to fur production by setting welfare standards so high (larger spaces, access to water for mink swimming, etc.) as to make it economically unsustainable.

However, this is not what the more than 1.5 million signatories of the European Citizens' Initiative Fur Free Europe are asking for, nor what many other millions of EU citizens would support. The public wants to accelerate the end of an industry that is already in decline.

This is the crux of the matter: introducing higher animal welfare standards — which are in any case unachievable in practice or economically unsustainable — would confer an appearance of legitimacy on the practice of farming and killing animals solely for their fur. It would imply that breeding and slaughtering animals, such as mink and foxes, to supply the frivolous fashion industry with a luxury product — for which numerous warm, beautiful and animal-friendly alternatives already exist, adopted by countless brands and designers — is acceptable. It is not.

The Efsa's conclusions provide the European Commission with a moral and scientific mandate to act. It would be senseless for policymakers to dwell on how many square metres or what environmental enrichments a mink truly needs, or to fund new research into alternative farming systems, when the clearest and most ethical solution is already on the table: banning farming for fur production across the entire EU.

The fate of the fur industry has long been written. It is now up to the European Commission to consign this cruel and unnecessary practice to the history books once and for all.

This article was translated by Humane World for Animals Italia. The original article was published on Euractiv: "Science Leaves no Doubt: The Commission Must Close the Door on Fur Farming | Euractiv"