Ban fur farming or risk a new pandemic | Neil Vora

Every year, millions of captive animals are gassed or electrocuted and then turned into multithousand-dollar fur coats. Though the industry has shrunk considerably in recent years, it poses a disproportionately large risk to human health. There’s a real chance that the next pandemic could be incubated within the cramped confines of a fur farm, and banning the cruel and senseless practice could be one of the most consequential public-health measures in decades.

Fur farms are hell. Like other “factory” farms, these facilities confine thousands of animals in close quarters, crammed into tiny wire cages. Often, the animals can barely move around, living out their sad, stationary lives atop a pool of their own waste. Some species, like red foxes, begin chewing the tails off of their young, or even killing them.

Others develop nervous tics. Chinchillas, for example, are known to tear out their own hair, a behavior so common in captivity that some people have explored mass administering the anti-depressant Prozac to the animals. A fur farm assessment completed at the request of the European Commission concluded that, in most cases, “neither prevention nor substantial mitigation of the identified [welfare consequences] is possible in the current system”.

Fur farms are inhumane, and also hazardous. Take mink, the most common captive species. They’re like viral sponges that can pick up respiratory pathogens from humans and other animals. When thousands of inbred mink are packed into crowded, stressful settings, viruses spread like wildfire – with numerous opportunities to replicate, mutate and grow more dangerous before jumping back to humans. Farming mink is essentially a dangerous genetic experiment that we allow to take place in the complete absence of necessary protective measures.

The risk isn’t hypothetical. In 2020, hundreds of people in Denmark – then the fur-farming capital of the world – fell ill with mink-related coronavirus strains. Health officials warned that continued mutation could jeopardize vaccine development, with one cautioning that Denmark could become “a new Wuhan”. In response, the government ordered the slaughter of 17m farmed mink, effectively wiping out the national industry. (But only temporarily.)

It’s bad enough that we’ve deemed this game of pandemic roulette acceptable. It’s worse that taxpayers are unknowingly keeping a dying industry on life support. The European Union was once a world-leading producer of farmed fur, but by 2024, the bloc’s thousand-odd farms produced a record-low 6m pelts, generating just €180m in sales. (That number is comparable to the market for video and DVD rentals.) With prices in freefall, and leading fashion brands rallying around fur-free fashion, the industry can no longer stand on its own. European farmers now rely on government subsidies – and the United States might be headed in the same direction. Last month, the House committee on agriculture advanced a version of the farm bill that would authorize taxpayer support to help domestic mink producers expand into international markets.

It’s long past time to end the fur trade – starting in the European Union, where there’s already strong support for a total ban. Eighteen member states have so far restricted fur farming, including Poland, once the continent’s top producer. In 2023, 1.5 million citizens petitioned the European Commission to enact a continent-wide ban on the production and sale of fur. But the commission has delayed issuing a decision on an EU-wide ban that was supposed to be released last month after years of deliberation. Leaked internal communications indicate that it plans to reject it entirely due to economic concerns. The European commissioner for Health and Animal Welfare, Olivér Várhelyi, has instead floated a weaker slate of reforms, as desired by the fur industry. That would be a mistake. Fur farms only employ a couple thousand workers across the bloc – they should be fairly compensated and supported through a transition period, not used as an excuse to avoid enacting commonsense policy.

If Europe finishes the job, there’s some risk that the industry relocates to places with weaker regulations, including the United States. Our domestic mink production has already shrunk to about 770,000 pelts a year, produced by fewer than 70 farms, down roughly 80% since 2015. A federal bill called the Mink Virus Act, introduced by the representative Adriano Espaillat, would phase out mink farming within a year and compensate farmers for the full value of their operations, helping them exit an increasingly unprofitable business. That’s the right approach. At the same time, we need to reduce domestic demand – the US remains one of the world’s largest importers of fur. A few state-level initiatives could go a very long way: California banned fur sales in 2023, and New York – now the US’s largest fur market – has introduced legislation that would follow suit.

While we must seize the policy opportunity available right now to ban fur farming, we must also recognize that cultural change is needed too. Practices once considered normal – such as force-feeding geese through a tube to grind their fatty livers into foie gras – are increasingly viewed as disgraceful relics of the past. We already recognize, in both law and moral principle, that cruelty to certain animals is unacceptable. Every US state treats the intentional killing of dogs and cats as a felony. Why then do we tolerate industrial-scale abuse of other mammals in the name of luxury, especially when it poses a catastrophic threat to society?

If we’re serious about preventing the next pandemic, we must recognize that the costs of capturing, breeding and slaughtering wildlife for the pleasure of a few is borne by the rest of us.

• Neil Vora is the executive director of the Preventing Pandemics at the Source Coalition and led New York City’s Covid-19 contact tracing program from 2020 to 2021