Episodes 23 – Mink Farming

Chic

The 23rd episode was recorded remotely with two of my colleagues, Brooks Kaiser, who is a professor of Environmental and Resource Economics in the Department of Sociology, Environmental and Business Economics at the University of Southern Denmark (SDU) and Else Skjold, who is an Associate Professor in Design and Sustainability at the Royal Danish Academy in Copenhagen, and whom listeners will recognize from several previous episodes in season one. Else has worked on multiple projects trying to make the Danish fur industry more sustainable. Brooks organized and invited me to a webinar panel to discuss the Danish mink farming industry after the Danish government’s orders to put down all minks in November 2020 because the corona virus had started mutating. This resulted in gradual extermination of mink animals throughout 2020 and a mass extermination by November 2020 across different farms in northern Denmark, and generated a big scandal, forcing the Minister of Agriculture to resign, and the Prime Minister to apologize to the mink farmers for depriving them of their livelihoods and promising compensation. This was also a significant set-back in how well Denmark was handling the pandemic up until that point – the threat of the mutation forced other countries to temporarily close their borders to Danish transports. But the quick response and the imposed lockdown in northern Denmark did prevent a new mutation, and in the end, it was the UK mutation that kept the infection numbers higher than usual in Denmark for most of the winter months.

While the media discourse was dominated by debates about compensation and the economy of mink farming, there were relatively few conversations about animal welfare and the unethical practice of killing animals for fashion. Some environmentalists were concerned with the way the extermination took place and wondered why there was no strict safety protocol, or why not more experts were consulted with experience from previous contaminations and farm infections. The question of banning fur farming completely only raises more economic question of passing on profit opportunities and leaving this industry up to countries with even fewer regulations.

By now the Danish government has issued compensations to the farmers who lost their incomes, and industry experts believe that it is not likely that any of them will start up mink farming again. But the experts also predict that the price for mink fur will double in the next ten years, so it means that if more EU countries ban fur farming, the production will move to unregulated countries like China, Russia, and Eastern Europe. According to PETA’s website the list of countries that have already banned fur farming includes: Austria, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Luxemburg, Netherlands, Northern Ireland, Macedonia, Serbia, Slovakia, the UK, Norway, and Japan. Denmark has a long tradition of farming and producing high-quality mink fur for exports to China. While there are very few people in Denmark who still actually wear fur, Copenhagen Fur is a powerful organization, and the country may not yet be ready to fully transition to a post-fur society.