“The Rules Committee blocked four GOP-led amendments on animal welfare that were headed to passage, including the Luna-Costa-Garbarino amendment to nix a provision to federally preempt state laws to combat extreme and inhumane confinement of breeding pigs,” said Pacelle. “The Agriculture Committee should not be allowed to wipe out the votes of 10 million American … Read more
U.S. House debate on the bill, replete with provisions to benefit foreign companies and a relative handful of foreign consumers, is here The American public cares deeply about animal well-being. You wouldn’t know it, though, if you dig into the legislative details of the Farm Bill – better defined as the “Factory Farm Bill” – … Read more
House Agriculture Committee Chairman Glenn Thompson has put an ugly thumbprint on an inhumane farm bill There have always been hardened opponents of the most important social causes in American history – whether the “fire-eaters” who defended slavery in the antebellum South, the men who mocked women’s suffrage just more than a century ago, or … Read more
The Farm bill may be made in the USA, but key provisions of the 1,000-page legislation are built for corporations and elites in China If you want to see Washington at its worst, behold the hash of the current version of the 2026 Farm bill. “If you like laws and sausages, you should never watch … Read more
While other nations shutter mink farms because they spread cruelty and contagion, our U.S. House Agriculture Committee wants to spend your money for fur ads in China It’s hard to imagine that the Farm bill could be much worse for animals and the American public. The legislation, now starting to snake its way through Congress, … Read more
A collapsing fur farming industry brings negligible economic benefits but very consequential health threats On December 1, Poland’s President Karol Nawrocki signed a law phasing out fur farming, making his country the 23rd of the 28 European Union member states to abolish the industry. This was a major step toward ending the mink fur trade … Read more
Poland, Europe’s top producer just banned mink farming, signaling the deep unpopularity and associated biohazards of mink farming. WASHINGTON — Today, U.S. Reps. Vern Buchanan, R-Fla. and Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn. introduced the MINKS are Superspreaders Act, a bipartisan bill that would prohibit mink farming in the United States. The bill, strongly supported by Animal Wellness … Read more
Killing beautiful animals for fur was, since dawn of Homo sapiens, a matter of animal sacrifice for human warmth. Fur-wearing, you could say, was coldly utilitarian. Over the last few centuries, the fur industry procured its commodity by killing free-roaming wild animals with deadly and indiscriminate body-gripping traps. Within the last century, it added to … Read more
Congress should direct the wind-down of a small, unprofitable enterprise grounded on cruelty and documented to spread dangerous diseases. Today, Congresswomen Nancy Mace, R-S.C., and Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., renewed their effort from last Congress (2021-22) to ban mink farming in the United States. Their bill comes in the wake of a long-term and irreversible collapse … Read more
No need to put homeland at risk to sell mink pelts to China’s elites Washington D.C. — Animal Wellness Action and the Center for a Humane Economy applauded Reps. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., and Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., for leading an effort in Congress to phase out mink farming in the United States because of documented zoonotic-disease … Read more
Congress is overdue to halt live exports of horses for consumption,fighting animals for combat, mink pelts for fashion, and bear bile as a potion. Many domestic forms of animal exploitation survive, and even thrive, because the people behind these enterprises tap foreign markets for their cruelty and contraband, whether they’re peddling live animals or animal … Read more
Animal Welfare Groups Tell Minnesota DNR About the Mountain of Evidence About Zoonotic Disease Threats as the Agency Examines Mink Farm Threats Washington, D.C. — Today, Animal Wellness Action and the Center for a Humane Economy said that “the scientific jury has reached a verdict, and it is that overcrowded, highly stressed mink kept on factory farms … Read more
Animal Wellness Action calls for government buy-out of small and declining very inhumane and virally dangerous industry Washington D.C. — The mink industry is experiencing dramatic and unprecedented decline, according to this year’s recently released mink report by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and to research and investigations conducted by scientists with the Center for a Humane … Read more
Hyperventilated Response to Minuscule Rabies Threat, Dismissal of Mink Threat Among Problems Cited Today, Animal Wellness Action and its sister organization, the Center for a Humane Economy, applauded Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), for agreeing to reorganize and re-energize the agency, admitting failures in its COVID-19 … Read more
A Danish legal team issued a report last week strongly criticizing Denmark’s Social Democrats and their allies after the Prime Minister and her cabinet ordered the mass killing of mink in that country in the summer of 2020. The directive came after a wave of SARS-CoV-2 infections of millions of animals at more than one-third … Read more
See how your U.S. Senators voted on mink farming The U.S. House and the U.S. Senate are seeing mink farming through different lenses, with the Senate looking at the miserable, dangerous fur factory farming sector through rose-tinted glasses. In early February, the House comfortably passed a ban on mink farming, recognizing that the extreme confinement … Read more
In 2019 and 2020, wildfires ignited large swaths of the Australian countryside. The conflagrations were devastating to humans, with significant loss of life and home. But the horrors for animals were even worse: a broad range of unique and iconic animals suffered, including dingoes, emus, platypuses, wombats, possums, long-footed potoroos, silver-headed antechinus, regent honeyeaters, and … Read more
U.S. regulatory failures are a reminder that federal and state agencies are underplaying predictable risk of mink farms spawning new variants and throwing U.S. into crisis We don’t know much about SARS-CoV-2 variants that have emerged in China or Russia, chiefly because of state control by their authoritarian governments. But we do know a good bit … Read more
Think about the horrors animals endure from human conduct at its worst. Then cherry-pick the worst features of the most severe forms of animal exploitation in America. You might, then, come up with the compound cruelties of mink farming. Add in the human and wildlife health risks associated with it and you have a crisis … Read more
Legislation comes after hundreds of mink farms experience SARS-CoV-2 Outbreaks (Washington, D.C.) – Today, in voting to approve the America COMPETES Act, the U.S. House of Representatives included a provision to ban mink farming throughout the United States, signaling disapproval of an industry that harms and kills animals for their pelts, exports them to China … Read more
SARS-CoV-2 is, by and large, a virus that affects two species: humans (Homo sapiens) and American mink (Neovison vison). Public health authorities tracking the progression of the COVID-19 virus in humans confirm about 375 million cases, but the best guess is about 10 percent of 7.8 billion people in the world have been infected. That … Read more
It’s Time for the Planet to Shut Down This Vile and Viral Industry Retailers such as Neiman Marcus and Canada Goose are clearing fur from the racks and manufacturing facilities. The Netherlands shuttered its hundreds of mink farms in March, and the nation’s political leaders are prodding the European Union to ban fur farming across … Read more
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Animal Wellness Action, the Center for a Humane Economy, and the Animal Wellness Foundation applaud the announcement by the provincial government of British Columbia that it would bring mink farming to an end by 2025. This represents the first action by a North American governmental entity to address the public health threat posed … Read more
We now have an even more detailed explanation for the unique susceptibility of farmed mink to SARS-CoV-2 – after COVID-19 outbreaks ricocheted through approximately 440 mink factory farms in Europe and in the U.S., along with three variants spawned. A recently published scientific paper out of the University of Cambridge School of Veterinary Medicine suggests that the … Read more
Despite its contraction, a barely viable industry poses a national health threat, given the susceptibility of factory-farmed mink to contract the SARS-CoV-2 and spill it back to people (Washington, D.C.) – Mink production and mink farming revenues spiralled further downward last year, according to the annual Mink report for calendar year 2020 released by the … Read more
COVID-19 and rabies are both zoonotic diseases, with the viruses originating in non-human animals and then infecting people after a transmission event. In the last 17 months, COVID-19 has infected nearly 35 million Americans, with more than 600,000 dead. In the same period, there have been zero cases of rabies in humans in the United … Read more
There are no spectators. There’s no gambling. There is no referee. And there are no knives or blades attached to the legs of the mink. But on the mink farms, there is animal fighting. It’s mink on mink. It’s a cage fight. Just as bloody and grisly as dogfighting or cockfights. At the mink farms, … Read more
Unproven, Untested Vaccination Program on Mink Farms Will Not Be Feasible or Effective Against an Evolving Virus (Washington, D.C.) — Today, the Center for a Humane Economy, Animal Wellness Action, and other partnering organizations unveiled a 96-page comprehensive scientific report detailing risks posed by mink farms to public health, native wildlife populations, and U.S. ecosystems … Read more
Center for a Humane Economy Releases Scientific Report Revealing How Intensive Mink Farms May Incubate New Virus and Also Threaten Animal Welfare and Wildlife Health (Washington, D.C.) – High-ranking U.S. House lawmakers, led by Appropriations Chairwoman Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., and U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., introduced legislation to ban mink farming, working with Animal Wellness … Read more
Animal Wellness and the Center for a Humane Economy release science-based report on the risks posed by mink farms to public health, native wildlife populations, and ecosystems Today, a remarkable set of U.S. Representatives, led by House Appropriations Committee Chair Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., and Nancy Mace, R-S.C., introduced legislation to ban mink farming in the … Read more
Late yesterday, a key Oregon Senate Committee took up the nation’s first proposed statewide ban on mink farming in the wake of a torrent of scientific findings to indicate the major role that mink farms may have in spreading COVID-19. S.B. 832, introduced by State Senator Floyd Prozanski (D-Eugene), would phase out mink farming within … Read more
Salem, Oregon – A key Oregon Senate Committee will take up the nation’s first proposed statewide ban on mink farming in the wake of a torrent of scientific findings underscoring the major role that mink farms may have in spreading COVID-19. Senator Floyd Prozanski, D-Eugene, is the sponsor of a bill to phase out mink … Read more
Press Release Mink Farms Viewed as Potential Reservoirs of COVID-19, Threat to Wild Mink Salem, Ore.— Oregon state Sen. Floyd Prozanski introduced a bill this session to phase out mink farming in the state by the end of the year. The legislation, Senate Bill 832, follows similar actions taken by Ireland and the Netherlands to permanently close all mink farms … Read more
Even though mink are more susceptible to COVID-19 than any other non-human mammal, and hundreds of thousands of mink have been infected by the virus at these factory farms from Lithuania to Spain to Michigan to Utah, American political leaders and scientists are treating mink farming with the same sort of inattention that they gave … Read more
More so even than live wildlife markets — which incubated and then launched COVID-19 across the globe — mink farms around the world are turning out to be present-day gathering places for the highly contagious virus. From British Columbia to Denmark to Lithuania, COVID-19 is methodically infiltrating mink farms throughout North America and Eurasia, being … Read more
Washington, D.C. — Animal Wellness Action, the Animal Wellness Foundation, and the Center for a Humane Economy have called on Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker to coordinate with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to coordinate a government buy-out program for the state’s mink farms, after COVID-19 outbreaks have infected and killed tens of thousands of … Read more
Many of my fondest childhood memories are of time spent with my grandfather, a mink farmer in a tiny Idaho town, just a few miles north of the Utah border. A soft-spoken, kind and generous man, my grandfather doted on his children, including my mother, and on me and his other grandkids. Even with his … Read more
With Denmark to kill 17 million mink to stop mutating coronavirus outbreak, Animal Wellness Action and other groups to call on government agencies to prevent outbreaks of deadly virus already infecting 100,000 Americans a day in U.S. Washington, D.C. — With COVID-19 cases ricocheting throughout the global mink industry — including in Denmark where its military … Read more
Declining Mink Industry Mainly Serves China, and Continued Operations Are No Longer Worth the Risk to U.S. Communities Washington, D.C. – Today, Animal Wellness Action, the Animal Wellness Foundation, and the Center for a Humane Economy called on Oregon Governor Kate Brown to coordinate with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to coordinate a government … Read more
It’s time to shut down the least-known and perhaps most appalling form of factory farming Drive into a complex of long, neatly arranged windowless building in Wisconsin or Utah or Idaho and, if you are able to push open a door and peer in, you might have to hold your nose and avert your gaze … Read more
Press Release Declining Mink Industry Mainly Serves China, and Continued Operations Are No Longer Worth the Risk to U.S. Communities Washington, D.C. — Today, Animal Wellness Action, the Animal Wellness Foundation, and the Center for a Humane Economy called on the Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers to coordinate with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to … Read more
Washington, D.C. – Today, Animal Wellness Action, the Animal Wellness Foundation, and the Center for a Humane Economy called on the Congress and the U.S. Department of Agriculture to develop a plan and execute a national buy-out of U.S. mink farmers, after a series of COVID-19 outbreaks among the small mammals in the two largest … Read more
The globally unmanageable hopscotching of COVID-19 between living beings is today putting a spotlight on one of the most obscure, ruthless, and frivolous of animal use industries: the production of wild animals on fur farms, particularly mink raised for their pelts. Seemingly more susceptible to getting COVID-19 than dogs or cats or most other mammals, … Read more
With the state Senate last night following the Assembly and banning the sale of fur garments — full-length, trim, and most every other form — California has set the high-water mark again for animal-welfare policy making for animal welfare. Assemblywoman Laura Friedman, a Democrat from Glendale, led the fight in the legislature for AB 44, … Read more
There’s no big idea in any ascendant social movement that doesn’t cause some angst or even some disruption or dislocation. If the idea had been easy or empty of impact, somebody would have checked that box long ago. Corey Johnson, the speaker of the New York City Council, has it right in boldly calling on … Read more