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Norway's Fur Farming Prohibition Act is set to take effect in 2025. May this neighboring scare hasten the demise of this abusive and unnecessary industry.

bergheim 6y ago
Indeed. And I love how we use other words to make ourselves feel better. Noone ever did genocide; they merely culled. I will be shocked if humanity do not see this differently in a century.
- vixen99 6y ago
  I trust we won't need a century to see this digusting business for what it is. This is what we do with our advanced brains?
- rllearneratwork 6y ago
  yes, the proper headline should be: "Denmark will kill millions of minks over mutated coronavirus"
- jabl 6y ago
  They would be killed either way, to produce fur. That's like the entire reason for their miserable and agonizing lives. The sad thing is not that they're being culled now due to COVID, but that we'll continue doing this generation after generation producing more suffering.
autosharp 6y ago
Is it that much worse than farming hogs? Most of that is done in cages too small to turn around or stand. Live transport and slaughter is also amazingly horrific.
- Griffinsauce 6y ago
  Why do we have to compare it? Multiple things can be terrible and require changes.
  - autosharp 6y ago
    The issue is very much analogous. Lots of pigs getting culled (in many cases burned and/or buried alive on a grand scale) because they are infected with diseases that are dangerous to humans. Corona included. I just keep being surprised that there is consensus forming around mink but the hog issue, which is very similar and actually a bigger problem by numbers, is not really part of the mainstream debate. For some reason being against mink farming is much more acceptable than being against hog farming and this is reflected in policy. It could be because the interests of hog farmers and consumers of hog are a much bigger part of society. But the harm is also that much bigger.
    - mainstreem 6y ago
      Increasing the cost of food is anti-poor. Increasing the cost of luxury fabric, not so much. Until poverty and hunger are eliminated worldwide, it's going to be hard to make me care more about how animals are farmed in order that the most possible people can afford enough to eat. It's easy to not care about people not getting mink coats. Much harder to care about people having food taken out of their mouths by people who think they have a right to dictate that sort of thing. If you think eating pork should be forbidden, I've got a part of the world to introduce you to.
      - autosharp 6y ago
        It is funny that you mention human need for food. Hog is actually an inefficient food production method because they need to be fed more corn/soy etc than the food they produce. If your goal was to make food more accessible to the poor then one way to go would be to stop this inefficient food production method and just consume the corn/soy protein directly. That would be healthier also. Consuming corn/soy directly would drive down the price of food because we would need less of it.
        salawat 6y ago
        Consuming excessive amounts of corn is associated with other issues, up to and including cannibalism, mind. https://phys.org/news/2017-01-corn-french-hamsters-deranged-cannibals.html https://phys.org/news/2017-01-corn-french-hamsters-deranged-... Do not discount the value add of multiple digestive and organ systems worth of energy work, even if the numbers otherwise look attractive. The entire planet is interrelated.
- eitland 6y ago
  Pig farming is vastly different than fur farming around here. Besides, pigs have been domesticat for a lot longer than foxes and minks.
- winter_blue 6y ago
  They're both bad. Meat is a disaster for the environment, in terms of the resources that grazing animals take, and the total energy needed for the same caloric amount of food from animals. Meat needs to slowly be eventually banned. Plant-based meat is getting better and better. Initially, we should start with a limit on meat sales, and then gradually reduce the limit until it reaches zero. And then impose sanctions, tariffs or embargoes on countries that refuse to reduce/stop meat consumption.
- ornornor 6y ago
  It’s not really a competition. No animal farming is humane, maybe one day we won’t be so self centered anymore and stop these atrocious practices.
- setgree 6y ago
  This question is easy for me — hog farming is, overall, a greater harm because we are talking about more pigs and more horrendous conditions. Both are morally impermissible, in my opinion, which is why I keep to a vegan diet and don’t wear fur. Putting aside the harms to animals for a moment, we might consider both mink farms and hog farms to be part of a larger problem, which is monoculture agriculture. Minks weren’t meant to live in tiny cages all cramped together, and neither were hogs, and weird ‘Koyaanisqatsi’ (life out of balance) things are going to happen when we do that — just like raising nothing but corn and killing everything else on farmland will eventually deplete the soil. This isn’t some subtle act of interpretation; the evidence is all around us that industrial-style practices applied to living things have negative externalities that plausibly outweigh their benefits.
  - toper-centage 6y ago
    Barely anyone cares about fur products, but people are too stuburn to stop general meat consumption - even if not totally - not matter the cost. Eating more vegan meals is probably the best personal action one can make for the environment. Most other significant actions can only be made on a corporate level.
    - uhtred 6y ago
      I wish more people would give plant based "meat" a try. Some of the sausages and burgers available are mind blowing.
      - loa_in_ 6y ago
        If I don't eat meat for the taste (which is a gross notion to me) but for the nutritional value does plant based substitute provide at least comparable nutrition? Does it have the aminoacids I would get from meat?
        hkeide 6y ago
        The bioavailability is much lower and it’s usually filled with factory oils like soybean oil which is not very healthy.
- core-questions 6y ago
  Contrasting opinion here (and that of the majority): stop anthropomorphizing animals. They aren't people. Their "feelings" do not matter - what matters is ensuring that we have reliable, self-reproducing, adaptable sources of protein for the population. Your lab-grown burgers that depend on thousands of years of technological development and piles of infrastructure are not the solution. Forcing everyone to become vegetarians is not even an option at all; the market demands meat and factory farms have stepped up to fill that niche at scale, reliably delivering meat to everyone in the first world even in extenuating circumstances. It's quite phenomenal, what we have accomplished in terms of livestock agriculture, and to call it "horrific" is a massive insult to the hundreds of thousands of people who work in that industry keeping humans fed while keeping costs to a minimum. I don't care if the animals I eat were happy, because no matter what happens they are going to be killed and I am going to cook and eat their bodies. Accepting that is simply part of being the omnivorous animal that millions of years of evolution has produced.
  - jbotz 6y ago
    Well, I don't know where to start... to me animals are people, not human persons of course, but individuals with personality, thus "persons", i.e. people. To speak of "anthropomorphizing" animals is a bit outdated... as the primatologist Franz de Waal puts it, people who use that term are in "anthropodenial". Today's biologists and ethologists largely acknowledge that at least higher animals are sentient beings, with consciousness and a full complement of complex emotions and reasoning ability. You can argue that humans are on top in overall cognitive abilities, but it's really only by degree, not by fundamental kind... our cognitive machinery is only bigger than most other animals', not really different. As for your statement that animals' feelings "don't matter", well, why not? Not too long ago humans of one skin color said that the feelings of other humans of another skin color don't matter. Then we made some progress, and now to say that is considered barbaric. And many humans today are beginning to think it's time to make some more progress and realize that non-human animals' feelings also do matter.
  - MaxBarraclough 6y ago
    > stop anthropomorphizing animals They aren't. No-one is saying that a pig has the same moral standing as a human. > They aren't people. Their "feelings" do not matter So you believe that animals are just automata with no consciousness? That animal cruelty cannot exist even in principle, any more than cruelty to sand? Descartes believed this. Today, we know better. > to call it "horrific" is a massive insult to the hundreds of thousands of people who work in that industry This doesn't address the matter of whether or not it's cruel. > I don't care if the animals I eat were happy, because no matter what happens they are going to be killed and I am going to cook and eat their bodies. Do you believe animals are conscious and capable of suffering, or not? Either way, it doesn't matter that they die in the end. If animals are conscious, it doesn't inform our morality that they are destined to die. People are also destined to die, but this doesn't impact our moral obligation to care about their suffering. If animals are not conscious, it doesn't matter whether they are destined to die.
vanderZwan 6y ago
I just learned that the Netherlands also was going to prohibit fur framing in 2025 but changed this to 2021 due to multiple cases of covid jumping from minks to humans. I don't really get why we don't outright ban it immediately and compensate the farmers a bit more for their troubles, since the "return on investment" for not creating another covid strain is a lot higher than that, but ok.
- tinus_hn 6y ago
  Chances are their days in Denmark were counted as well, making this a much easier choice.
aaron695 6y ago
Is it to much to ask to talk about the actual article? This article has nothing to do about minks and animal abuse. This is a pandemic on track to kill 10's of millions of people. Minks and farming is topic talked about constantly around the world for many decades. Attractive models made it cool, we get it. Plenty of article are posted on HN about animal rights. No farmed animals social distance, so how intensive it is is irreverent. In fact because it's intensive an outbreak is immediately known, which is good. There is no segue here. How can we talk about things at an educated level when everything gets demoted back to the base.
Accujack 6y ago
It's still ok to wear human skin though, right?

bergheim 6y ago

Indeed. And I love how we use other words to make ourselves feel better. Noone ever did genocide; they merely culled. I will be shocked if humanity do not see this differently in a century.

vixen99 6y ago
I trust we won't need a century to see this digusting business for what it is. This is what we do with our advanced brains?
rllearneratwork 6y ago
yes, the proper headline should be: "Denmark will kill millions of minks over mutated coronavirus"
jabl 6y ago
They would be killed either way, to produce fur. That's like the entire reason for their miserable and agonizing lives. The sad thing is not that they're being culled now due to COVID, but that we'll continue doing this generation after generation producing more suffering.

autosharp 6y ago

Is it that much worse than farming hogs? Most of that is done in cages too small to turn around or stand. Live transport and slaughter is also amazingly horrific.

Griffinsauce 6y ago
Why do we have to compare it? Multiple things can be terrible and require changes.
- autosharp 6y ago
  The issue is very much analogous. Lots of pigs getting culled (in many cases burned and/or buried alive on a grand scale) because they are infected with diseases that are dangerous to humans. Corona included. I just keep being surprised that there is consensus forming around mink but the hog issue, which is very similar and actually a bigger problem by numbers, is not really part of the mainstream debate. For some reason being against mink farming is much more acceptable than being against hog farming and this is reflected in policy. It could be because the interests of hog farmers and consumers of hog are a much bigger part of society. But the harm is also that much bigger.
  - mainstreem 6y ago
    Increasing the cost of food is anti-poor. Increasing the cost of luxury fabric, not so much. Until poverty and hunger are eliminated worldwide, it's going to be hard to make me care more about how animals are farmed in order that the most possible people can afford enough to eat. It's easy to not care about people not getting mink coats. Much harder to care about people having food taken out of their mouths by people who think they have a right to dictate that sort of thing. If you think eating pork should be forbidden, I've got a part of the world to introduce you to.
    - autosharp 6y ago
      It is funny that you mention human need for food. Hog is actually an inefficient food production method because they need to be fed more corn/soy etc than the food they produce. If your goal was to make food more accessible to the poor then one way to go would be to stop this inefficient food production method and just consume the corn/soy protein directly. That would be healthier also. Consuming corn/soy directly would drive down the price of food because we would need less of it.
      - salawat 6y ago
        Consuming excessive amounts of corn is associated with other issues, up to and including cannibalism, mind. https://phys.org/news/2017-01-corn-french-hamsters-deranged-cannibals.html https://phys.org/news/2017-01-corn-french-hamsters-deranged-... Do not discount the value add of multiple digestive and organ systems worth of energy work, even if the numbers otherwise look attractive. The entire planet is interrelated.
eitland 6y ago
Pig farming is vastly different than fur farming around here. Besides, pigs have been domesticat for a lot longer than foxes and minks.
winter_blue 6y ago
They're both bad. Meat is a disaster for the environment, in terms of the resources that grazing animals take, and the total energy needed for the same caloric amount of food from animals. Meat needs to slowly be eventually banned. Plant-based meat is getting better and better. Initially, we should start with a limit on meat sales, and then gradually reduce the limit until it reaches zero. And then impose sanctions, tariffs or embargoes on countries that refuse to reduce/stop meat consumption.
ornornor 6y ago
It’s not really a competition. No animal farming is humane, maybe one day we won’t be so self centered anymore and stop these atrocious practices.
setgree 6y ago
This question is easy for me — hog farming is, overall, a greater harm because we are talking about more pigs and more horrendous conditions. Both are morally impermissible, in my opinion, which is why I keep to a vegan diet and don’t wear fur. Putting aside the harms to animals for a moment, we might consider both mink farms and hog farms to be part of a larger problem, which is monoculture agriculture. Minks weren’t meant to live in tiny cages all cramped together, and neither were hogs, and weird ‘Koyaanisqatsi’ (life out of balance) things are going to happen when we do that — just like raising nothing but corn and killing everything else on farmland will eventually deplete the soil. This isn’t some subtle act of interpretation; the evidence is all around us that industrial-style practices applied to living things have negative externalities that plausibly outweigh their benefits.
- toper-centage 6y ago
  Barely anyone cares about fur products, but people are too stuburn to stop general meat consumption - even if not totally - not matter the cost. Eating more vegan meals is probably the best personal action one can make for the environment. Most other significant actions can only be made on a corporate level.
  - uhtred 6y ago
    I wish more people would give plant based "meat" a try. Some of the sausages and burgers available are mind blowing.
    - loa_in_ 6y ago
      If I don't eat meat for the taste (which is a gross notion to me) but for the nutritional value does plant based substitute provide at least comparable nutrition? Does it have the aminoacids I would get from meat?
      - hkeide 6y ago
        The bioavailability is much lower and it’s usually filled with factory oils like soybean oil which is not very healthy.
core-questions 6y ago
Contrasting opinion here (and that of the majority): stop anthropomorphizing animals. They aren't people. Their "feelings" do not matter - what matters is ensuring that we have reliable, self-reproducing, adaptable sources of protein for the population. Your lab-grown burgers that depend on thousands of years of technological development and piles of infrastructure are not the solution. Forcing everyone to become vegetarians is not even an option at all; the market demands meat and factory farms have stepped up to fill that niche at scale, reliably delivering meat to everyone in the first world even in extenuating circumstances. It's quite phenomenal, what we have accomplished in terms of livestock agriculture, and to call it "horrific" is a massive insult to the hundreds of thousands of people who work in that industry keeping humans fed while keeping costs to a minimum. I don't care if the animals I eat were happy, because no matter what happens they are going to be killed and I am going to cook and eat their bodies. Accepting that is simply part of being the omnivorous animal that millions of years of evolution has produced.
- jbotz 6y ago
  Well, I don't know where to start... to me animals are people, not human persons of course, but individuals with personality, thus "persons", i.e. people. To speak of "anthropomorphizing" animals is a bit outdated... as the primatologist Franz de Waal puts it, people who use that term are in "anthropodenial". Today's biologists and ethologists largely acknowledge that at least higher animals are sentient beings, with consciousness and a full complement of complex emotions and reasoning ability. You can argue that humans are on top in overall cognitive abilities, but it's really only by degree, not by fundamental kind... our cognitive machinery is only bigger than most other animals', not really different. As for your statement that animals' feelings "don't matter", well, why not? Not too long ago humans of one skin color said that the feelings of other humans of another skin color don't matter. Then we made some progress, and now to say that is considered barbaric. And many humans today are beginning to think it's time to make some more progress and realize that non-human animals' feelings also do matter.
- MaxBarraclough 6y ago
  > stop anthropomorphizing animals They aren't. No-one is saying that a pig has the same moral standing as a human. > They aren't people. Their "feelings" do not matter So you believe that animals are just automata with no consciousness? That animal cruelty cannot exist even in principle, any more than cruelty to sand? Descartes believed this. Today, we know better. > to call it "horrific" is a massive insult to the hundreds of thousands of people who work in that industry This doesn't address the matter of whether or not it's cruel. > I don't care if the animals I eat were happy, because no matter what happens they are going to be killed and I am going to cook and eat their bodies. Do you believe animals are conscious and capable of suffering, or not? Either way, it doesn't matter that they die in the end. If animals are conscious, it doesn't inform our morality that they are destined to die. People are also destined to die, but this doesn't impact our moral obligation to care about their suffering. If animals are not conscious, it doesn't matter whether they are destined to die.

vanderZwan 6y ago

I just learned that the Netherlands also was going to prohibit fur framing in 2025 but changed this to 2021 due to multiple cases of covid jumping from minks to humans. I don't really get why we don't outright ban it immediately and compensate the farmers a bit more for their troubles, since the "return on investment" for not creating another covid strain is a lot higher than that, but ok.

tinus_hn 6y ago
Chances are their days in Denmark were counted as well, making this a much easier choice.

aaron695 6y ago

Is it to much to ask to talk about the actual article? This article has nothing to do about minks and animal abuse. This is a pandemic on track to kill 10's of millions of people. Minks and farming is topic talked about constantly around the world for many decades. Attractive models made it cool, we get it. Plenty of article are posted on HN about animal rights. No farmed animals social distance, so how intensive it is is irreverent. In fact because it's intensive an outbreak is immediately known, which is good. There is no segue here. How can we talk about things at an educated level when everything gets demoted back to the base.

Accujack 6y ago

It's still ok to wear human skin though, right?