The ISPCA has welcomed the recent announcement by the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (DAFM) that all mink on the remaining three fur farms in Ireland are to be culled as this will bring fur farming in Ireland to an end sooner than intended.
DAFM will take this action as a precautionary measure following a recommendation by the Department of Health and due to the emergence of mink-adapted SARS CoV-2 (COVID) variants which pose a risk to public health on fur farms in other EU Member States, including Denmark where 17 million mink are to be culled after positive COVID tests.
The ISPCA has campaigned, along with Veterinary Ireland, for an end to fur farming in Ireland on animal welfare and ethical grounds – read more about this campaignย here. This resulted in the government including a commitment in the current Programme for Government to โImmediately prioritise the drafting of legislation for the phasing out of fur-farming, publishing legislation in this area as soon as possibleโ.
The recent announcement means that fur farming will effectively end immediately, without a phase out, during which hundreds of thousands of mink would have continued to suffer in barren cages on factory fur farms.
The ISPCA is working with fellow members of Eurogroup for Animals, the EUโs largest animal welfare lobby group, to bring an end to all fur farming in the EU.
