A new scientific opinion published by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) confirms what Respect for Animals and other campaigners have been saying for decades, namely that the systems of fur farming in the EU totally fail animal welfare needs. The findings demolish the fur industry’s credibility and leave no justification for continued delay in action by the European Commission. The only rational and ethical response is a full EU-wide ban on fur farming and the sale of farmed fur products.
This is not the first time European authorities have examined the science and reached such a conclusion. The 2001 SCAHAW report exposed the systemic failure of fur farms to meet even basic animal welfare standards. Over two decades later, despite years of fur industry lobbying, rebranding, and hollow welfare schemes, nothing has changed. Animals are still confined, frustrated, injured and afraid in tiny cages. Now, EFSA has confirmed the same conclusion with even greater scientific precision.
“The failure to act after the SCAHAW report was a moral and political failure,” said Mark Glover, Campaigns Director of Respect for Animals. “If the European Commission ignores EFSA again, it will be knowingly endorsing the continued, routine cruelty inflicted on millions of animals. This cannot happen a second time.”
The report is particularly devastating for the fur industry’s own welfare certification schemes, WelFur and Furmark. Despite the industry promoting its WelFur standards as ‘world-leading’, EFSA confirms that in existing fur farming systems in the EU, which includes all WelFur farms, animals suffer from severe and unpreventable welfare consequences.
Among the most serious harms EFSA identifies across species are:
- Restriction of movement
- Inability to forage, explore or express natural behaviour
- Sensorial overstimulation and deprivation
- Handling stress and fear of humans
- Tissue damage, lameness and social conflict
- Isolation stress in species kept alone
EFSA is clear: “most of these welfare consequences cannot be prevented or substantially mitigated in the current system.”
“The fur trade’s claims about WelFur have always been smoke and mirrors,” Mark Glover added. “EFSA has now stripped away the illusion. WelFur doesn’t protect animals, it protects the industry.”
EFSA also confirms that there are no field-tested alternatives to the current cage-based systems, and that meaningful mitigation of suffering would require a total overhaul of the system, including much larger, enriched enclosures that simply currently do not exist in commercial fur farming. The status quo is not just inhumane, it is indefensible.
Respect for Animals calls on the European Commission to support the aims of the Fur Free Europe European Citizens’ Initiative: a full ban on both fur farming and the marketing of farmed fur. Anything less would be a betrayal of the science, public opinion and basic moral duty.
