The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) has just published its latest statistics on mink fur production, with more bad news for the cruel fur trade.
The report states:
Mink pelt production in the United States in 2020 totaled 1.41 million pelts, down 49 percent from 2019.
Records date back to 1975, with the 2020 production data representing an all-time low. The main states for fur factory farmed mink are Wisconsin and Utah, producing around 800,000 mink pelts between them.
The USDA also released data regarding the economic value of the fur, which also revealed a substanial drop:
Value of pelts produced during the 2020 crop year was $47.4 million, down 19 percent from $58.4 million the prior year.
This is understood to be the lowest value of mink pelts on record in the USA.
As in Europe, mink farms in the USA have been badly affected because of mink contracting coronavirus during the pandemic. The shocking, cramped conditions on fur factory farms allow for viruses to rip through the mink population. The virus has been found to be transmissible back to humans and risks undermining Covid-19 vaccine efficacy,
Recently, a bipartisan proposal in the US House of Representatives was introduced, which would ban the farming of mink fur in the United States in an effort to stem possible mutations of the coronavirus, something researchers have said can be accelerated when the virus spreads among animals.
