UK government advisory report condemns global fur trade

The Animal Welfare Committee, which advises the UK government, has published a damning report condemning the animal suffering involved in the fur trade.

Its report on ‘the responsible sourcing of fur’ calls out the suffering inflicted on animals who are confined in cages on fur farms or caught in brutal traps in the wild. And it indicates support for legislative action, stating:

consumer and market forces currently do not and cannot provide sufficient pressure to adequately safeguard animal welfare.

Despite banning the farming of animals for their fur more than two decades ago, the UK imports millions of pounds worth of animal fur from overseas every year. This creates a double standard, says Humane World for Animals UK (formerly called Humane Society International UK), which leads the #FurFreeBritain campaign.

The charity is calling on the UK government to act on the report’s findings and deliver on its recent Animal Welfare Strategy commitment to ‘uphold high animal welfare standards in trade’ by banning the UK’s bloody fur trade for good.

Meanwhile, DEFRA has published responses to its 2021 Call for Evidence on the UK fur trade. The results show more than 96% of the almost 30,000 respondents strongly agreed that killing animals for their fur is wrong. Respondents:

overwhelmingly did not support the import, sale or export of fur or fur products.

Claire Bass, senior director of campaigns and public affairs for Humane World for Animals UK said:

It’s clear from the Committee’s findings that trading in fur from caged, tormented, diseased and injured animals is completely at odds with the UK government’s recent Animal Welfare Strategy commitment to ‘uphold high animal welfare standards as part of our approach to trade’.

The Committee states that fur should not be sourced from animals who have not had ‘a life worth living’ or a humane death and then explains all the ways in which the global fur trade fails to meet these criteria.

The previous Labour government rightly banned fur farming 25 years ago. We must now stop outsourcing that same suffering overseas. The government now has both formal evidence and a strong public mandate to end the UK’s bloody fur trade.

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Animal Welfare Committee report quotes and conclusions

The Animal Welfare Committee states that:

Within a commercial setting it is not possible and is unlikely to ever be possible to farm species such as fox and raccoon dog without having a detrimental effect on their health and welfare, or in a way which meets their welfare needs.

It adds:

There are no species being farmed for fur whose welfare needs are being adequately met by current standards and safeguards.

The report’s concerns include:

• Criticism that cage sizes within industry ‘welfare assurance’ schemes are ‘insufficient to meet physical and psychological welfare needs’, and cage design is inadequate.
• The use of inhumane killing methods, including CO2 which ‘has been shown to be a highly aversive method of killing mink [which] fails to kill rapidly’, and anal electrocution.
• Criticism of fur industry assurance schemes for both farmed and trapped fur, including outdated welfare science and lack of: consistency, training, unannounced inspections, independent auditing and traceability.
• Lack of industry consideration of the experience and welfare of individual animals on fur farms, with welfare assurance schemes such as WelFur permitting a high threshold of allowance for animals with serious welfare problems (e.g 15% of foxes may have ‘severely bent feet’).
• Challenges with traceability of the country of origin, species and method of production of fur (farmed or trapped) imported into the UK, using available data from HMRC.
• Although over a third (37%) of fur imported to the UK over the last 10 years came from China, the Committee was unable to obtain any evidence about industry application of ‘welfare certification’ schemes in the country.
• Concern that trapping standards for fur subsequently imported into the UK are ‘not sufficient to prevent unnecessary suffering, and do not adequately protect animal welfare’. The standards permit lethal head/chest crushing traps that take five minutes to kill species including beavers and otters.
• Concern that “consumers are not currently able to accurately identify whether products are fur of animal origin (wild caught or farmed) or ‘faux’ fur, or a mixture of the two”.

Public opposition to the fur trade

The evidence released today, of animal suffering and also of strong public opposition to the fur trade, now puts the need for a fur import ban beyond doubt. Therefore, Humane World for Animals UK is calling on the government to act swiftly.

More than 200 MPs support the Fur Free Britain campaign. Ruth Jones MP led a Westminster Hall debate earlier in March which saw cross-party support for the issue.

There is also strong public support for a ban on fur imports and sales. 77% of UK voters believe that when a type of farming is banned in the UK for being too cruel, we should also ban imports of products produced the same way overseas.

Last year campaigners handed in a 1.5 million signature petition to the prime minister in support of a ban. Furthermore, the vast majority (93%) of the UK public reject wearing real animal fur, while only 3% wear it. The same poll found that the words 79% of people most closely associated with a fashion brand selling fur are ‘unethical’, ‘outdated’, ‘cruel’ and ‘out of touch’.

The Animal Welfare Committee’s findings echo the damning indictment delivered by the European Food Safety Authority’s 2025 scientific opinion on the welfare of animals on fur farms. It concluded that the cage systems used on fur farms fail to meet the basic welfare needs of mink, foxes, raccoon dogs and chinchillas. And this includes the industry’s so-called “high welfare” or “certified farms”.

Featured image via Kristo Muurimaa / Oikeutta eläimille / Humane World for Animals UK