Let’s get this out of the way to start: This isn’t a culture war piece. I don’t mean for this article to inflame passions on a topic about which some people are understandably passionate.

In fact, as I write these opening sentences, I honestly don’t know where this article is going to end up. What I do know is that I’ve purchased fur in the past, and after the topic came up in my Field Notes on the Pini Parma Light Taupe Mink Collar Coat, I thought I was overdue to educate myself about this aspect of the luxury industry. So you’re along for the ride.

There’s an argument to be made for farmed fur, which I believe goes something like this:

We already use leather extensively today, whether for shoes, coats, gloves, and more—not to mention in furniture, automobiles, and a variety of other uses. As a natural material, fur isn’t derived from petroleum. It won’t shed microplastic fibers into the environment when used or cleaned, and is biodegradable when eventually discarded. People tend to treat fur as an heirloom to be cared for in order to last for decades. The fur industry has created science-based systems to assess and report animal welfare. Finally, in the absence of natural fur, some consumers will substitute petroleum-based alternatives.

And then there’s an argument to be made against farmed fur, which I understand as:

Fur is a luxury, not a necessity. It’s based on a system of farming that’s fundamentally incompatible with modern expectations of animal welfare, no matter what industry advocates may say. Farmed fur introduces unnecessary biosecurity risk—densely populated animal farms can spread diseases, both to other animals and to humans. Fur may be natural, but that doesn’t mean it has less environmental impact than synthetic alternatives, and in fact some studies have shown that farmed fur is worse for the environment than its fake equivalents.

With these arguments in mind, how are we as consumers supposed to make sense of them? How can we gain an understanding of fur that helps us make better decisions for ourselves—not looking at the world in absolutes, but combining expanded knowledge with our own personal beliefs to come to a decision that works for each of us as individuals?

The arguments for and against fur come down to two questions: the sustainability and the ethics of producing and using it. The sustainability of fur is a complex issue and the amount of competing data out there can be overwhelming. If there’s interest, I can return to this topic in a future article. For now, my focus is on the ethics of farmed fur. How can each of us decide whether we believe it’s reasonable to raise an animal—say, a mink—in order to use its fur in clothing?