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?

Over the centuries, renowned philosophers have looked at the issue of animal rights and how we as humans make use of animals. René Descartes went all-in on team ‘do whatever we want with them’ when he wrote of an animal that it was “not at all necessary to conceive for their operation any other vegetative or sensitive soul in it or any other principle of movement and life than its blood and spirits”. In other words, animals lack souls and so are incapable of suffering. You’d be hard-pressed to find someone who would defend this viewpoint today. Thank goodness.

The philosopher Jeremy Bentham—seen by some as the father of animal rights—wrote, “The question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?” This explicitly denied the animals-as-machines viewpoint of Descartes. Yet Bentham himself defended meat eating by writing, “we are the better for it, and they are never the worse… The death they suffer in our hands commonly is, and always may be, a speedier and, by that means, a less painful one than that which would await them in the inevitable course of nature.”

When I think about the ethics of how we make use of animals, though, I often come back to modern philosophy, something I first read over 20 years ago.

In 2002, Michael Pollan wrote an essay for The New York Times titled, “An Animal’s Place”. He was investigating his own attitudes towards animals used for food, not fur, but I see it as relevant nonetheless. Pollan wasn’t moralizing for others, only searching for answers for himself, but did suggest that “people who care should be working not for animal rights but animal welfare—to ensure that farm animals don't suffer and that their deaths are swift and painless”.

In the end, Pollan decided that he was comfortable eating meat from animals that had been raised non-industrially. As he put it, for any animal, “happiness seems to consist in the opportunity to express its creaturely character—its essential pigness or wolfness or chickenness”. In other words, if he could assure himself that his bacon came from a pig that had the opportunity to act like a pig naturally would, then he felt okay about eating it.

This raised a problem for fur, though, and Pollan discusses it in the same essay:

In other words, a pig can express its essential pigness on a farm because humans have domesticated it over millennia of farming, so it’s perfectly happy on a farm, given fresh air, sunlight, and a bit of mud (more or less). Fur species aren’t domesticated, though, so they’re unable to express their “creaturely character”. The images below are from a video by FUR EUROPE explaining their voluntary industry inspection-based certification for animal welfare:

Perhaps you look at these images and see a high-density, cage-based farm (true) where mink are unable to fully express their “creaturely character”… their ‘minkness’ (also true). Alternately, you might look at the images and see a farm that voluntarily submits to animal welfare inspections (true) where mink live in better conditions than exist at many pig or chicken factory farms in the US (also true).

If philosophy is inconclusive, what does science have to say on the subject of the ethics of fur? Quite a bit, actually.

In 2025, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) responded to a request by the European Commission by producing a scientific assessment of the welfare of five species raised for fur in the EU: American mink, red and Arctic foxes, raccoon dog, and chinchilla. EFSA released its findings in the form of a technical report, a scientific opinion, a plain-language summary, and an infographic. (Kudos to EFSA, by the way, for making its findings accessible at multiple levels of technicality and detail.)

What did EFSA find? From their plain-language summary:

In even plainer language, EFSA’s position is that the high-density, cage-based farms used for fur-bearing animals are fundamentally incompatible with their ability to express their natural behaviors. Marginal improvements are possible, but to truly provide for their welfare, the entire architecture of fur farms would need to be rethought from the ground up—and, in an additional complication, differently for each species given their varying needs.

In the title of this article, I asked whether fur is ethical. My interest here isn’t in trying to definitively answer this question—that’s not possible.

Far greater thinkers than me—from Bentham over two centuries ago to Pollan today—have taken up the issue of humanity’s relationship with animals that we make use of. No one has yet come up with an argument so compelling that it has convinced a large majority of humanity, unless you count Descartes in the sense that a large majority of humanity now disagrees with him (or so I suspect) and believes that animals are capable of suffering.

At the same time, the science on animal welfare is clear. Fur industry groups in the EU and the US sponsor organizations to inspect, report on, and promote animal welfare, but to be clear, this means welfare within the current high-density fur farming system, not welfare generally. In other words, the fur industry asks itself, ‘How do we make our animals as comfortable as possible within farms as we currently operate them?’, not, ‘How do we enable our animals to express their essential nature?’ Again, though, we as humanity haven’t come to a common position on our attitude towards this. If we had, factory farms for cows and pigs wouldn’t exist today, and it would be far easier and cheaper, on a per-animal basis, to improve their lives than it would be to improve the lives of farmed mink and foxes.

If it’s not possible to definitively answer the questions I posed, what can I do? The best I can do is to offer a way of thinking about this issue yourself so you can make your own informed decision. It’s on the homepage of this newsletter: “For people who want to understand luxury, not just buy it.” How can we as consumers think about and understand the issue of fur?

First, you may find yourself at one end of the spectrum or the other. If you are fundamentally opposed to the use of fur under any circumstances, then you know where you stand on this question. If, on the other hand, you believe that it is always reasonable for humans to make use of animals for any purpose, then again, you know where you stand.

I presume that most of my readers fall somewhere between these two positions; that is, you’re open to considering the purchase of fur, and may have even purchased it in the past, but you have questions about whether it’s the right thing to do. Ultimately, this article is for you.

If you’re comfortable with the idea of wearing fur but don’t want to support the current system of production, you could seek out vintage and second-hand fur. Your purchase won’t directly lead to greater production of new fur, and by purchasing and caring for existing fur, you can give it a longer life and improve its sustainability.

If you don’t fall into one of the categories above—opposed to all fur, supportive of all fur, or supportive of fur but only if it’s pre-owned—that means you’re open to purchasing new fur, but you have questions and concerns you’d like to resolve. Perhaps you’ve thought about these questions before, or perhaps this article is causing you to consider them for the first time.

The question you have to answer for yourself, ethically, is if you’re comfortable with how we raise and treat farmed fur-bearing animals. That leads to two questions:

What sort of life do you believe we humans owe to animals raised for fur? Do you believe they deserve the opportunity to act more or less as they would in the wild? If so, I’m not aware of any current fur farms that operate like this, so unless you’re willing to purchase fur from trapped wild animals—not the subject of this article—then fur is out for you, at least given the current fur farming systems. Or do you believe it’s sufficient that animals raised for fur are given reasonable living conditions (temperature, access to food and water, enough space to move around)? If so, read on.

Does a given fur item come from animals raised in reasonable conditions? If you’re still reading, perhaps it’s because you’re open to buying new fur but want to know that the animals used in its production were provided with at least a basic level of comfort. How can you know this? If you’re buying in or from the EU, it’s easier: you can look for the FURMARK label:

The FURMARK label indicates the fur was produced by farms in compliance with WelFur, the fur farm inspection and certification program of the International Fur Federation. Again, this does not mean that their fur farms meet EFSA’s suggested requirements, but it does certify, at the least, a minimally humane standard of care.

Buying in or from the US, it’s not as simple. The organization Fur Commission USA (FCUSA) operates the Humane Care Certification Program (HCCP), but it’s unlikely (if not impossible) you’ll see this on a tag. As to whether a given salesperson would even know what you’re asking about should you do so, that’s impossible to say. But you can try.

If you fall on one end or another of this question, your decision is made, whether for or against.

If you’re purchasing pre-owned fur, the fact that you’re not encouraging the current model of fur production gives you the freedom to buy and enjoy what you like.

For everyone else, besides thinking about the questions above, and deciding how you answer for yourself, here are two questions you can take with you if and when you shop for fur:

What species is this fur from, and where was it raised? If it was in the EU, that’s a good start. Other jurisdictions may not have the same focus on animal welfare.

Is this fur certified as humanely raised? If so, by which organization, and what qualifies them to be issuing certifications?

Do you see the use of animals for food as fundamentally different than the use of animals for fur?

Is an animal’s ability to “express its creaturely character” important to you—enough to influence your purchase decisions?