‘Ban fur farms’ initiative in Finland

Opponents of farmed fur handed a European Citizens’ Initiative to Finland’s parliament, calling for an end to the industry.

The parliamentary petition was backed by 102,561 people – well above the 50,000 minimum – and the date for an initial debate will be announced in the near future.

Twelve EU member states and the UK now ban fur farming, and the Initiative’s sponsors want Finland’s government to introduce a support scheme for the farmers as the practice is gradually phased out.

Opposition to the intensive raising of animals for fur increased in summer 2023 after avian flu was detected at 27 farms and 500,000 animals were culled to prevent it from spreading and possibly mutating to infect humans.

Heidi Kivekas, chief operations officer at the Animalia animal protection association, said at the time that checking the spread of transmissible diseases was not the only motive for banning the fur farms.

Kivekas argued that fur had been fetching low prices for years, there had been a steep fall in revenue and farms were continually closing.

“The best solution for the farms,  entrepreneurs and preventing future pandemics is to discontinue fur farming altogether,” she declared.

The Finnish Fur Breeders’ Association (Fifur) has also been slated for inflating the industry’s importance as an employer, exporter, and contributor to the tax system after Statistics Finland confirmed in 2023 that the association claimed to provide direct jobs for 3,200 people when it employed only half that number.

In an August 2024 report, Fifur maintained that a recent survey showed that 39 per cent of participants had a “very positive” or “fairly positive” attitude towards breeding and raising animals for their fur.

Fifur revealed that this same level of support had dropped from 46 per cent in 2023, and 50 per cent in 2022 while speculating that the decline was probably linked to last year’s avian flu outbreak and media coverage of the massive culls.

As a rule, population support has been around 50 per cent, Fifur said, adding that the association believed that in 2025 support would have returned to “normal” levels thanks to management of the bird flu risks.

Meanwhile, Finland’s public broadcasting company YLE pointed out that 77 Citizens’ Initiatives have been submitted to the country’s parliament, since the scheme was introduced more than 10 years ago.  The first of these, YLE continued, asked for an end to fur-farming, which was not included in the seven initiatives that have been approved or the six that are waiting to be processed.