page_title: Fur farming
section_title: Finland
hierarchical_section_title: Fur farming / Controversy / Finland
caption_attribution_description: According to producers and officials everything is fine and legal.
context_page_description: Fur farming is the practice of breeding or raising certain types of animals for their fur.
  Fur used from animals caught in the wild is not considered farmed fur, and is instead known as "wild fur".
  Most of the world’s farmed fur is produced by European farmers. There are 5,000 fur farms in the EU, all located across 22 countries; these areas of production collectively account for 50% of the global production of farmed fur.
  The EU accounts for 63% of global mink production and 70% of fox production. Denmark is the leading mink-producing country, accounting for approximately 28% of world production. Other major producers include China, the Netherlands, Russia, and the U.S. Finland is the largest United States supplier of fox pelts.
  The United States is a major exporter of fur skins. Major export markets include China, Russia, Canada, and the EU. Exports to Asia as a share of total exports grew from 22% in 1998 to 47% in 2002.
  China is the largest importer of fur pelts in the world and the largest exporter of finished fur products.
  Fur farming is banned in Austria, Croatia, the United Kingdom, the Czech Republic and Norway.
context_section_description: Finnish citizens have had a right to instigate parliamentarian law initiatives since 2012. The first citizens' initiative to gain enough signatures was that instituting a ban on fur farming. Some 70,000 citizens signed the initiative within the required time period in 2013. In a march to Parliament House, Helsinki on 18 June, four to five hundred people appealed to members of parliament to approve the citizens' initiative to ban fur farming. According to animal expert MSc Sesse Koivisto (wife of Ilkka Koivisto ex-director of the zoo Korkeasaari) in Helsingin Sanomat in 2010, fur farming did not provide acceptable conditions for the animals. In order to stop the suffering of animals, she demanded a ban on fur farming in Helsingin Sanomat, as in some other countries. On 19 June 2013, the Finnish Parliament rejected the first citizens' initiative to ban fur farming. A positive development in the politics of Finland was that the initiative was taken in the Parliament for public voting.
  In Finland in August 2016, there were about 950 active fur farms. The breeding of fur-animals has had a long tradition in Finland, having been professionally conducted since the 1920s. Up to 90% of the fur-farming community is situated in the rural areas of Ostrobothnia and employs four to six thousand people. Today, fur farming is strictly regulated by law. The Finnish Furbreeders Association has developed its own national program of certification and animal health welfare that is tied to the ISO 9001 standard and monitored by the Norske Veritas. The fur animals are housed in shelter buildings or halls, where each animal has a specific place marked with a kit card. Shelter buildings are suitable for all fur animals, but halls are only used in mink farming.
caption: Fur animal in Finland, 2018
exif: {}