The world’s two largest fur auction houses are both closing down.

Kopenhagen Furs announced on Friday November 13th that they’d be liquidating their assets, and just days earlier, the North American Fur Traders Association quietly began liquidating their headquarters and has deleted their website.

It was a desire for lucrative pelts that lured large waves of European colonizers to North America. By the time the British Government’s Hudson Bay Company was founded in 1670, the Eurasian Beaver had been pushed to near extinction by the fashion industry, and so fur businesses set out in search of more beaver pelts to satisfy a seemingly insatiable demand for fur felt hats. The overhunting of millions-upon-millions of beavers in North America had a devastating impact on ecosystems, rapidly and forever-changing the landscape from one with millions of beaver dam catchments of biologically rich and intricate networks of ponds, bogs, and openings in meadows and forests to a more uniform and dry terrain.

Mink carcasses are disposed of at a farm in Farre in the southern part of Jutland, Denmark, October 21, 2020. SOURCE: RITZAU SCANPIX/METTE MOERK/REUTERS

150 years later, the North American Fur Traders Association (NAFA), which spun off of the Hudson Bay Company in the 1980s, is quietly liquidating their headquarters while “court-supervised restructuring proceedings” are underway with their creditors, and their website has vanished.

NAFA was “the second largest fur auction house in the world and the largest in America”, selling “over ten million farmed minks per year” as well as wild trapped furs and farmed fox pelts, according to their profile on industry website wearefur.com.

This hit to the fur industry is happening against a backdrop of Denmark, the largest mink fur-producing country in the world, announcing (and then scrapping) military plans to slaughter their entire 17 million confined mink population en masse “after a mutation of the coronavirus found in the animals spread to humans”, according to Reuters. That mutation may pose threats to the efficacy of a COVID-19 vaccine, according to the Center for Disease Control.

Soon after the announcement, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen apologized, revealing that the government lacked the authority to carry out the plan. Members of Parliament refused to sign an authorizing bill, likely under pressure from the country’s lucrative fur industry. The ongoing situation has descended into a political battle.

Mink have been killed en masse in the Netherlands and Spain, and cases of mink contracting coronavirus have popped up on fur farms in Greece, Sweden and Italy, according to BBC and in Utah, Wisconsin, and Michigan, according to National Geographic. Zoonotic diseases like COVID-19, that jump and mutate between non-human animals and humans, highlight the serious societal risks of mass animal confinement operations like fur factory farming, and unveil how profit-driven industry forces prioritize profits over human health.

The Kopenhagen Furs announcement seemed more of a shock, but NAFA’s trouble was first announced in November of 2019, when they declared they’d refinance and abstain from selling any wild fur in 2020. But the cause of this trouble has been brewing for years. Organizations and activists have been pushing for an end to the fur industry for decades, and their work is paying off more and more in recent years. The list of brands, retailers and cities or countries that have banned fur is too long to include here in its entirety, but recent additions are Nordstrom, Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s, Prada, Versace, Mulberry, Burberry, Michael Kors, Diane Von Furstenberg, Chanel, Coach, SMPC Group, Global Brands Group, the entire state of California and many more.

“68" FUR BUFFING MACHINE — 220V” being sold at NAFA’s liquidation auction, Oct 14, 2020. SOURCE: BIDSPOTTER.COM — “68" FUR BUFFING MACHINE — 220V” *being sold at NAFA’s liquidation auction, Oct 14, 2020.*
SOURCE: BIDSPOTTER.COM

CHANGING CONSUMER ATTITUDES

Despite the fur industry’s best efforts to greenwash fur by making false “natural” “ethical” and “biodegradable” claims, which the French Board of Advertising Ethics (JDP) ruled “not supported by data”, “inconsistent”, “baseless”, and “misleading” in 2018, consumers are demanding more transparency and cruelty-free fashion. A 2019 study of about 80 million consumers over a one-year period revealed an increase of 66 percent in searches for sustainable fashion with “Vegan fashion” specifically responsible for over 9.3 million social impressions on Lyst. Likewise, in a 2016 study of over a thousand millennials, 70 percent said “they would not buy a new clothing item with fur on it,” according to Mic.