American mink Neogale vison

The American mink is a semi-aquatic mustelid native to North America, taken into cage farming for its pelt and now the main fur-farmed carnivore worldwide as well as an invasive species wherever stock has escaped. Farmed mink are fed a pumpable wet ration of animal by-products, slaughter offal and cereals. Scale is disputed: a 2024 review puts United States output at about two million pelts a year, while the USDA's own survey recorded 771,200 pelts in 2024, down 19 percent from 957,410 the year before, with 196,800 females bred for the next season. Mink are monoestrous with delayed implantation of blastocysts, oestrus driven by lengthening days, and reach sexual maturity at eight to twelve months. Two disease problems define the species. Aleutian disease, an amdoparvovirus infection, persists in the herd and costs weight, fertility and pelt value in adults while killing kits through acute interstitial pneumonia; seroprevalence fell in Denmark from 100 percent in 1976 to 5 percent by 2011 but still reaches 70 percent in China, and test-and-removal has not eradicated it. The second is respiratory virus spillover: mink are highly susceptible to SARS-CoV-2, ten of eleven experimentally infected animals reached endpoint within three days, farm outbreaks occurred in at least twelve countries, and Denmark culled seventeen million animals.