Mink and other animals on fur farms are often killed with the cheapest methods available, including gassing them, poisoning them, or beating them to death. Brands that sell mink lashes sometimes claim that mink is “brushed” to obtain the hair used to make the eyelashes. Mink lashes are often sold as “100 percent cruelty-free” or “safely collected on a farm raised outdoors” or even “taken only after brushing the minks”. Mink is held captive in terrible conditions, so their fur can be glued to false eyelashes for a “fuller and thicker” look.
Did you know that your false eyelash extensions are made with the hair of an adorable mammal called mink? And no, they are not by-products nor are they free from animal cruelty. In fact, more than 50 million minks are raised around the world every year, mainly because of their fur. But there's a much more sinister side to sporting mink lashes than meets the eye. It is driving the burgeoning mink fur industry, where animals suffer fear, stress, torture, illness and inhumane slaughter when considered to be no longer profitable.
With more than 5.9 million tags on Instagram, it's undeniable that there's a craze for mink lashes right now. Either way, mink eyelashes and eyebrows support a terrible industry and the suffering of animals in tiny cages. Not to mention that the slaughter of minks has also focused the fur trade's attention on other animals such as foxes and chinchillas. However, in fact, minks are confined to small, depressing, cramped wire cages in highly unsanitary conditions.
If you buy a mink fur coat or a set of mink lashes, you're supporting an industry where animals suffer immense fear, stress, diseases, parasites and other physical and psychological difficulties. However, did you know that a national sacrifice in Denmark has killed almost every mink in Denmark and wiped out the world's largest mink fur industry to stop a strain of coronavirus associated with mink? On average, producing 1 kg of mink fur is equivalent to 110 kg of carbon dioxide gases released into the atmosphere. As a result, Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen announced that all of the country's mink — up to 17 million — would have to be sacrificed, including healthy animals. They are mink skins that have been shaved off the body of a mink (either just before or immediately after the animal is killed on a fur farm) that are then glued in tufts to a human's eyelashes to achieve a “fuller and thicker look”.
But it's not just large and exorbitantly expensive mink fur garments that still creep into our stores. Mink could not be kept at large because they are aggressive and solitary animals and would fight each other within the restricted area.
