Chow Time

Produced by Fur Commission USA (www.furcommission.com)

In some regions of the United States, fur farming is an important means of recycling the waste products from the production of human food.

Each year Americans alone consume 37 million beef cattle, almost 9 billion chickens, turkeys and other poultry, and over 4 billion pounds of fish and shellfish.

But humans don't eat these animals in their entirety, so where do all the leftovers go? Just take a fish, for example. After humans take the parts we need for our fish pie, what happens to the head, scales, fins and guts?

Rather than going to waste, these by-products are put to good use, recycled by such businesses as pet food companies, aquariums, zoos, and fur farmers.

Here we are visiting a typical fur farm in Wisconsin, the leading fur-producing state in the United States and home to hundreds of thousands of carnivorous mink.

Wisconsin is also home to many other kinds of livestock that provide a constant supply of protein-rich food for the hungry mink. As one of America's largest dairy producers, Wisconsin can feed its mink with spent cattle and expired dairy produce such as cheeses. Old chickens and expired eggs are other local food sources ideally suited to fur bearers.

Most fur farmers collect these leftovers themselves, personally visiting chicken farms, packing plants and slaughterhouses around their county. They then mix these ingredients on the farm, carefully measuring the protein, fat and ash content to ensure their animals receive the proper nutrition all year long.

Carnivores such as mink and fox are tricky to raise, with varying nutritional requirements during the growing and reproductive phases of their lives.

On this farm in Wisconsin, mink are raised. In one year, each animal consumes a hundred pounds of feed, or more than 20 times its body weight. Just imagine that a glamorous full-length mink coat is made from the pelts of perhaps 50 mink that ate their way through 5,000 pounds of leftovers! Foxes, meanwhile, eat even more, consuming over 35 times their body weight annually.

In all, in North America, it is estimated that mink and fox farmers recycle over a billion pounds of agricultural by-products annually, and in so doing transform these leftovers into a biodegradable clothing product that is both nature's finest and most beautiful insulator. Fish heads never looked so good!