Danish Government To Kill Over 2.5 Million Minks To Quell Coronavirus Spread

North Jutland, Denmark:

The rich, glossy and silky farm-bred mink coats flourishing the market might be severely affected as yet another consequence of the unfortunate pandemic since the Danish government has announced to cull over 2.5 million innocent minks, as they are believed to pass on the virus to humans.

In the early weeks of May, 2020, the Dutch authorities announced that they suspected that the mink had transmitted the coronavirus to a worker. The link between transmissions of the coronavirus from minks to humans was first detected in April by the government testing of two farms in the Netherlands, which is the fourth largest producer of mink pelts following China, Denmark and Poland.

As stated by the Dutch government, “Based on this comparison and the position of that form of virus in the family tree, the researchers conclude that it is likely that one staff member at an infected farm has been infected by mink.”

The present outbreak is believed to have begun in the late June, when a COVID-19 patient was related to a mink farm in the North Jutland region of Denmark, as suggested by USDA’s Foreign Agricultural Service. The analysis conducted by the Danish State Serum Institute and the Danish government also confirmed the presence of the virus among mink farms in North Jutland. According to stats presented by John Hopkins University, Denmark have a total of 33,593 cases with 675 fatalities. The House of Representatives voted to ban the breeding of mink for fur on June 23, 2020.

“It’s a huge breakthrough: at last there will be an end to killing of animals for their fur in Netherlands…besides being morally reprehensible, mink breeding is now simply unsustainable because it poses threat to public health. By stopping mink breeding now and not just in 2024, millions of minks will be spared a miserable life,” says party chairman and Dutch lawmaker Esther Ouwehand.

Sadly, this was decided after suffocating 6 to 8 lakhs of minks in the Netherlands to death by carbon monoxide, since June 5, 2020.

It’s surprising to notice that no other mink producing nations have publicized plans to cull mink or shut down mink farming.  As said by a virologist Brian Bird and associate director of University of California Davis One Health Institute, “The take-home message now is we are still learning a lot about COVID-19, this coronavirus and the animals it can infect.”

Mick Madsen, the head of communications for Fur Europe undermines the role of mink in coronavirus transmission, said in his words, “You can see the biosecurity measures [in other countries] working…mink farms are not responsible for spreading the coronavirus. People are spreading the virus.”

Even after Danish health authorities and the Danish Veterinary and Food Administration worked on various measures to suppress the wave of the infection, it was in late September when the cases at the mink farms started reaching the zenith. In the words of Mogens Jensen, Danish Minister of Food, Agriculture and Fisheries, “On october 1, 2020, 41 mink farms had been infected with coronavirus in North Jutland, and an additional 20 herds were under suspicion.”

Talking about the decision to cull a large number of minks, when the authorities previously justified to let the infected animals survive, he said, “In the view of recent large increase, we must unfortunately state that it has not been sufficient to prevent continued spread of infection among the North Jutland mink herds…it is the right thing to do, even though it is sad for both animals and humans”.

On October 9, it was reported a thousand minks have met fatal ends at fur farms in Utah and Wisconsin following Covid-19 outbreaks. The virus progresses speedily in the mink, with most infected mink dying the very next day. What makes minks more susceptible to the coronavirus than other animals is still unknown.