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The announcement was made by the premier on November 4 and, less than a week later, it is already underway: there are millions of minks to be killed in Denmark. The decision was made after a mutation of the new coronavirus was found in animals, which infected 214 people. “The mutation of the virus through mink can create the risk that the future vaccine will not work as it should (…). It is necessary to shoot down all minks, ”Mette Frederiksen said at a press conference.
Reuters visited some mink production companies and photographed the slaughter process, which began immediately after the announcement. The first images were taken on November 6, two days after the decision; on Monday, the news agency captured the mink to be buried in a mass grave located on military ground. But in October, there were records of slaughter animals, as shown in some pictures in this photo gallery. The decision has drawn harsh criticism from industry players, but also from lawmakers, who say the decision was illegal, and has also raised questions about the scientific evidence that justified it. The government has already admitted that it has no legal basis for the measure and is rushing to draft a law to support the decision.
On Monday, Environment and Food Minister Mogens Jensen sent an email to Reuters where he regretted the “lack of transparency” in the process. Jensen said the government will move forward with “emergency legislation” to support the slaughter order – though the opposition warned it would not allow a draft to replace what usually results from a 30-day legislative process. . On Tuesday, the Danish Veterinary and Food Administration apologized to mink producers in a letter, but said they continued to recommend slaughter.
Opposition parties argue that the slaughter of healthy mink should not have started before compensation plans for workers and owners of the country’s 1,100 farms went into effect. Tage Pederson, head of the Danish association of mink breeders, warned producers to continue the slaughter, despite doubts about its legality, and warned that the industry – which employs 6,000 people and exports mink fur worth $ 800 million a year – it was over.
Following this decision, minks, agricultural workers and their families will also be tested in Poland. The population of these animals in Poland, however, must only represent half of Denmark’s 17 million. “The priority is to monitor the health of animals on farms,” the Polish Agriculture Minister said in a statement sent to Reuters. The Polish veterinary authorities have reported that they have tests and infrastructure for this control since May, but did not specify what type of tests had already been performed or whether they had already been performed. Some mink farm representatives say the tests were indeed carried out – and that they did not show any covid-19 infection – while others said the tests had not been carried out. When asked about tests and potential infections in mink, the regulator told the news agency that “there have been no cases identified”, without providing further details on the case.
“We all know that this virus does not exist on Polish farms,” said Tadeusz Jakubowski, veterinarian and director of the Polish Association of Fur Breeders and Producers. “I suspect someone is using the coronavirus as a pretext to wreak havoc on farming in Denmark, for no scientific reason,” he fired. Non-governmental organization Otwarte Klatki asked for the normal covid-19 test for Polish mink: “It’s hard to believe that the problem won’t show up in Poland sooner or later. Maybe it already exists, but we don’t know,” Pawel said. Rawicki. The country is, together with Denmark and China, one of the leading mink producers globally. Some 60 million are killed each year in the three countries, the UK’s Humane Society International estimates.
Denmark, however, is not the first country to make this decision. In July, the region of Aragon, Spain, ordered the culling of nearly 100,000 mink after 80% of these animals were infected with the new coronavirus. The measure was a way to “avoid risks to the population and public health”, justified Joaquin Olona, the region’s Minister of Agriculture at the time. In the same month, but a few weeks earlier, it was the Netherlands that took the same step: about 10,000 were slaughtered.
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