Denmark to cull its mink population

This just in.


So I quickly reviewed the other articles about Oregon that I linked to and I think that up until now they were just investigating the possibility of minks in Oregon having covid. So maybe in the good news department, it sounds like they were investigating. although it also seems like they either didn't take precautions or that the precautions were not just good enough.

This article doesn't state one way or another if the covid infected workers (or the minks) had the mutated version they have found in Denmark.

The article has a link to another article that got by my NewFeeder. Covid is in minks in Wisconsin and Utah, too.


Unlike in Oregon, minks are dying from the disease. The vet doesn't think the animals spread it to humans. but that is not what they think in Europe.

The first article also included this link.

The USDA states, "A small number of animals worldwide, have been reported to be infected with SARS-CoV-2, mostly after close contact with people with COVID-19."
This statement is what I would put in the misleading category.
First, there are the 8000 dead minks in Utah. Then are the people in Denmark (and other countries) that have a mutation of Covid that is "mink related".

Another alarming factoid that is buried in this that there are at least five other species involved.
 
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It's sad, but we all know these animals were sentenced to death the day they were born. I just hope these headlines help non-vegans make the connection...and they provide us vegans with a chance to facilitate that connection.

In his book Dominion Matthew Scully writes "we cringe when things go wrong at the farm and they all need to be shot, incinerated, and buried. But it is just as hard to watch when things go right."
 
It's sad, but we all know these animals were sentenced to death the day they were born. I just hope these headlines help non-vegans make the connection...and they provide us vegans with a chance to facilitate that connection.

In his book Dominion Matthew Scully writes "we cringe when things go wrong at the farm and they all need to be shot, incinerated, and buried. But it is just as hard to watch when things go right."
Yes. absolutely.

In this latest article, they used the word, "biosecurity". Not a word I've seen used in agriculture before. Perhaps could wake some people up.
 
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More mink news. This is a good article to read whether you have been follwing this story or not. Here are the highlights.

mink on fur farms were catching COVID-19. And they seemed to be able to pass it back to people.​
Hundreds of mink farms in Denmark and the Netherlands had COVID-19 cases, and two farms in Utah had reported the first U.S. cases in mink.​
To date, COVID-19 has been found on mink farms in a total of nine countries​
One mink-associated variant bears the same mutation as the coronavirus variant now spreading rapidly in the United Kingdom; each time such changes happen, there is a risk the virus changes in a way that could make it more dangerous and prolong the pandemic.​
As of December 3, a total of 644 people associated with mink farms had contracted COVID-19 since June, along with another 338 people who work in mink pelting,​
mutations believed to have originated in mink had shown up about 300 times in people in Denmark.​
In Europe, the already-shrinking mink industry is now quickly crumbling. Efforts to ban fur farming, often in response to campaigns led by animal rights activists, are now accelerating. The Netherlands announced it would end mink farming for good in 2021, three years earlier than planned. France announced it would ban farming mink by 2025. Poland, where undercover footage from the country’s largest mink farm appeared to show animals cannibalizing each other, is expected to soon follow suit. Ireland, which is home to only three mink farms, previously had voted down a bill to end mink farming, but has now decided to cull its farmed mink population preemptively, likely ending the industry in the country.​
if the coronavirus escapes into the wild mink population, COVID-19 could become an entrenched and uncontrolled animal disease, wreaking havoc on animal communities and probably also occasionally infecting people.​
“On a ranch, you can quarantine them. When you have a wild population, that’s impossible; you can’t stop them all,”​
The USDA announced the first known case of a non-captive wild animal with the coronavirus. A wild mink, trapped just outside a mink farm in Utah where there was a COVID-19 outbreak, tested positive. The strain was “indistinguishable” from that of the farm outbreak. The spillover had happened.​