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A mink looks out from its cage at Henrik Nordgaard Hansen and Ann-Mona Kulsoe Larsen’s farm as they have to slaughter their flock of 3,000 mother minks and her cubs on their farm near Naestved, Denmark.
Mads Claus Rasmussen / Ritzau Scanpix / AFP / Getty Imag
Denmark will unearth millions of dead minks after a hasty slaughter and burial aimed at ending a coronavirus mutation that ended with decomposing carcasses triggering a new risk of contamination.
The exhumation of some 4 million minks will take place in May, with a six-month waiting period that will be considered sufficient to ensure the bodies are virus-free and safe to handle. Once unearthed, the mink will be incinerated as corporate waste. Health authorities said keeping the animals buried “does not present an immediate risk of contamination with respect to lakes, streams and drinking water.”
The government is trying to close a chapter that forced a cabinet minister to resign and ended Denmark’s reputation as a country that had fought the pandemic more skillfully than most.
Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen has had to defend her role in the debacle, after it emerged that she initially did not have the legal mandate to demand the total removal of Denmark’s roughly 15.4 million minks. The rushed and disorderly process that followed drew harsh criticism from parliament and the country’s mink industry, which just a few months ago had been the largest in the world.
But Frederiksen has repeated his initial warning that his government’s decision to require all Danish minks to be euthanized was appropriate. The country’s top epidemiologist warned at the time that the animals were very efficient at spreading the coronavirus, and Frederiksen said Danish scientists were concerned that the mutation found in the country’s mink could derail vaccination efforts.
On Monday, Parliament finalized the scope of an inquiry tasked with investigating Frederiksen’s role in the scandal, and a commission is due to begin its work in April and present its findings in spring 2022.
The risk of mink
There are several other mink producing countries that have detected strains of coronavirus in animals, namely Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Sweden and the US None have so far taken the same drastic steps as Denmark.
In early November, the World Health Organization said that the coronavirus mutation found in Denmark “highlights the important role that farmed mink populations can play in the continued transmission of SARS-CoV-2 and the critical role of a strong surveillance, sampling and sequencing of SARS-CoV -2, especially around areas where such animal reservoirs are identified. “
The organization then said that it advises “all countries to improve surveillance for Covid-19 at the animal-human interface where susceptible animal reservoirs are identified, including mink farms.”
In a separate development, Denmark on Monday joined other European countries in imposing a 48-hour ban on arrivals from the UK, where a rapidly spreading mutation of the virus was detected in humans. Danish health authorities say nine cases of Britain’s mutated strain have been recorded in Denmark.
