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If it were (as it begins to sound) a horror B movie, the story of the exterminated mink in Denmark because the potential spreaders of Covid-19 should be called the return of the cursed mink. The government order at the beginning of November was drastic and macabre: breeding mink, 17 million heads in a thousand companies, with a turnover of 800 million a year and 6,000 jobs, are all were exterminated because some specimens carried a strain of particularly resistant coronavirus. A very controversial decision in Denmark, largest exporter of mink in the world; and that now, almost a month later, it seems like the fatal beginning of a horror movie. The mass graves that house the corpses, hastily dug to comply with the government order they are overflowing and polluting rivers, lakes and aquifers. And animal welfare organizations have raised a new nightmare: fear in Danish forests thousands of minks escaped from the farms, as is often the case, and that a new strain of coronavirus that is refractory to treatment is developing among them.
In short, more than minks, zombies: even political, sinceThe minority government of the social democrat Mette Fredriksen ran the risk of falling, at the beginning of November, in the order to exterminate them; and she was forced to admit that it was a mistake, and I didn’t have the legal basis to ask for it. The Minister of Agriculture had to resign.
The mass graves
In some news spots these days, the carcasses of some slaughtered minks are emerging from the ground. The latest case was reported at a military training center in Holsterbo, but it was by no means an isolated incident, explained National Police spokesman Thomas Kristensen. The macabre phenomenon due to scant amount of soil, in some cases just one meter, that was placed on the corpses that, inflated by decomposition gases, exerts pressure on the ground above, thus returning to the light. There is concern that they could contaminate nearby lakes and aquifers. Also for this reason, it seems that it is not excluded, now, having to dig up the minks and re-embed them, in a plastic metaphor of what seems to be the worst political mess in recent Danish history.
Escaped minks and risk of spills
In addition, the possibility raised by ecologists and veterinarians is that among the thousands of minks that escape from farms each year there are carriers of the coronavirus, in the resistant strain, or cluster 5, which has made them dangerous. The risk, estimated by one of the executives of the veterinary public health agency in an interview with The Guardian, that 5% of escaped minks are positive. What happens if they infect each other, creating a community of forest minks affected by strain 5? What happens if they infect animals of other species, in what has now entered the collective lexicon as a contagion? Difficult, Executive Mortensen explained. They are solitary animals. But still, if a stray cat ate the carcass or got dirty with its feces, contagion would not be excluded.
The visit to the farm
Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen clashed with the opposition, who asked her to resign and with a vote of no confidence in Parliament; Also for this reason in recent days he visited a mink farm in Kolding, in the west of the country, and met its owners, father and son, offering himself shortly after, through tears, to photographers.
Two generations of very experienced breeders They had their life’s work destroyed in no timeshe said as her voice trembled. It was a busy day for them … and for me too. There photos of her tears It has sparked much discussion at home, where opposition to the option to exterminate Danish minks has been fierce.
The mink crisis in the Danish government
The order to exterminate minks, including healthy ones, effectively canceling a productive sector valued at 800 million euros a year and 6,000 jobs, was given by the government on November 4. Group 5, the mink strain, had already infected 200 people., whose antibodies seem to respond less well to the virus than in other varieties. IT IS the Minister of Agriculture was forced to resign: the government, it turned out, did not have the legal basis for such a request, but only to request the removal of sick or positive minks; and the opposition insists that before the animals were killed, the government should have started a compensation plan. Killing healthy minks was a regrettable mistake, said Mette Fredriksen in parliament.
Farms in Europe
But after all, the war on mink, an animal whose farms in Europe have often suffered from coronavirus outbreaks in recent months, has now been embraced by many governments. In the Netherlands, farms are now almost illegal, France has monitored the 4 farms that raise minks and has exterminated a thousand; The UK and Austria had already banned these farms for years, and countries like Germany, Belgium and Norway plan to eliminate them, or have already done so. The coronavirus epidemic, therefore, just the coup de grace. Also in Italy: Health Minister Speranza suspended farm activities for three months, and 30,000 minks were slaughtered on the country’s largest farm, where three animals were weakly positive, near Cremona.
November 28, 2020 (change November 28, 2020 | 14:20)
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