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COPENHAGEN (Reuters) – Denmark’s Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen suffered a nervous breakdown on Thursday visiting a mink farmer who lost his flock following an order from the government this month to cull the country’s 17 million minks to curb the spread of the coronavirus.
Frederiksen has faced calls from the opposition to resign and a vote of no confidence in parliament following an order from the government in early November, which he later admitted was illegal, to euthanize the country’s entire mink population.
The order came after authorities found outbreaks of COVID-19 in hundreds of mink farms, including a new strain of the virus, which is suspected of compromising the effectiveness of vaccines.
“We have two generations of really skilled mink farmers, father and son, who in a very, very short time have seen their life’s work shattered,” Frederiksen told reporters after meeting with a mink farmer and his son in his farm near Kolding in western Denmark.
“It’s been emotional for them, and … I’m sorry. It’s been emotional for me too,” Frederiksen said in a hesitant voice, pausing for breath between words.
The decision to euthanize Denmark’s entire mink population, one of the largest in the world and most valued for the quality of its fur, has left the government in shock after admitting it did not have the legal basis to order the slaughter of minks. healthy.
After a tumultuous couple of weeks since the order was issued on November 4, Agriculture Minister Mogens Jensen resigned last week after an internal investigation revealed a flawed political process.
Denmark has proposed to ban all mink farming in the country until 2022. Tage Pedersen, director of the Danish association of mink farmers, said this month that the industry, which employs about 6,000 people and exports fur skins worth 800 million dollars a year, it’s over.
Denmark’s opposition says the culling of healthy mink should not have started before compensation plans were in place for owners and workers on some 1,100 mink farms.
(Information by Nikolaj Skydsgaard; edited by Jacob Gronholt-Pedersen)
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