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The Detail is a daily news podcast produced for RNZ by Press room and is posted on Stuff with permission. Click on this link to subscribe to the podcast.
A couple of weeks ago, Denmark decided to kill all their minks.
All 17 million of them.
The mink had tested positive for a mutated form of Covid-19 after contracting the disease from humans.
READ MORE:
* Covid-19: 15 million minks will be killed in Denmark for fear of the coronavirus
* Lessons learned from past pandemics can be applied to Covid-19
* Covid-19 can help us prepare for future pandemics
* Coronavirus: How do viruses mutate and jump to different species?
Two million went to the slaughterhouse before the slaughter was stopped, and the opposition parties objected and questioned the constitutionality of the decision.
Mads Claus Rasmussen / Ritzau Scanpix / AP
Mink on a farm in Gjoel in North Jutland, Denmark.
The slaughter of animals suspected of carrying an infectious disease is nothing new: here in New Zealand, more than 100,000 cattle have been slaughtered to stop the spread of mycoplasma bovis.
But there are more than 800,000 animal-borne viruses that could be transmitted to humans, and the further we push into still-intact parts of nature, the greater the chances of those diseases turning into pandemics, just like HIV, Ebola, the Covid. 19, and many more diseases of animal origin.
So what has this pandemic taught us about our relationship with nature?
Today in The detail, Emile Donovan talks to Newsroom.co.nz political journalist Marc Daalder and infectious disease expert Professor David Hayman about what this pandemic has taught us about our relationship with nature, and how we can use them to mitigate the next pandemic when it inevitably arises.
First things first: Covid mutations are not as scary as they seem.
“Our understanding of pop culture about viruses [suggests] they get worse or stronger … [but] the mutation is normal. The flu virus mutates frequently and rapidly, which is why a new flu vaccine is received every year, ”says Daalder.
“The coronavirus mutates less frequently than the flu, on average about 24 times a year. And a single mutation is generally not a cause for concern.”
Still, mutations can lead to complications: if a disease mutates significantly, it can neutralize the effectiveness of a vaccine. Because we have not yet approved a working vaccine for Covid-19, we want the disease to remain as inert as possible while we continue to work on one.
Warwick Smith / Stuff
David Hayman, Professor of Infectious Disease Ecology at Massey University.
It’s not entirely surprising that the virus has mutated in mink farms, says Massey University infectious disease expert David Hayman.
Mink is grown commercially for its fur in many European countries and is kept in close proximity, as are other forms of intensified agriculture.
Animals kept in such close quarters provide the perfect conditions for a virus to spread en masse, and Professor Hayman says this example should lead us to think more carefully about how humans use animals.
As you clear the natural habitats of animals for use as farmland, “you are moving both people and domestic animals into wildlife space, and increasing the chances of contact between domestic animals and wildlife. .. can act as a reservoir, an interface, where an infection is passed from wildlife to domestic animals and then transmitted to people.
“But [it’s also worth considering] the intensification of agriculture itself: you are having genetically very similar animals that are potentially stressed, at high densities. These are perfect populations for viral infections to spread. “
