After the slaughter of all of its huge herd of mink to fight against Covid-19, Denmark, the former world’s largest exporter, will reauthorize their breeding, the Ministry of Agriculture announced on Friday September 23.
“Temporary ban on mink farming will expire at the end of the year“, said the ministry in a press release, saying it was based on the recommendations of the health authorities. Breeders will have to stick to a strict infection prevention and control model developed by veterinary and health authorities, it is specified.
Political nightmare
From November 2020, the Danish government had urgently carried out an immense campaign to slaughter more than 15 million mink, the only animal identified with certainty to date as capable of both contracting Covid-19 and recontaminating humans. . The measure was taken at full speed to combat the risk of coronavirus mutation in fur animals, and all breeding was then banned in 2021 and 2022. The culling campaign turned into a political nightmare for the social executive Democrat because it later turned out that the government had no legal basis to impose it on breeders.
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At the beginning of July, a commission of inquiry set up to determine the responsibilities in this affair concluded that Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen had made statements “seriously misleading“but without having”neither knowledge nor perspectiveto judge. She had only received an inconsequential reprimand. The mutation identified in Danish mink, which was quickly declared extinct, had however made it possible to highlight the dangers of mutations of the new coronavirus.
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