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Mink raised for their fur have been slaughtered in the Netherlands, health officials suspect they have infected their farmers with coronavirus.
On Wednesday, the Netherlands Ministry of Agriculture announced that it would slaughter "more than 10,000 minks", in farms where new cases of Covid-19 have been reported, to prevent them from becoming sources of contamination (also called "clusters"), reports AFP. The next day, two animal rights groups went to court to try to prevent the mass slaughter, but their request was dismissed on Friday evening.
The mink slaughter started on Saturday in a farm of 1500 females, "who each have four to five pups", where cases of Covid-19 have been reported in animals, said AFP Frederique Hermie, spokesman for the organization NVWA, responsible for food and food safety. It indicates that small mammals are killed with carbon monoxide. The representative added that the slaughter will continue in the nine other contaminated farms that have been reported.
In May, the Dutch health authorities established that two employees of these farms had "very probably" contracted the disease from the mink. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), these could be "first known cases of transmission" from animal to human coronavirus. In response to the risk, the government of the Netherlands has banned the transport of minks, and testing for Covid-19 is compulsory in all farms in the country, where they are bred for their fur.
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by Mélodie Capronnier