One of the biggest political scandals in Denmark’s modern history. This is how the Danish newspaper describes Jyllands Post the “mink case” from 2020. The Scandinavian country has culled all 17 million minks in the country, including the healthy ones, during the corona pandemic. This was decided after a mutated variant of the corona virus appeared in the minks. The variant had also been transferred to humans, which made it feared that this new variant could cause a second wave.
Read also Danes cull mink ‘to save vaccine’
It led to a parliamentary inquiry. The report presented by the Commission of Inquiry on Thursday shows that Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen and former Minister of the Environment and Food Supply Mogens Jegens knew that there was no legal basis for the culling. The Committee also sees no evidence that this virus mutation was extra dangerous. She called the Prime Minister’s decision “grossly misleading”.
However, the government found the culling necessary to protect the population against the virus. Experts also considered the preventive killing of all minks permitted.
The commission states that a total of ten senior officials can be held accountable. They risk a fine or, in extreme cases, expulsion, which is rare in Denmark. The food minister resigned in November 2020 over the scandal.
The commission collected more than a million documents and emails about the mink case, and conducted 86 interviews with a total of 74 witnesses. The report has a total of 1,649 pages, says the chairman of the inquiry committee and former health minister, Sophie Lohde (Venstre), know on Twitter .
fur season
Denmark was the world’s second largest producer of fur, mainly mink fur, after China. In 2019, Danish mink fur exports amounted to 650 million euros; 3.8 percent of total Danish agricultural exports. The largest fur auction in the world, Copenhagen Fur, is in Denmark. Although the fur season had just started, the hides of the culled animals were not allowed to be traded. Not even those of negatively tested companies.
Farmers, fishermen and mink breeders were outraged after the decision to euthanize the animals. They came to the capital with five hundred tractors. There, the demonstrators made a tour of all government buildings and the parliament building. Also causing a stir were the images of the “zombie ores.” After culling, the animals were buried in military grounds under two meters of earth, but hundreds of them came back up due to gassing. This led to concerned local residents and strict surveillance of the site.
Different than in the Netherlands
In the Netherlands, all minks were also culled during the corona pandemic. The situation was different from that in Denmark. Veterinary virologist Lars Erik Larsen of the University of Copenhagen previously told NRC that Danish mink viruses were more likely to “collect” mutations. Larsen: „In the Netherlands you have always discovered the infections among minks early. The Danish outbreaks often did not come to light until the infection had been going on among the animals for two or three weeks. That may have given the coronavirus more time to mutate.” The Netherlands nevertheless chose to kill all minks as a preventive measure and thus brought forward the decision that had already been taken to make the Netherlands “mink-free” by 2024.