Mink farming is very different in Canada than in Denmark, where some 1,200 farms were producing more than 17 million mink in an area about the size of Vancouver Island.
“After farmed mink in several countries were infected with COVID-19, enhanced bio-security measures have been implemented on Canadian farms to protect the animals and public health. Rather than support our farmers as they face this threat to their livelihoods, however, animal activists are fanning fears and calling for all Canadian mink farms to be shut down.
It has long been known that mink can catch influenza from humans, so it was not a complete surprise when the SARS-CoV-2 virus was first detected on Dutch farms last Spring. We now know that ferrets, hamsters, house cats and other mammals can also contract COVID-19 from humans.
The discovery that the SARS-CoV-2 virus had mutated on Danish mink farms raised concerns that vaccines for humans could be compromised, leading the government there to order mass culling. But although the mink-related “Cluster-5” variant of the SARS-CoV-2 virus has not been seen since mid-September, animal activists have jumped on this story to justify their campaign to ban fur farming everywhere.”
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