Mink mutation

[Lilybet1980]

Anyone know how worried we should be about the mink outbreaks in Denmark?

Oh thanks for that cheerful news.

I thought they were bad enough eating our fucking swans.

Mink have been implicated since May but it doesn't seem to have been widely reported. They are getting culled, poor animals

No idea. 2020 really is the gift that keeps giving.

I’ll just be over here searching for a private island I can go live on. That won’t be ruined by climate change.

*The Danish Prime minister has described it as very serious, fearing it may have an impact on potential vaccines
Prime Minister Frederiksen described the situation as "very, very serious". Danish police and army personnel will help to carry out the mass cull.

Ms Frederiksen cited a government report which said the mutated virus had been found to weaken the body's ability to form antibodies, potentially making the current vaccines under development for Covid-19 ineffective.*

Marvellous

Maybe they need to stop mass breeding mink for their fur then.

There were cases in The Netherlands and Spain previously

mobile.twitter.com/angie_rasmussen/status/1324386522464878592

Yes read about it in the news today. Disgusting that fur farms still exist. Poor animals. We humans really are everyone's worst enemy including our own.

Poor creatures.

I hope that this at least ends/massively reduces the mink fur industry - all the current mink were going to end up slaughtered by humans fairly soon one way or the other but this situation could also put the farms out of business and make it hard to restock.
(I am sure that this would be sad for individual current fur farm workers but in a world where mass unemployment is building I would miss fur farms less than most other industries currently going to the wall).

I had seen issues with it in the news. My father told me, from Spain. They ere worried. But I did not know that it had mutated there.
Question is that they thought they had proof enough this virus had passed from human to minks, and then back to other employees.
Taking into account coronaviruses do pass from animals to humans originally it makes sense, but it is really scary!

It is worrying, but from what I've seen of the conditions those poor animals are kept in, maybe they're better off dead. They seem to be kept in rows of very small cages, like battery hens used to be, just awful. This is another situation where humans are abusing animals and keeping them in horribly cramped conditions, then nature gets out of kilter and humans suffer.

I hope all the mink farms are shut down, it's shocking that this stuff is going on in mainland Europe, I don't think this would be allowed in the UK.

Am I right in thinking that mink are used to make fake eyelashes that people stick on?

Coffee informative link thanks.

It seems just as we are probably on the brink of vaccines becoming available, along comes something to potentially scupper it all. And yes once again it's due to our abuse of animals.

We keep chickens and pigs locked up in cages and barns in horrible conditions too. It must be hell on earth for so many. There seems to be no end of ways to abuse animals for our own gain. Maybe mother nature is fighting back.

What rock have I been living under? I didn't even know what a bloody mink was until I just googled it.
And yes apparently their fur is used for eyelashes 🤢.

At the risk of turning this thread into a Brexit debate, I would point out that if we end up with US farming standards rather than EU ones we will definitely be heading in the wrong direction on animal welfare.

Interesting the mutation of covid in Spain was traced back to a farm in the north. It does make you wonder. We have also had two outbreaks of avian flu one in Kent and one really bad one in Cheshire.

Spread of mutated coronavirus in Danish mink ‘hits all the scary buttons,’ but fears may be overblown.
www.statnews.com/2020/11/05/spread-of-mutated-coronavirus-in-danish-mink-hits-all-the-scary-buttons-but-fears-may-be-overblown/?

Yeah this is a good piece from New Scientist. Seems quite balanced:-

www.newscientist.com/article/2259178-is-a-dangerous-new-coronavirus-strain-circulating-in-farmed-minks/

Course the irony is vaccines will have been tested on lab monkeys.

What you gonna do? A tricky moral dilemma?

I was shocked there were so many fur farms still operating. I think it was banned in U.K. since 2000 so hadn’t realised it was still so big in Europe. And used in false eyelashes! I had no idea.
On pandemic front, it is a big worry. That part of Denmark is now in strict lockdown, schools closed, rail links etc shut down. Just hope Sweden & US are being equally vigilant about outbreaks on their mink farms.
And seriously, we need to end this kind of intensive farming. It’s wrong on so many levels.

being vegan is looking more attractive by the day.