The culling of the entire mink population in Denmark took another unpleasant turn over the weekend as a majority of parties in parliament agreed to dig up millions of rotting carcasses to safeguard groundwater, streams and lakes from pollution.
The exhumation will not start until May next year to ensure that it will be safe to handle the COVID-19 infected mink, the Danish minister of Food, Fish and Agriculture, Rasmus Prehn, said in a press statement published on 20th December.
The deal came after NGOs and locals voiced their concerns over the mass graves set up after the government’s order to cull 15.4 million mink in the country due to large outbreaks of COVID-19 in and around mink farms.
The rushed large-scale culling operation was decided after a mutation of the novel coronavirus known as Cluster 5 had been detected in Danish mink and 12 humans in the western part of Denmark where the mink farms are most concentrated.
Fearing that the new strain could have implications for the development and efficacy of vaccines, the centre-left Danish government ordered all mink to be culled and the mink farming industry has largely closed down at least until the end of 2021.
Rasmus Prehn, a Social Democrat, described the agreement reached on Sunday as an early Christmas present. The mink culling operation has been a highly contentious political issue in Denmark because of the severe implications to the country’s fur industry and farmers, and because the government jumped the gun in early November and ordered it without having the needed legislation in place.
The deal to have four million dead mink dug up again was a slim victory agreed on by a narrow centre-left majority, without any members of the opposition.
The minister said the decision to postpone the exhumation for several months was taken due to the risk of catching COVID-19 from the dead animals and is supported by an environmental assessment, according to which the local groundwater, streams and lakes are unaffected for the time being.
Rasmus Prehn said: “I fully understand that the local population would rather see the mink out of the ground today than tomorrow, but I have full faith in the environmental authorities.
“Given that the mink can still transmit COVID-19, the gain of digging them up a few months earlier does not match the risk of doing so.”
The mink were buried in shallow mass graves in army training terrain in the northern part of Jutland, which is the peninsula that shares a border with Germany, because incineration plants ran out of capacity when the killing was at its height in November.
At the time, locals complained of the near vicinity of freshwater reserves and residential areas. One mass-grave was based merely 400 metres from a local swimming lake, and in some places carcasses started resurfacing out of the shallow graves.
The fur and farming industries, as well as political opposition, have criticised the government for being too heavy-handed and moving too fast in dealing with the issue.
Rasmus Prehn’s predecessor Mogens Jensen resigned on 18th November after heavy pressure because of his role in the decision to move ahead with the forced culling without securing a legal mandate first, and in early December the government agreed to launch a parliamentary probe into the process.
Containers overflowing with dead mink 
Containers overflowing with dead mink
It is in this light that Rasmus Prehn declared himself a “happy minister” when announcing the deal.
He said in a statement that the dug up mink will be transferred to incineration plants to be deposed off. The operation will commence in late May 2021 and conclude by mid-July.
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Story By: Flemming Emil Hansen, Sub-Editor: Marija Stojkoska, Agency: Real Press
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