The Netherlands has started slaughtering tens of thousands of farmed mink

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Veterinary experts from the Netherlands have confirmed that the coronavirus which affects mink in several Dutch farms is transmissible to humans. The services of the Batavian veterinary administration launched this Saturday the slaughter of mink from the first of the seven farms concerned. Fur farming will be banned in the Netherlands from 2024 and animal welfare associations will demonstrate in The Hague on Monday to bring the date forward to this year.

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In total, several tens of thousands of mink will be slaughtered, since since the confirmation of the transmission of the coronavirus from animal to man, thousands of females have given birth.

It was in Deurne, near Eindhoven in the south of the Netherlands that the slaughter began this Saturday. It is the mink farming employees who carry out the operation themselves. In this case, there are fifteen hundred females and their litters of five young on average. Mink euthanasia is done by falling asleep with carbon monoxide, in the same way as during the annual slaughter in November for skins.

A second case of contamination of a farmer by a mink was confirmed two weeks ago, but the slaughtering does not start until now because two association of defense of the animals had filed a summary procedure. The judge rejected this Friday the appeal of the two associations.

Five other mink farms are located in the same province of North Brabant and another is a few kilometers away in the neighboring province of Limburg. We are here in the Dutch region where the largest focus of Covid-19 has been identified and the Batavian authorities do not want to run any risk at a time when the semi-containment measures which had been imposed are lifted one after the other in the Nederlands.

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