The well-known and widely circulated story of the “culling” of around 17 million mink in the autumn of 2020, the government’s unplanned assault on the careless mink breeders and private property rights, and the subsequent deployment of the dead minks in giant pits that swelled disgustingly under the putrefaction process, is the prevailing story regarding what has become the main story regarding Covid-19 and the pandemic that seriously hit Denmark in the month of February/March 2020.
The Danish author, Mathilde Walter Clark, makes an admirable and brave effort to put other and new perspectives on that story in her excellent book “Det blinde øe” from 2023.
The press treated the Minks case uncritically
We often brag regarding the critical, independent press in Denmark. Mathilde Clark documents that the critical press was completely and utterly in the wake of the mink industry, Kopenhagen Fur, the Fur Breeders’ Association and the individual mink producers.
The press uncritically turned the scandalous mink story into a tear-jerking melodrama for the poor mink breeders who were robbed of their dear livelihood and had an honorable branch of Danish animal breeding step into the dirt.
The tears were in the eyes of every mink breeder in the whole of Jutland, and the sympathy in the press and among politicians was quite unique whipped up to hysterical heights. What was up and down, true and false, fact and bluster in this matter was completely ignored.
Most people remember March 11, 2020, because the WHO declared SARS-CoV-2 a pandemic and Mette Frederiksen, the Prime Minister, shut down Denmark.
I stood in Vrejlev church in the evening rehearsing for a concert.
Everything was cancelled.
But it wasn’t like the mink industry came under suspicion right away. Of all countries in the West, Denmark had been incredibly patient with mink breeding, regardless of the fact that there had been a critical TV2 documentary “Fur inside out” in 2009.
In many countries, the breeding and production of mink was prohibited, primarily because the animals’ living conditions were extremely poor, if not animal cruelty.
Confining a wild predator in a small wire cage with others was in every – EVERY – respect contrary to the animal’s nature. The mink’s ideological advocates, who probably only thought of the fur’s value in kroner and øre, claimed that the animal had been “domesticated”, which is so much an insinuation that it must be called a lie.
Denmark was the last country to shut down the mink industry
Everywhere except in Denmark, the authorities decided at the first confirmed infection on a mink farm that the business should be shut down. The mink farms were “virus factories”; the individual mink a petri dish for virus mutations. In Denmark, where everything was done more “reasonably” than everywhere else, zone boundaries were created around the infected mink farms, 7.8 kilometer zones. It was done because the mink industry should benefit from the benefit of the doubt, and this regardless of the fact that the infection continued on farm following farm – and without respect for the demarcated zones.
One might of course hope that the Covid-19 infection would gradually stop and not jump from Jutland to the islands etc.
On 4 November 2020, the government then decided, following advice from the virological expertise, to gas all mink and de facto close down the industry.
All discussion then came to be regarding, and still does, as if Denmark were the only country where the spread of the virus on the mink farms did not pose an existential threat to the population. Not true?
The perspective is that the private property right, which is limited by the consideration of the public good in the Constitution itself, and the economic interests of the mink breeders were more important than anything else, namely the public good, including such “peripheral” things as the health and survival of the population and the well-being of the animals.
The Chinese mink industry influenced the Danish market
China plays an extremely large role in mink history. In the first place, China was probably the place, the wet market in Wuhan, where the virus Covid-19 jumped from animals to humans and started the pandemic. Unfortunately, it is not clear exactly whether the jump happened from a special bat to humans in 2019, when the first were hospitalized in Wuhan with respiratory problems. Whether there have been “intermediate hosts” – the spread of infection on the large Chinese mink farms – has simply not been investigated. Sad enough.
China had (has?) at least a large mink industry, but the demand was much greater, and Danish mink exports went mainly to China. That is, the mink skins; the bodies ended up in the meat-and-bones grinder. It was, following all, a quite common practice, which, however, took on almost diabolical dimensions, when the minks had to be gassed at the state’s request. Gassing for the sake of the market is another matter!
China was the largest buyer of Danish mink fur. But the Chinese market was unstable. Especially following Xi Jingping became the president of the country in 2013. He wanted to limit the import of foreign luxury goods and he wanted to eradicate corruption. One of the gateways to the Chinese market for Danish mink went through Hong Kong, which had no import duties on foreign goods. It had China and extra high tariffs on luxury goods.
A bit of bribery by Chinese customs officials ensured that Danish mink skins entered the Chinese market at a reasonable price.
Didn’t Kopenhagen Fur know that?
And the very largest mink owner in Denmark was not a Dane, but a Hong Kong Chinese, Pat Wong, owner of approximately 15/20 farms, which is responsible for a very large compensation for the expropriation of the mink industry in November 2020.
Congratulations on the.
The amount for the total compensation is currently approximately DKK 30 billion.
It was a known fact that the mink industry had been on the deroute since 2013. The demand for skins fell, production increased – in Denmark a method had been found for bitches to give birth to six puppies per litter, in China only 3, which scientific gain was provided by party-funded university research – and the deficit grew.
In 2019, a mink farm had an average debt of DKK 700,000. The compensation issue was in all respects in favor of the mink breeders: In Denmark, we have a solid tradition of treating mink producers brilliantly, supported by research into feed and optimized breeding. Sales of mink skins have reportedly been a financial pillar of Danish exports, we believe.
Eight billion kroner in foreign currency income and several thousand in employment, and by the way are completely indifferent to all the circumstances of mink breeding.
Greed and vanity are colossal imperatives in this world
Mathilde Walter Clark’s book is called “Det blinde øe” for good reason.
The book is an eye-opener that uncovers all the dark sides of Danish mink breeding that everyone else blindfolded. It is based on extensive research of sources – both here in the country, abroad and not least China.
Human greed and vanity are colossal imperatives in this world. Vanity regarding mink skins was greatly waning, yes – it had become downright bad taste to dress in mink fur, ermine, silver fox or chinchilla, but Danish mink production continued in top gear as if nothing had happened.
Then a virus, SARS-CoV-2, jumped from the horse-nosed bat to a Chinese in Wuhan, we assume, and that changed everything in the world – except in Danish mink breeding, which was protected and protected until you dared not protect it longer and made quick, political decisions, which today are the very pivot point in the history of the last major pandemic this world has experienced.
What a shift in perspective!
Great that Mathilde Walter Clark brings the matter into the right proportions.
2024-03-02 20:07:33
#press #uncritically #turned #mink #story #tearjerking #melodrama
