Ireland will cull 120,000 minke animals to prevent the spread of Coronavirus
The impact of the mutation of the new coronavirus on mink is growing. On the 19th, the Irish Ministry of Agriculture requested the culling of the minks in the country’s three mink farms to prevent the spread of the mutant coronavirus.
According to the Irish Radio and Television (RTÉ) and the US political news website Politico reported on the 19th, the Irish Ministry of Agriculture said on the same day that it had notified the owners of three mink farms in Laois, Kerry and Donegal counties.
In order to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, the mink they breed will be culled. The specific culling plan has not yet been introduced, and about 120,000 mink are involved in the culling.
However, according to the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), the farms can still peel off the skins of these minks to fulfill customer orders.
The breeders of these three mink farms criticized the government for culling healthy minks, saying that this action has no scientific or legal basis and will also cost them their livelihoods.
They stated that Denmark’s recent decision to culling mink was based on the sharp increase in the number of mink-infected farms in the country, but this was due to the fact that the farms were clustered in the same area, and the farms involved in the culling in Ireland were located in three different areas.
Local rural areas.
Tony Hollohan, the chief medical officer of the Irish Ministry of Health, once told the Ministry of Agriculture that if the new coronavirus variant found in Denmark becomes the main strain of the virus, mink farms will pose a continuing risk to public health, so mink needs to be culled.
Gerald Barry, a virologist at the University of Dublin, described Ireland’s culling of mink as an “overreaction.” He told Irish Radio and Television that the new coronavirus has been changing and there is no evidence that the virus variants found in Danish mink are more dangerous or easier to spread.
The Danish National Serum Institute previously found that a variant of the new coronavirus in mink is more difficult to neutralize by antibodies, which may affect the effectiveness of the new coronavirus vaccine. But Barry said that all the new coronavirus vaccines developed will be suitable for new virus variants.
According to previous reports by The Paper, seven countries and regions including Denmark have reported cases of human mink-related infections with the mutant new coronavirus, but not Ireland. Denmark decided to culminate all domestic mink farms earlier this month, but this order caused political controversy and was subsequently suspended.
In addition, the Netherlands, Spain, Greece and other countries have also taken measures to culminate minks infected with the coronavirus, and Poland has begun to test minks for coronavirus.
