ARCHIVED - Spanish mink breeders under pressure again after Covid outbreak at Galicia farm

3,100 mink are to be culled but calls for a halt to all mink farming meet with resistance

Calls for a halt to all mink farming in Spain are likely to be intensified this week following another outbreak of coronavirus at an establishment in Galicia, where an order to cull all 3,100 of the animals being reared in at a farm in A Baña has been issued by the regional government.

According to the authorities the likely source of the infection was the two people who look after the mink at the farm: after the outbreak was detected both returned negative PCR tests but positive results in antibody testing, indicating that they had previously been infected although without symptoms.

The government of Galicia also reports that the national and EU authorities have been informed and that the outbreak was detected as a result of inconclusive test results being obtained in December. The tests were carried out during the inspections which form part of the protocols at mink farms throughout the country in order to control possible SARS-CoV-2 outbreaks.

It has been established that coronavirus can be transmitted with relative ease from humans to mink, and more recently, from mink to humans, with mutations, and this has already resulted in the culling of 17 million animals in Denmark and similarly dramatic action being taken in other countries such as the Netherlands.

Second confirmed mink-related outbreak in Spain
The outbreak in A Baña is the second reported at a mink farm in Spain: in July the regional government of Aragón reacted to the worries of mink-borne Covid transmission by ordering the slaughter of 92,700 mink on a farm in La Puebla de Valverde, in the province of Teruel, after a series of tests carried out over a two-month period confirmed contagion.

However, the authorities in Galicia are resisting pressure to close down all of the 25 mink farms in the region, which currently contain a total of 69,186 breeding animals. The government explains that ever since the first cases of Covid in mink were reported in the Netherlands it has been permanently in contact with those working in the sector to explain the risks and to ensure that the necessary protocols are implemented without exception. José Balseiros, the Director of Farming and Agriculture in Galicia, even goes so far as to claim that if the regional government extends its order to other concerns it will be overstepping its powers.

Agavi, the Spanish association of Mink Breeders, also defends the need for farming to continue and underlines that in the case of A Baña all of the relevant protocols were followed to the letter. In addition, the association points out that in this country all employees are permanent – seasonal workers are not taken on as they were in the past in the Netherlands and Denmark – and that farms are located away from built-up areas and at significant distances from each other.

But after the outbreak in the summer there were numerous calls for this farming activity to be banned in Spain, and almost inevitably these will now be renewed. In November the WWF tweeted “In Spain there are still 38 American mink farms, a reservoir of # COVID_19 that can favour mutations which render vaccines useless. We cannot take more risks”, and similar messages are now appearing following this second mink outbreak in the north of the country.

Before 2020 Denmark was the leading producer of mink in the world and the sector is far smaller in Spain with a total of just 38 mink farms, of which 31 are in Galicia and the remainder in Aragón, the Basque Country, Castilla y León and Valencia. Even so, these concerns produce 750,000 pelts a year but the activity has been targeted by animal rights campaigners on ethical grounds for years, and plans already existed to phase the sector out in the Netherlands by 2024 before the coronavirus risk led to the process being accelerated last year.

Before the outbreak in Aragón last year animal welfare rules were in place at mink farms everywhere in Spain except in Galicia, despite the fact that 90 per cent of the country’s production is in the region.
As long ago as June last year the WWF demanded that the Spanish government close down all mink farms immediately, describing them as a “biological time bombs”, a phrase used again today calling for the total closure of all mink farms. In July the Spanish mink breeders’ association accepted the scientific evidence that animals were becoming infected with Covid-19 but not that reverse transmission was taking place, and in August the WWF again demanded that the example of the Netherlands and Denmark be followed in this country.