The U.S. Department of Agriculture demonstrated last week that the mink from two Utah fur farms died after an infection with the coronavirus that causes Covid-19 in humans, Eli Cahan reports for the journal Science.
Farmers learned that anything came after a strong buildup of mink deaths before this month. Normally, two or three of the animals die every day on the farm, however, in early August, “these mortality rates soared in the sky,” Bradie Jill Jones, spokesman for the Utah Department of Health and Agriculture, told the New York Times. Azi Paybarah.
Farmers called the Ministry of Health and Agriculture to report the stage on August 6. They then sent dead animals to veterinary pathologist Tom of Utah State University for further study. won a “large number” of examples of dead mink, but only a few were in order, he told the journal Science.
His lungs were “wet, heavy, red and angry,” he told Science, all symptoms of pneumonia. The mink lungs also resembled the mink lungs that hit the coronavirus in Europe. Tests conducted through a Washington State University lab revealed that five of the deceased mink were inflamed with the virus, and the USDA demonstrated it, says Karin Brulliard of The Washington Post.
Utah farms will “composta” the mink assigned to the site, Jones told the New York Times, “so that these animals do not leave the farms where those infections have occurred.
The first cases of coronavirus in mink gave the impression in Europe this spring. Since then, fur farms in the United States have had greater biosecurity measures by expanding the use of non-public protective devices such as masks, gloves and rubber boots, mink farmer Clayton Beckstead, also regional director of the Utah Farm Bureau, told The Washington Post. .
Last May, researchers in the Netherlands discovered evidence that the mink transmitted the coronavirus to at least two agricultural workers, Dina Fine Maron reported for National Geographic at the time. Researchers pressed that this option does not pose a threat to the public, as the virus was not discovered outdoors in farm buildings.
But since then, more than a million mink on farms in the Netherlands and Spain have been shot as a precaution, Aritz Parra and Mike Corder for The Associated Press.
“With evidence of the transmission of mink to farm humans, we will have to be heavily involved in the possibility of inflamed pets passing on their infection to US,” Cary Studies Institute ecologist Richard Ostfeld told AP.
But Michael Whelan, chief executive of Fur Commission USA, which represents mink fur producers, does not expect the virus to spread on American farms.
“We don’t expect an epidemic like the one that’s happening in Europe. The mink industry has taken biosecurity very seriously for many years,” Whelan told the New York Times. He added: “Our mink farms are spread over a much larger domain than in Europe.”
Utah is the largest manufacturer of mink skins in the United States, Wisconsin, according to the New York Times. Most U.S. mink are sold to buyers in China, but sales have slowed due to adjustments in economic policy and reduced travel amid the pandemic, the Washington Post reports.
Cases on U.S. farms threaten the mink farming industry if farms are required to sacrifice their animals, Science says, but the spread is also troubling because there is a possibility that the virus will be dead to spread to animals.
Dean Taylor, a Utah state veterinarian, tells Science that mink have “great implications… [they deserve] everyone’s attention.”
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