ARCHIVED - 1,100 mink culled in northern Spain after one tested positive for Covid

More calls for a ban on all mink farming as ethical concerns are exacerbated by the Covid risk

Calls for mink farming to be banned and all animals culled have grown louder in Spain since the reports of a second coronavirus outbreak at a farm in Galicia earlier this month, and it has now been announced that a third such business has been found to be affected in the region of Castilla y León.

The farm is in the municipality of Navatalgordo (in the province of Ávila), where one animal has tested positive for Covid-19. Given the high degree of transmission from mink to humans the regional government has ordered that all 1,010 mink at the premises be culled in order to protect public health.

There are just 38 mink farms in Spain, 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. Similar steps have been implemented in Denmark, which before 2020 was the leading producer of mink in the world.