A new outbreak of coronavirus at a mink farm in Italy highlights the need for an EU ban
A new outbreak of the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 at a mink farm in Lombardy, Italy, has been reported. The outbreak was identified as early as October 2024 but was not publicly reported by health authorities. Approximately 900 minks were culled between the end of October and the beginning of November.
This is the fifth coronavirus outbreak at mink farms in Italy since 2020. The first outbreaks occurred in 2020 and 2021 in Capralba and Villa del Conte, despite the biosecurity measures introduced in 2020. Later outbreaks affected a mink farm in Galeata in 2022 and another in Calvagese della Riviera in 2023. Italy has a ban on mink farming that came into force in January 2022, but as it is also illegal to kill the remaining mink, hundreds of minks still remain on mink farms.
− The conditions these minks are forced to live in are terrible, and it is highly unacceptable that the authorities have not been transparent about what happened until now, says Benny Andersson, CEO for Project 1882.
The Italian animal rights organization LAV published the report "Fashion Spillover" in 2022, which highlighted serious health issues at mink farms and inadequate management by national institutions and health authorities during the pandemic. Even today, neither animals nor humans can feel safe, given the ineffectiveness of biosecurity measures in preventing virus outbreaks in intensive farms with particularly susceptible animals.
− Project 1882 calls for immediate action to free the remaining 400 minks still kept in cages and to protect public health. This also clearly shows that a comprehensive EU ban is needed in line with Fur Free Europe, concludes Benny Andersson
For over 50 years, Project 1882 has fought to stop fur farms by putting pressure on the EU and Swedish authorities. Among other things, this has led to the Swedish government allocating a decommissioning subsidy that in practice will mean the end of the fur industry in the country. Project 1882 was one of the organizations behind the citizens' initiative Fur Free Europe, which collected more than 1,5 million signatures from EU citizens.
Please support our work to close all fur farms in the EU by making a donation.
