Animal Wellness Action is supporting Senate Bill 832, a bill sponsored by state Sen. Floyd Prozanski that aims to close down the small number of industrial mink farms in Oregon and help the farmers transition to other commodities or lines of work. The legislation will be heard by the Senate Committee on Natural Resources and Wildfire Recovery on April 5.

It’s true that animal welfare advocates have long sought to end commerce in fur. As the grandson of an Idaho mink farmer, who spent much of my childhood and youth on mink farms, I can attest to the inhumane conditions on those operations and the undeniable misery endured by the animals.

But the legislative and regulatory efforts to regulate mink in Oregon have more to do with protecting human health than ending inhumane mink farms. Mink are uniquely susceptible to the coronavirus, which they easily catch from infected farm workers. In Denmark, the world’s leading producer of mink pelts, scientists discovered the virus uses the mink to mutate into a pathogen that is transmissible back to people, and in a form that could be resistant to vaccines.

That’s why Denmark culled all 17 million of the mink raised on over 1,100 mink farms and provided farmers with a generous relief package. Other European nations, responding to outbreaks of their own, have similarly moved to shutter their mink farms.

While other countries have moved swiftly to eliminate the threat posed by mink farms, authorities in the U.S. and the states where outbreaks have occurred, including Oregon, have largely shrugged off the threat and taken a “wait and see” approach. Their ho-hum attitude was matched by an alarming lack of transparency; after the coronavirus outbreak on an Oregon mink farm, state agencies refused to disclose to the public many important details, including the location of the farm where the outbreak occurred. In Oregon, as in other mink-producing states, agencies appear more concerned about protecting the viability of their mink industries than in informing and protecting the public at large.

The Oregon outbreak was anomalous in a couple respects. First, while mink in other countries and states quickly succumbed to COVID-19, the Oregon mink got sick, but then recovered. Officials also noted that captive mink that escaped from the farm and were later trapped, tested positive for the virus. Farmed mink that escape (a frequent occurrence on factory mink farms) pose a major threat to our native wildlife, including wild mink and other mustelid species, such as fishers, martens, and badgers. Should those creatures catch the virus, they could potentially transmit the disease to a trapper or other human who comes in contact with them.

It would be one thing if mink were being raised to supply a much-needed product for consumers in the U.S. But they’re not. Americans have largely sworn off fur as a luxury fashion item, so the pelts being raised on Oregon mink farms are destined for China, where a small segment of the population still wears fur. Why should Oregonians be expected to tolerate a grave public health threat for the sake of a product destined for the very country where COVID-19 started?

The global pandemics that have resulted in millions of human deaths started as a direct result of our unhealthy relationship with wildlife, especially wildlife raised on factory farms. Scientists are warning that if we don’t move to eliminate this threat, COVID-19 might look like a comparatively benign precursor to a far deadlier pandemic. Thankfully, some Oregon lawmakers are heeding that warning and moving decisively to mitigate the threat for the people of our state.

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