Qualla: 2020 Danish Mink Cull

2020 Danish Mink Cull: Introduction

Sat, 05 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Patrick Reijnders, CC BY-SA 3.0. The order came on a Wednesday. On 4 November 2020, Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen told a press conference that it was necessary to cull all mink in Denmark, and that this applied to the breeding animals as well. Denmark was the largest mink fur producer in the world, supplying some 40 percent of global pelts from roughly 1,100 farms, most of them family businesses in Jutland. Within a day the responsible minister had been told the order might have no legal basis. Within four days the prime minister knew too. By 19 November about 15.5 million animals were dead, and the country was two years from the end of the argument about it.

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Image: Patrick Reijnders | CC BY-SA 3.0

2020 Danish Mink Cull: Cluster 5

Sat, 05 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ramblersen, CC BY-SA 4.0. Mink are unusually susceptible to SARS-CoV-2, and they are farmed in long sheds holding thousands of animals in close rows — conditions in which a respiratory virus moves fast and, more worryingly, moves back into the people who work there. Infection was first documented on Danis...

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Image: Ramblersen | CC BY-SA 4.0

2020 Danish Mink Cull: The Fourth of November

Sat, 05 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit European People's Party, CC BY 2.0. The industry the government was about to end was worth DKK 2.5 billion in 2019, with exports of roughly €1.1 billion a year. It was also, for well over a thousand families, the thing their parents and grandparents had built. The clause about breeding animals mattered most to them...

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Image: European People's Party | CC BY 2.0

2020 Danish Mink Cull: No Law Behind It

Sat, 05 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Christian Ursilva from København, Danmark, CC BY-SA 4.0. Danish law allowed culling inside infection zones. It did not allow the state to order the killing of healthy mink outside them, and the Veterinary and Food Agency had raised the problem shortly before the press conference. Minister of Food Mogens Jensen was told on 5 November. F...

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Image: Christian Ursilva from København, Danmark | CC BY-SA 4.0

2020 Danish Mink Cull: Trenches in the Training Ground

Sat, 05 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Fred Romero from Paris, France, CC BY 2.0. Fifteen million carcasses had to go somewhere, and the speed of the operation outran the incinerators. Between 5 and 19 November roughly three million mink were buried in trenches in military training areas — at Nørre Felding, just southwest of Holstebro, and at Kølvrå near Karup...

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Image: Fred Romero from Paris, France | CC BY 2.0

2020 Danish Mink Cull: The Commission and the Bill

Sat, 05 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Marginataen, CC0. The Mink Commission was established on 23 April 2021 and reported on 30 June 2022. It found that what was said at the press conference had been objectively grossly misleading, but that Frederiksen neither knew this nor intended it, and that ministers learned of the legal problem ...

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Image: Marginataen | CC0