Irish chief medical officer calls for mink cull as “a matter of urgency” LIMERICK, COPENHAGEN––Not even Guinness bottle caps are flipping, let alone champagne corks popping, in celebration of the anticipated imminent end of mink breeding in Ireland, Denmark, the Netherlands, Italy, Poland, France, and perhaps even Greece and Spain. Mink massacres underway in […]
Mink ranching survives in Denmark despite risky COVID-19 mutation
Danish mink industry was to be liquidated from fear that COVID-19 mutation could neutralize vaccines in development COPENHAGEN, Denmark––The Danish mink industry, on the verge of liquidation as of November 4, 2020 to control a COVID-19 coronavirus mutation, appears to have politically mobilized to win a reprieve––for the mink ranchers, however, not the mink […]
Mink the missing link? COVID-19 deaths & new data suggest yes.
Dutch findings come as COVID-19 hits mink farms & humans in Wisconsin & Utah GREEN BAY, Wisconsin; SALT LAKE CITY, Utah––Which came first, the COVID-19 coronavirus infecting humans, or infecting mink? No one right now knows for sure whether mink might have been the incubator species through which COVID-19 passed from horseshoe bats in […]
Why Europe will not eat U.S. & Australian wild horses
Dutch & Danish seizures of illegally trafficked German horse meat do not mean revived demand WASHINGTON D.C., BRUSSELS––Yes, the Bureau of Land Management under Donald Trump appointee William Perry Pendley is desperately eager to dispose of as many as 45,000 wild horses in holding pens, plus about 68,000 of the estimated 95,000 wild horses […]
“That touch of mink” & COVID-19: Dutch outbreak hints mink may be host
Fur farming to end in The Netherlands by 2024 WAGENINGEN, The Netherlands––The discovery that ranched mink can become infected with the COVID-19 coronavirus may lend momentum to the Dutch national plan to phase out mink farming entirely by 2024. Concern that mink themselves might become a COVID-19 reservoir may also dampen Chinese enthusiasm for rebuilding […]
Iconic animal use events fall to COVID-19: “Running of the bulls” is latest
“Social distancing” also shuts down SeaWorld, seal hunt, fur auctions, Kentucky Derby, & the carriage horses in Central Park PAMPLONA, Spain ––The 700-year-old Festival of San Fermin, featuring bullfights and the “running of the bulls” through the cobbled streets of the oldest part of Pamplona, Spain, was on April 21, 2020 indefinitely postponed due […]
Why U.S. furriers don’t advertise much any more
Mink coat ads vanish from newsprint SACRAMENTO, California––A furrier somewhere in the U.S. may yet buy a page of advertising, in what little remains of 2019, in one of the thousands of newspapers that are electronically searchable at www.NewspaperArchive.com. As of December 29, 2019, however, the year appeared to be ending without a single NewspaperArchive […]
Drove out the snakes? What did St. Patrick do with the Irish wolves?
He made friends with them! DUBLIN, TEL AVIV, ROME––As of St. Patrick’s Day 2019, there are still no wild snakes in Ireland, more than 1,660 years after the patron saint of Ireland allegedly drove them all out. Paleontologists say there were never any wild snakes in Ireland in the first place. But there were […]
Walls, boar purges, & no-man’s-land fail to stop African swine fever
Wild boar to blame for only 1% of outbreaks, Chinese learn PARIS, France––Donald Trump is not the only world leader who has yet to learn that walls don’t work––not if the goal is really to keep a foreign threat out, as opposed to presenting the appearance to a political base of doing something drastic […]
Stink over conditions at skunk & ferret “fur farm”
SAEN seeks Animal Welfare Act charges against “fur farm” that appears to breed animals mostly for laboratories & the pet trade NEW SHARON, Iowa––If the 85-year-old Ruby Fur Farm was just a fur farm, producing mink or fox pelts for the garment industry, it would not be subject to unannounced visits from the USDA […]