Naaju Breaking News, Live Updates, Latest Headlines, Viral News, Top Stories, Trending Topics, Videos
[ad_1]
In the country a political crisis has set in since the government admitted that the slaughter was ordered without a legal basis, since the law only allows the slaughter of animals on farms with detected cases and their relatives, but not all minks.
The controversy has already cost his post to the Minister of Agriculture, Mogens Jensen, who resigned on November 18.
But the opposition also called for the resignation of Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen from the Social Democratic Party.
The Danish press has already given a name to the crisis: minkgate (the mink scandal).
And a study from Aarhus University in that country estimates that confidence in the government has fallen by 20% since last July.
The Frederiksen government ordered the cull, arguing that a coronavirus mutation in mink could infect humans and compromise the effectiveness of a new vaccine.
This measure has generated a division of opinion within the scientific community. While some understood the sacrifice, others noted that it was too early to determine if the mutation involved a real risk.
Denmark is the world’s leading producer of mink fur, and the movement devastated this industry.
The head of the mink breeders association, Tage Pedersen, said the slaughter was a disaster for Danish fur producers, a sector that employs around 6,000 people and is worth $ 800 million a year in exported fur, a reported the Reuters news agency.
Request for resignation
“It was a mistake, a regrettable mistake,” apologized to his parliament in early November, after it was made public that the sacrifice of all visions had no legal basis.
The government has tried to address this by speeding up negotiation of emergency legislation to give legal cover to the measure and to ban mink farming until 2022, although the criticisms are not stopping.
A few days later, there was the resignation of the Minister of Agriculture, Mogens Jensen.
“I want the Prime Minister to do the same. I want her to recognize that when she makes a mistake, it is her responsibility,” Opposition Leader Jakob Elleman-Jensen of the Liberal Party told the time.
His position was supported by other parties, such as the People’s Party, and other members of parliament called for an investigation to determine whether the government knowingly violated the law.
But not only the illegality with which the massacre was ordered is criticized, but also possible negligence in the way the slaughtered mink were buried.
Environmental impact
Opposition members are now calling on the government to exhume millions of mink buried in mass graves.
The demand comes after the animals have started to resurface due to nitrogen and phosphorus gases they give off as they decompose.
The new agriculture minister, Rasmus Prehn, said last Friday that he supported the idea of exhuming the mink and incinerating it, but that it required approval from the environmental protection agency.
Danish television channel TV2 has collected statements from legal experts claiming that the Danish government carried out the mass burials without assessing the impact on the environment.
Environment Minister Lea Wermelin spoke to Parliament last Friday in a session devoted to the mink crisis.
Wermelin admitted that mass burials had not been the best method and that cremation would have been preferable. However, he justified that there was no other way to urgently deal with such a number of dead animals.
Liberal Environment spokesperson Thomas Danielsen said “This case is full of errors and illegalities.”
The Danish chain DR puts 11 million mink which until last Friday had been slaughtered.
Apologies between tears
During a visit to an empty mink farm last Thursday, the Prime Minister was shocked by the situation.
“We have two generations of very skilled mink breeders, father and son, who in a very short time have seen their lives turned upside down, and that has been sad for them. I’m sorry. For me too,” he said. he says, getting up. wiped away her tears.
The country has approximately 1,100 farms and the government continues to negotiate compensation for mink farmers with the rest of the parties.
Meanwhile, the mutation that drove the movement appears to be under control. Last week, AFP reports, the Danish government concluded that this potential threat had “probably disappeared” in the absence of new cases.
.
[ad_2]
Source link
