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Mink from two Utah farms became the first in the United States to test positive for the coronavirus, state and federal officials said on Monday.
Five animals on farms have tested positive for the virus, but many more are believed to be infected due to a recent increase in mink deaths on farms, Bradie Jill Jones, spokesperson for the Utah Department of Health and Agriculture, said. Typically, two or three mink die per day on a farm, she says.
“Growers started to worry early last week when these death rates exploded in the sky,” Ms. Jones said. The owners of the two farms, whom authorities have refused to identify, have contacted a veterinarian who alerted agriculture officials.
Mink samples were tested at the Utah Veterinary Diagnostic Lab and the Washington Animal Disease Diagnostic Lab, officials said. These results were later confirmed by tests performed at the National Veterinary Services Laboratories of the United States Department of Agriculture.
Several workers at both farms have also tested positive for the coronavirus, Ms. Jones said, but the ministry has not determined whether these infections are related to the farm. There is no evidence that animals play a significant role in spreading the virus to humans, according to the Federal Department of Agriculture.
Ms Jones said the farms will “compost” the affected mink on site “so that these animals do not leave the farms where these infections have occurred.”
Of the 2.7 million mink pelts produced in the United States last year, more than half a million came from Utah, according to federal data. The only state to produce more was Wisconsin, which produced just over a million mink skins.
“Mink was known to be susceptible” to the virus following an outbreak on several farms in the Netherlands, the United States Department of Agriculture said Monday in a statement announcing the infections in Utah. In June, Thousands of mink have been slaughtered in Spain and the Netherlands on suspicion of transmitting the disease to humans.
Michael Whelan, executive director of the trade organization representing mink producers in the United States, said he was not concerned about a similar and widespread outbreak in mink in the United States. “Our mink farms are spread over a much larger area than in Europe,” he said in an interview. In the Netherlands, affected mink farms have been clustered together and in areas with a high rate of infected humans, he said.
“We do not expect an epidemic like what is happening in Europe,” he said. “The mink industry has taken biosecurity very seriously for many years.”
Kitty Bloch, executive director and president of the Humane Society of the United States, said the outbreak in Utah was “a big deal.”
“If you want to face the next pandemic, you have to look at our relationship with animals,” she said. “The health and conditions in which we put these animals have an impact on our health. We cannot separate them.
In April, several tigers and lions at a New York zoo tested positive for the virus.
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