'Cabinet quickly puts an end to mink farming'

The cabinet will accelerate the end to mink farming in the Netherlands. All mink farms are being bought out and have to close within six months. Carola Schouten, the Minister of Agriculture, is allocating €180 million for this. The decision has to do with the many infections of the coronavirus on mink farms.

Various media report this. According to the reports, Schouten will announce tomorrow (Friday) that all mink farms in the Netherlands must be culled and closed by March 21, 2021. This concerns 120 companies. The end of Dutch mink farming was originally planned in 2013, in accordance with an earlier decision of the cabinet in 2024. 

In recent months, the coronavirus has proliferated on many mink farms. So far, the virus has been detected on more than 40 farms, all of which have been culled as a preventive measure. According to the reports, the cabinet will not decide to remove all mink farms as a preventive measure. The danger to public health - the risk of the virus being transmitted from mink to humans is small - is too small for that. 

D66: Consciously infecting
Schouten is having an investigation into why so many minks are infected with the coronavirus on so many farms, and it is also being checked whether the mink farms are complying with the corona measures properly. D66 raised serious questions about this yesterday (Wednesday). MP Tjeerd de Groot suspects that mink farmers themselves had a hand in the spread of the virus. It would be financially more advantageous for mink companies to receive compensation from the cabinet than to sell the pelts on the market.

Farmers Defense Force calls De Groot's comments in a statement 'zum vomit' and speaks of libel and slander. The farmers' movement wants De Groot to apologize. "To all those mink farmers and their families whom you have falsely accused without any form of evidence and insulted to their very core. You are a disgrace to the people's parliament."

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