Opinion: COVID-infected minks running wild in Oregon? A horror movie in the making – oregonlive.com

Lori Ann Burd

Burd is director of the Center for Biological Diversitys Portland-based environmental health program.She lives in Portland.

It sounds like a campy Revenge of the Mutant Minks horror flick: Factory farmed mink infected with COVID-19 escape their cages to not only spread the virus among wild mink but give rise to a mutant viral strain that threatens to compromise our newly minted vaccines.

Sadly, Danish officials have watched all but the last part of that horrifying scenario play out in Denmark in recent months. More than 17 million minks were killed amid COVID outbreaks and the mutant COVID strain has shown up in at least 12 people.

Thats not the reality here in Oregon, which is home to 11 registered factory farms holding about 430,000 fur-bearing animals, including mink, and an unknown number of smaller mink-rearing operations. At least, not yet.

But it would defy logic and science to believe that Oregon is somehow immune from the ghastly scene unfolding in Denmark. And that makes the tepid and secretive response of state officials to the recent COVID-19 outbreak at an Oregon mink operation inexcusable.

For numerous reasons the viral outbreak reported Nov. 27 among both mink and workers in Oregons largely hidden fur-raising industry could not have been more predictable.

It starts with the very basic fact that closely confined mink at these factory farms are known to be highly susceptible to the virus.

Then add in the news from Denmark about the COVID outbreaks at more than 200 farms and the reality that thousands of mink have already died here in the U.S. of the virus.

For all those reasons, it was only a matter of time before Oregons mink farms would report an outbreak of its own.

Thats why on Nov. 6, I submitted a letter to Gov. Kate Brown and Oregon officials on behalf of the Center for Biological Diversitys Portland-based environmental health program urging the state to take proactive measures to ensure that COVID-19 was not spreading among animals and workers at Oregons mink facilities.

On Nov. 19, the state agencies responded by refusing to commit to any specific preventative actions to address the very clear threats. That same day Oregon recorded its first reported cases of mink experiencing COVID-19 symptoms.

But even after finding COVID-19 present in all 10 of the representative samples taken from that one fur-farming operation, it took state regulators four days to place the operation under quarantine and ask its workers to self-isolate.

To date, even after the recent news that mink workers are at extremely high risk of contracting COVID-19, and reports on the very real risk of infected mink escaping into the wild, Oregon officials have yet to release the location of the outbreak, citing what they vaguely referred to as privacy concerns.

Here in Oregon, where mink are also native, the potential escape of COVID-19 infected mink in to the wild could pose a terrible threat to wildlife populations, already beleaguered by this years massive wildfires.

Sadly, its only the latest example of how state officials overseeing Oregons factory farming industries are more concerned about protecting the interests of these businesses than protecting public health, such as in its failure to take timely action against the states largest industrialized dairy even as it polluted the environment.

In order to give Oregon residents the information they need to protect their families, Ive urged Gov. Brown and the Oregon Department of Agriculture and the Oregon Health Authority to release information on the location of the November outbreak.

Continuing to prioritize the interests of factory farms over public health contradicts everything our governor has been telling us about prioritizing public safety. And our national and state leaders are putting us all at greater risk by ignoring the research-based reality that our sprawling factory farms are, without question, hotbeds for the development of dangerous pathogens and the spread of novel diseases like COVID-19.

The evidence points to COVID-19 stemming from bats, not from animals at a large industrial farm. But as news organizations have recently reported, public health researchers and agriculture experts say its not a matter of if, but when, a novel virus will arise out of our industrial animal agriculture systems.

The sooner Oregon officials start showing proper respect for the science underpinning that reality, the safer and healthier well all be.

And that starts with a more open and honest approach to addressing the many dangers of the current outbreak at mink farms.

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Opinion: COVID-infected minks running wild in Oregon? A horror movie in the making - oregonlive.com