Dutch mink cull starts as coronavirus spreads to 10th farm

‘Dutch mink farms have begun a government-ordered cull amid concern that animals infected with coronavirus could transmit the illness to humans. Infected mink have been found on 10 Dutch farms where the ferret-like animals are bred for their fur, according to the country’s Food & Wares Authority. “All mink breeding farms where there is an infection will be cleared, and farms where there are no infections won’t be,” said spokeswoman Frederique Hermie.’

Read here (Reuters, June 6, 2020)

Rotten: The highly unpalatable side of our food supply chains

Subscribers of Netflix can watch the two-season ‘Rotton’, a ‘docuseries [that] travels deep into the heart of the food supply chain to reveal unsavoury truths and expose hidden forces that shape what we eat.’ The reception to this series on Wikipedia: ‘Reaction to the series has been relatively positive, with a rating of 80% on Rotten Tomatoes. It is praised for its high-quality cinematography and compelling, human-centred narratives but criticised for focusing on particular issues rather than providing explanation for wider industry problems, or giving the viewer answers as to which brands and products are unaffected by the issues the series presents.’

Read here (Netflix)

Jane Goodall says ‘disrespect for animals’ caused pandemic

‘It is our disregard for nature and our disrespect of the animals we should share the planet with that has caused this pandemic, that was predicted long ago.

‘It’s also the animals who are hunted for food, sold in markets in Africa or in the meat market for wild animals in Asia, especially China, and our intensive farms where we cruelly crowd together billions of animals around the world. These are the conditions that create an opportunity for the viruses to jump from animals across the species barrier to humans.’

Read here (The Malay Mail, April 11, 2020)

New research suggests industrial livestock, not wet markets, might be origin of Covid-19

‘There is a growing body of evidence that points to a different origin story for Covid-19. We now know that none of the animals tested at the Wuhan seafood market tested positive and about a third of the initial set of reported cases in people in Wuhan from early December 2019 had no connection to the seafood market, including the first reported case. And we also now know, thanks to the leak of an official Chinese report to the South China Morning Post that the actual first known case of Covid-19 in Hubei was detected in mid-November, weeks before the cluster of cases connected to the Wuhan seafood market were reported.’

Two studies quoted in this article point to industrial farming of animals as the more probable cause, in particular that of pigs.

Read here (Grain, March 30, 2020)

Related article: Viral times - The politics of emerging global animal diseases (Grain, Jan 20, 2020). Read here