Due to the destruction of minks by Denmark, the 90-year-old auction house Kopenhagen Fur will have to close, its director Jesper Christensen told the Danish channel TV 2.
“We had 300 people working for the company, and that was the most discouraging message I've delivered to them,” said the director.
Christensen added that the closure will be gradual. By the end of 2020, Kopenhagen Fur will receive all previously agreed-upon mink fur, and next year the company will sell the leftovers from Danish warehouses.
“Kopenhagen Fur’s large international customer group has difficulty understanding the past week’s development in Denmark,” the auction house said in a statement. “Many customers have based their entire business model on Danish mink.”
The reason for the emergency mink massacre is a mutated version of COVID-19, which is less responsive to antibodies and may interfere with future vaccines, scientists suggest. So far, twelve people in Denmark have been infected with what has been dubbed by some media outlets as “mink coronavirus”. To date, up to 2.5 million mink have been killed by the world's largest producer of mink fur.
It was recently reported that the Danish authorities are expressing regreat about their move to exterminate all minks on fur farms. Mogen Jensen, Minister for Gender Equality, Food and Fisheries, said that the grave decision had no legal basis.
Prior to that, the World Health Organisation (WHO) confirmed the susceptibility of minks to coronavirus, which makes them dangerous to humans. On 5 November, Denmark decided to destroy all minks on fur farms to prevent the spread of the mutated coronavirus.
So far, Denmark has recorded 60,000 cases of COVID-19 in total, 756 deaths, and 45,705 people have already recovered from the virus.
