> Denmark, the world's biggest producer of mink fur, said Wednesday it would cull all of the country's minks after a mutated version of the new coronavirus was detected at its mink farms and had spread to people.
Questions:
1. Is this worrisome?
2. If Denmark is catching this, should we be concerned that the virus has mutated in other animals and has thus far gone undetected?
1. Yes. This is serious. Mutation is a big red reset button on the pandemic potentially.
2. No. Minks are kept in small cages with a very high density of biomass. This makes it a perfect incubator. Also ferrets have some similarities with humans in the upper respiratory system, making this more of a concern.
Not only that, the conditions of keeping the animals close but not too close even encourages selection for mutations that allow the virus to spread more easily through air.
If I remember correctly, ferrets were held under similiar conditions for "gain for function" experiments [0]. "Gain of function" means here how the virus can develop the ability (function) of spreading through the air when it e.g. initially required direct contact to be transmitted. An animal would be intentionally infected with the disease and a random mutation would allow the virus to jump to a separate cage to infect an animal there.
Pretty horrible and dangerous, imo. Research on this was banned in the US for a few years, see also [0].
Edit: a small bonus comment I just thought about: here is a time lapse of development of resistance to antibiotics on a large petri dish [1]. Observe how they used increasing concentrations of antibiotics to allow stepwise improvement of resistance instead of confronting the bacterium with an unsurmountable effect all at once.
Both links you provided appear to be for the same article, just from two different sources. There is nothing in the article about Fauci "urging" anyone to lift the ban on gain of function research. He did defend the research being done in China and the ban was lifted by NIH in December 2017, though.
Also, calling people who downvoted you "idiots" is not the road towards meaningful discussion.
This is really interesting. I wish they would have gone the other way after. Taken the bacteria from the middle and observed how long it took to lose that anti-bacterial resistance.
I am convinced that bacterial resistance is a trait, but am unconvinced of it's permanence if the utility of maintaining it is removed from the environment.
So, the reason given is that you have a virus that exists naturally. If we can artificially find a variant that is more lethal and or contagious (those are often the vectors that are selected for) you can then calculate the delta between the DNA of the original and the variation and make some guesses as to the likelihood that this variation will emerge naturally via mutation and then perhaps develop some sort of preventive countermeasures.
Here is a good lecture by a harvard professor on risks of gain of function research:
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Risks and Benefits of Gain-of-Function Experiments in Potentially Pandemic Pathogens
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The Centre for the Study of Existential Risk's January 2015 Seminar, with Professor Marc Lipsitch (Harvard) and Professor Derek Smith (Cambridge).
A growing trend in experimental virology has been the modification of influenza viruses that are antigenically novel to, and virulent in humans, such that these variant viruses are readily transmissible in mammals, including ferrets which are thought to be the best animal model for influenza infection. Novel, contagious, virulent viruses are potential pandemic pathogens in that their accidental or malevolent release into the human population could cause a pandemic.
Professor Marc Lipsitch (Harvard) describes the purported benefits of such studies, arguing that these are overstated; estimates the magnitude of the risk they create, argues for the superiority of alternative scientific approaches on both safety and scientific grounds, and proposes an ethical framework in which such experiments should be evaluated. The talk also explore recent developments following the pause in funding for this research announced by the United States Government in October, and steps towards the risk-benefit analysis called for by the announcement.
Professor Lipsitch is a professor of epidemiology and the Director of the Centre for Communicable Disease Dynamics at Harvard University. He is one of the founders of the Cambridge Working group, which calls for a “quantitative, objective and credible assessment of the risks, potential benefits, and opportunities for risk mitigation” of gain of function experiments in potentially pandemic pathogen strains.
A response is given by Professor Derek Smith, Professor of Infectious Disease Informatics at Cambridge University.
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> Mutation is a big red reset button on the pandemic potentially.
Only on the vaccination / immunity front - the biggest problem was that there initially were no tests or lab capacities for tests, plus a total collapse of PPE stockpiles and supply. That's ... at least decently solved.
Depends on where you are. The US has significantly improved testing (I work for a COVID-19 testing company) but people don't socially isolate or wear their damn masks.
We had issues in the election yesterday of poll workers not wearing masks. People just don't get it, and this behavior clearly isn't "fixed" as the winter surge is well under way.
Who would pay for it? Or do the work, or collate it, or publish the results? Portions of the federal government are actively hostile to fact-based public health work. The rest of it seems to be either defunded or demotivated, as opportunity allows.
Denmark is. Besides very easy and rapid access to free testing for everyone who suspects they might be infected, the government has also sent out requests to random people to get tested.
The same story has been in the Dutch news. Apparently the virus has crossed three times between human and mink. His tone is satirical but the facts check out: https://youtu.be/LOT9BTMVRUI
Not all of those will be the new strain. The regular strain seems to be capable of infecting minks on its own, where it wreaks havoc on the tightly packed population. The problem is that this adds an entirely different evolutionary pressure that can result in a markedly different virus, which in the worst case can jump back to humans.
Most viruses breed in “reservoir” populations, then cross species with unpredictable effect.
This is why we had a “bird flu” or “pig flu”, and so on.
Coronaviruses cross between mammals all the time, mutate, and create new strains. This is why there is no cold vaccine (and why the flu vaccine changes each year, and is usually only 60-80% effective).
So, to answer your questions: (1) It is not any more worrisome than the news we had back in March. (2) It certainly has already and will continue to mutate in other animals. Should we be concerned? I guess. I made peace with this inevitable outcome months ago.
I feel sorry for the minks. I hope they don’t start testing other types of mammals and then decide to pursue wholesale eradication of local ecosystems and livestock.
Doing that is clearly a non-starter (the food chain would collapse). However, it is necessary-but-not-sufficient to prevent new coronavirus strains from popping up.
It's necessary for the world to realize breeding livestock like we do now is unsustainable. Either we go vegan, lab meat or hybrid agriculture. But the current industry is the dead end.
Livestock breeding isn't inherently unsustainable. E.g. you can have closed-off poultry or pork farms with greenhouse-fed animals, all powered by wind or solar, with sewage processing to ensure there's no external pollution. This isn't sci-fi, it exists today in e.g. the denser parts of western Europe.
Yes it's costlier than beef from the developing world raised on cut-down rainforest land, but growing lab is a lot more expensive.
You can argue that it's inefficient, sure, but so is a vegan eating an avacado instead of white rice. Things can be relatively inefficient and still be sustainable.
> If you kill all the mammals, then the birds of prey will go extinct
Birds of prey eat a lot more than just mammals, e.g. fish, reptiles, other birds etc. So no, if there magically weren't any mammals tomorrow most species of birds of prey would survive.
Why are minks riskier than average?
Is it because of biological similarity (but then, there are lots of other mammals), or because of the conditions they're kept in?
Naively, I might have just expected that cows or pigs or sheep would be the highest risks in aggregate, just because of numbers.
The respiratory systems of Mustelidae are similar enough to humans that they easily can become a reservoir for human disease or vector for cross-species transmission. We’ve used ferrets in all kinds of respiratory disease research for this reason (particularly flu studies).
Minks are closely related with Ferrets, one of the "not really rare" but "neither really uncommon" domestic pets. Domesticated ferrets communicate by licking and gently biting humans and other ferrets, and live in the same room as us.
Pigs tend to be a high risk due to both their proximity to humans, and because they’re genetically close enough to use that they’re a disease transmission risk. It’s believed that the 1918 flu pandemic mutated in a pig before hopping back to the first human victim.
There's also another factor to consider in interspecies infections.
Over-fitting.
A virus "trained" on multiple species is targeting biology that is ubiquitous in higher life. The wider range of species a disease can infect, the less likely an individual member of a species is to have genetic variation that leaves it not susceptible to the disease, and the worse an outbreak is likely to be.
I don't know why but it seems that in minks SARS-Cov-2 mutates a lot more frequently than it does in humans. This would mean a lot of new strains that we would not know how to detect or deal with.
From what I remember it sounded rather that the virus mutated faster in ferrets, not just because of their environment. I cannot find a source for it, so I might have misunderstood.
I would consider it the danger of lockdown. We guarantee that the virus is still festering somewhere on the planet, and that vulnerable populations remain around the world, risking flareups.
With zero response - ie. what we do for influenza - we establish herd immunity over a short, sharp period, and the virus immediately falls over.
In any case, even if this mink-mutant variant is slightly deadlier, the data from Sweden shows that COVID deaths can be effectively reduced to near-zero from basic herd immunity strategies - Sweden yesterday recorded a single COVID death. So it makes sense to adopt the Swedish approach now, for a variant of the virus we know how to treat.
You mention the IFR but what about the long term implications of so many people catching COVID and having reduced lung capacity or long term damage?
Can we please address this fact that scares a lot of us? We already know the death rate is low for groups that are not at risk but it seems even healthy people are suffering from "long COVID" with serious long term implications.
"what about the long term implications of so many people catching COVID and having reduced lung capacity or long term damage?"
There is almost no evidence of either in mild-to-moderate cases of Covid-19 (i.e. the vast majority of cases). People who have been on ventilators, or hospitalized for extended periods due to severe illness are a different story, as ventilators themselves often cause lung damage. The scariest anecdotes that have been widely circulated online have come from ventilated or hospitalized patients with severe illness.
Beyond these anecdotes, stories of "long covid" thus far are predominantly based on anecdote and self-reporting of symptoms, and the symptom profiles that you hear are frequently vague and/or unverifiable ("brain fog") and in most cases, not significantly different than you might see with any respiratory virus.
For example, here is a report from the CDC that was widely reported as evidence that "35% of covid cases had long-term illness". However, "long-term" here, is defined as "three weeks", and "illness" was defined as a spectrum of mild symptoms that resemble any flu-like illness, such as fatigue, cough and congestion:
Even more specific studies have had serious problems. There have been a few reports of cardiac inflammation and other specific clinical signs in otherwise healthy people. To date, most of these have been debunked for statistical problems. For example, it was widely reported that Division I athletes were found to have heart inflammation after mild Covid-19 infections, which led the Big10 to start screening athletes with MRI before play. Subsequently, so few abnormalities have been found that doctors are now calling for the rule to be rescinded:
Please provide a number instead of ‘so many’ and ‘it seems’. I’ve seen ‘so many’ alarmist stories on this but no statistics at all, this is turning me rather skeptical.
We simply do not know right now. I think ARDS and the risk of permanent lung damage is one of the main reasons that we named this SARS pandemic "COVID".
For the previous SARS pandemic I believe it was about half of every infected person who developed long term respiratory problems. This strain shares around 80% of its genome with the previous SARS-1 strain.
If you don’t know, bringing it up as an established fact is dishonest. But again, if the claim is really so many people are experiencing an obvious issue, yet they are so hard to find we still don’t have an idea I’m rather skeptical.
If you never look for them you will never find them. I was very sick in december and still have bad lungs because of it. Wether it was "COVID" or just multiple types of the flu hitting me relentlessly I don't know, but the short story is that you basically are not taken serious by doctors if you come up to them and say "My lungs feel really bad after that thing you said was simply the flu one year ago". And I live in Denmark, the exemplary of free medical health care...
Governments seem more keen on burning an uncountable amount of money on dubious PCR testing instead of treating or at least debunking any concerns of long term issues.
Its obvious that MY government really has no clue what they are doing. They have given themselves absolute power in this state of emergency, they make decisions and then announe them before other parties have a chance to say anything about the material handed to them.
First our government sold The state serum institute to a rediculous low price to some sheikh from Saudi Arabia, and now they pay BILLIONS every month to that very same company and take all the advice they give as unconditional fact.
But fact is they are a private company with a stake in government funded PCR testing.
You tell us an anecdote about how you are experiencing problems after you were sick in December.
I’m pretty sure you didn’t get tested for Corona in December but anyway I don’t see how that justifies scaremongering about ‘a lot of cases’ where people have longlasting damage. Again, if it is so pronounced and affects so many people it shouldn’t be hard to show.
No I didnt get tested, first of all historically you do not get PCR testing for the coof unless you die, thats a trend beginning with covid. Also because it wasn't even on the radar unless you were one of those types of persons who hung out on 4chans /pol/ where they had daily threads about the virus since december at least.
My point is that governments do NOT want to address the ARDS concerns because it will mean millions of citizens will have to get early pensions, which will be a massive strain on welfare states. They'd rather not address this at all. My other point is that we have reached a point where PCR testing is utterly meaningless, it SOLELY benefits big pharma.
It makes no sense to keep on doing PCR testing, we should have done like china when shtf there and started doing symptom diagnostics instead since its way cheaper.
Also, if you need a respirator to breathe, you need it COVID or not. If you are sick, it doesn't really matter if its SARS-2, covid-20 or the flu. Stay home!
People love to bring up Sweden but they have never experienced dealing with COVID-19 in winter where it is up to 20x more contagious as everyone moves indoors.
You would be objectively wrong? Basic reasoning would tell you that places with less cases have a lower probability of transmitting the disease to animal reservoirs and risking harmful mutations coming back at us.
>With zero response - ie. what we do for influenza - we establish herd immunity over a short, sharp period, and the virus immediately falls over.
This is also incorrect? We take a number of proactive actions against the flu every year, from vaccination, to other public health and treatment measures, to even more drastic steps like culling livestock populations where more dangerous strains have emerged.
>So it makes sense to adopt the Swedish approach now, for a variant of the virus we know how to treat.
We don't actually have any idea about the consequences of this mutation, especially in a larger population, so we should do the exact opposite and proceed with extreme caution until its risk profile is understood.
No competent medical professional ever uses the term "herd immunity" in any instance where they are not talking about a vaccine. Without a vaccine to _create_ herd immunity, what you are proposing is just sitting back and willfully letting huge numbers of people die, willfully allowing the virus to mutate unchecked as it spreads unchecked, etc. You should really give this a listen: https://maximumfun.org/episodes/sawbones/herd-immunity/
I tried to listen to this but the basis of their argument is "if one person dies it's too many", which is a knee-jerk reaction that fails to weigh the possible options and outcomes in a thorough manner. Note that the hosts are not specialists in this field and the vibe of the podcast is more comedy than science. I also take issue with your opening: "no competent medical professional ever", which is doomed to be a faulty generalization, and a name-calling one at that.
I've listened to Sawbones for a long time and finally had to give up. The shows does present some factual information, but also spins some things, and seem to primarily exist so the hosts can create a setting where they can "prove" how smart they are and insult anyone that doesn't agree with 100% of what they are saying. It just comes off as really mean spirited and not particularly informative or funny as they claim to be.
Dammit, and since years I was thinking that anything related to fur was a closed chapter, at least in Europe. This is horrible and absolutely superfluous, used to produce luxury goods :(
While I don’t really care one way or the other about the mink farms, it should come as no surprise that the main marked for the mink furs is China. For a supposed communist country they sure do like superflous luxury goods and have little regards for how they are made.
Its good to keep it in perspective. There are billions of people in China. If only a tenth of a percent enjoys luxury goods, that's millions of people.
And as another Dane, I am digusted and have beeen for many years. Would that vis-a-vis mink farmers as a group this virus had a sense of poetic justice.
To me, the important part of the article is that this strain may have rendered the vaccines useless, thus delaying immunisation of humans. If it says that, and that is not true, then it is alarmist, no?
It is a statement from the Prime Minister of Denmark in the press conference explaining that the government is culling the minks.
The Prime Minister is being alarmist, but quoting people verbatim generally isn’t; they are covering the facts of the event, including the fact that the person in charge and responsible for the newsworthy event said this statement. The AFP is not reporting whether the statement is true or false.
I would wait until the Danish health authorities actually publicate their findings. This is not a statement made by pseudo-scientists. While I don't know his credentials I don't see why I should trust him more than Statens Serum Institut. So I guess the question is if Denmark is alarmist or if this person is the opposite.
Arguably so should the Danish government, because SSI has not said anything in particular about this decision.
They did publish a statement last week regretting they didn't properly mail the mink farmers to ask them about how Covid was going, but said that this failure wasn't important for the monitoring or spread of the disease. If they then knew anything about mink order 66 coming, that's some poker face.
The director of the center of infectious diseases at SSI Kåre Mølbak was at the press conference, so it is clear I think that while they have not written and published their findings they gave shared them with the government.
Because they were alarmed? Governments are not immune to disinformation themselves and can experience pressure from a population rallied by falsehoods.
Dane here. This is the danish health authorities' recommendation.
If anyone thinks our government kills off >1000 farms and declares serious lockdown of a good part of our nation (no moving in and out of these counties, no going to work etc.) in a spur of the moment overreaction because of some Facebook sillyness, it is frankly getting insulting.
You could also make the argument that farmers should use some of their profits to buy insurance against such things. For example, I remember this story about the UK government and insurance provisions from earlier in the pandemic[1], and there were definitely experts on the radio at the time who said that it's possible to purchase cover against epidemics and other rare events - why not for government deciding to eliminate your herd? Or legal insurance so you can sue for compensation?
Additionally, if mink farmers are aware that their animals can be a vector for disease - and shouldn't they be? - then should they not also take steps to protect their own finances from foreseeable events, regardless of their likelihood?
Are they being closed permanently, actually? Yes, this would be a good opportunity to shut down that entire abhorrent industry, but I wouldn't be surprised if the government instead gives a fat handout to the fur farmers to restart their businesses.
You don't have something simulator to Norways social services? In Norway they will help you find a new job, and offer re-education. You also gets up to 80% of your former salary provided by the government until you do.
Yes Denmark have similiar social services. The farms (and related companies that works in the industry) will get financial help and the State will help workers with re-education
From what I noticed in the news is that various European countries have similar policies. Meaning, government doesn't reduce employment by (as government) creating jobs or hiring people. However, they do offer support in fining jobs or making it easier to learn another job. Lastly, unemployment rate is often an important topic and the way that's influenced seems nicer than e.g. UK/US methods. For UK/US it doesn't feel like the government cares about their citizens.
To me (Dutch) the other person is speaking about Denmark without knowing a lot about it.
"You also gets up to 80% of your former salary provided by the government until you do."
Also when you were self-employed, and/or if you quit your job? In Norway can you quit your job for no reason and get 80% of your salary while you look for another (or not)?
No, but it is the states function to provide for the unemployee. The state also runs job centers, which helps people find new jobs. You don’t need to be communist to care for people, or help the find employment.
Who claimed that Denmark was socialist/communist/marxist? They have social democratic traditions sure, but like the other Scandinavian countries, they have generally transitioned to a more right-wing oriented economic policy over the last 20-30 years, while maintaining their social security net.
Is it somehow inherently socialist/communist/marxist to provide job retraining to people moving between jobs at privately owned companies?
Seems to me that it’s highly beneficial to the private companies involved.
I live in the North - the exact area where the animals are raised in - you know it as they smell really bad. The area with the mink factories is mostly thinly populated. I don't know what restrictions are going to be implemented in the coming days, but I'm sure most people will take Corona 2.0 ("Made in Denmark") seriously and keep their distance.
It was discovered that Danish mink got infected by SARS-CoV-2 in June. There were local outbreaks at farms and some of these spread to nearby farms. Authorities scrambled and these farms were isolated and the mink killed. However, the spread continued to more than 200 farms, sometimes across large distances, and I still don't think the vector is known. Some speculate that birds might be the carrier (not infected but just carrying the virus from farm to farm).
As the number of infected farms increased more preventive measures in the form of killing mink on nearby farms were mandated. The farmers were not happy about this and there has been negotiations about how many mink to kill and how to compensate the farmers. Mink fur is a huge export and from a pure economical (and cynical) viewpoint this is a disaster.
This summer it was discovered that the virus in the mink had mutated and that some people had been infected with the mutated virus which didn't cause alarm at that time. However, the new development is that a mutation has been identified in five mink and 12 people that has a decreased sensitivity to antibodies and this might result in a vaccine not being effective against this mutation.
So now the discussions about how many mink to kill has stopped. They will all be killed. Sometimes you have to be decisive and the Danish prime minister was decisive today.
I still do not get it. 12 people have a decreased sensitivity to which antibodies? - some specific antibodies or antibodies in general? Which vaccine (or all of them)? Provided sources are vague about this.
'Preliminary studies suggest that this virus exhibits decreased susceptibility to neutralizing antibodies from several people with a history of infection.'
Does this mutated coronavirus from minks transfer human->human?
Any guesses yet on whether the vaccines in development would respond to this virus as well?
Does the rest of the world need to immediately cut travel to Europe? Would rather stop travel and wish we didn't than allow travel and wish we stopped it...
We literally just had a real life trial for how we deal with new pandemics in January... have we learned our lesson?
The mutated cornavirus shows reduced responsiveness to antibodies thus a threat to current vacines in pipeline.
Yes, it transfer Human-> Human.
Hence the drastic measures to contain and eliminate the variant.
It's probably the responsible thing to do and Denmark is a 1st world country, so they can afford it. But would the same thing happen if this problem occured in a poorer country? Probably not. So isn't it inevitable that a similar mutation happens in mink in another, poorer country and that it then spreads from there?
It's possible there is only mink-to-human transmission and not human-to-human. This was the case for MERS, which was contained in part by culling chickens.
If so the solution would be to not shut down the farms because a version of corona that is not contagious would be really helpful. I’m not buying your argument.
Like if we didn't knew that minks usually pick up and mutate viruses. Here in the Netherlands we had some serious covid outbreaks on mink farms and all farms are due (or already are) to be terminated over the next few months.
I just learned that the Netherlands also was going to prohibit fur framing in 2025 but changed this to 2021 due to multiple cases of covid jumping from minks to humans.
I don't really get why we don't outright ban it immediately and compensate the farmers a bit more for their troubles, since the "return on investment" for not creating another covid strain is a lot higher than that, but ok.
Is it that much worse than farming hogs? Most of that is done in cages too small to turn around or stand. Live transport and slaughter is also amazingly horrific.
This question is easy for me — hog farming is, overall, a greater harm because we are talking about more pigs and more horrendous conditions. Both are morally impermissible, in my opinion, which is why I keep to a vegan diet and don’t wear fur.
Putting aside the harms to animals for a moment, we might consider both mink farms and hog farms to be part of a larger problem, which is monoculture agriculture. Minks weren’t meant to live in tiny cages all cramped together, and neither were hogs, and weird ‘Koyaanisqatsi’ (life out of balance) things are going to happen when we do that — just like raising nothing but corn and killing everything else on farmland will eventually deplete the soil.
This isn’t some subtle act of interpretation; the evidence is all around us that industrial-style practices applied to living things have negative externalities that plausibly outweigh their benefits.
Barely anyone cares about fur products, but people are too stuburn to stop general meat consumption - even if not totally - not matter the cost. Eating more vegan meals is probably the best personal action one can make for the environment. Most other significant actions can only be made on a corporate level.
If anything, I would say fur gets a disproportionately high amount of attention from animal rights activists, relative to the total number of animals affected. According to Animal Charity Evaluators, an effective altruism group that focuses on animal welfare [0]:
> Of domesticated land animals used and killed by humans in the United States, over 99.6% are farmed land animals, about 0.2% are animals used in laboratories, 0.07% are used for clothing, and 0.03% are killed in companion animal shelters.
I am assuming they are grouping animals farmed for fur in the ‘raised for clothing’ category.
If I want meat I will eat meat. Plants aren't meat. If you want people to eat plants then promote some vegan dishes that are good on their own without relying on comparisons to something else. "It tastes like meat" is not a compelling pitch.
Bacon isn't advertised as "better than plants" or "tastes like plants". It doesn't need to.
BMW doesn't run commercials during NFL games where members of the public think their cars are Chevys.
When you pitch "plant meat" you are implying plants are inferior to meat in some way.
Yes, I know. But I am not one if them. "It's less cruel" is not a compelling enough argument for me to stop eating meat. If you tell me about some vegan dishes that are good on their own I will probably start eating them sometimes and my meat consumption will go down as a side effect. I'm literally telling you how you can sell more people on the idea of plant-based diets.
Exactly. Meat is meat and happens to taste good. But vegetables can taste good too. I can appreciate them for what they are, and do not need or want them to taste "like meat".
Many people choose to stop eating meat because it's cruel, not because they don't enjoy eating meat. Therefore plant based meat is a fantastic invention :)
And even then it only works for people who lack the discretionary income for meat. That's a significant number of people but not everyone. If your goal is to reduce meat consumption in general then the pitch should be "plants are better than meat" rather than "plants can be kinda like meat".
I absolutely agree. Many plants are delicious. I will take eggplant, courgette, cabbage or any number of other delicious plants over a brown mush of unknown plants and other things that tries to pretend to be meat, thanks.
Many people choose to stop eating meat because it's cruel, not because they don't enjoy eating meat. Therefore plant based meat is a fantastic invention :)
Nobody is arguing that. This thread is about the marketing of plant-based diets to meat-eaters. The reasons for being vegan are well understood. They just aren't compelling to everyone. Cost is just another compelling argument.
I’ve tried a wide variety of plant based “meat”. I’ve also tried a wide variety of meat. Some of the plant based “meat” is surprisingly good, but “mind blowing” is going way too far, and setting up unrealistic expectations that will end up being detrimental to the goal of getting more people to reduce or eliminate meat.
It's subjective, but I personally find it mind blowing how similar Impossible Burgers or Beyond Sausage are to the real thing. I also find it mind blowing that I can create a vegan version of a British classic ;) sausage, chips, and beans and not be able to tell the difference from the real thing :)
It's amazing how people's subjective experiences can differ so much. Impossible and Beyond are good, but to me they are really, really, really different from meat, to the point that I don't even understand why people eat them: Vegetables are delicious. Why try and fail to make them similar to meat, and simultaneously make it harder to understand what is even contained in the thing you're eating?
If I don't eat meat for the taste (which is a gross notion to me) but for the nutritional value does plant based substitute provide at least comparable nutrition? Does it have the aminoacids I would get from meat?
There are lots of mouse studies that point to bad metabolic effects from soybean oil consumption. Many of these mechanisms are the same in humans. If one wants to start pulling the metaphorical thread on seed oils, this is not hard to do, as long as one realizes that the companies who sell these things will always tell the consumer they are healthy.
Seed oils did not exist in the food supply before the late 1800s, so the idea that they are this amazing health food, while also being incredibly cheap/profitable to produce and really useful in creating junk food really stretches credulity.
Animals are killed to provide for your vegan diet too, though you can argue they are indirectly killed. And then there is the moral issue of murdering plants and consuming them.
> Minks weren’t meant to live in tiny cages all cramped together
The same goes for plants/vegetation used to feed vegans. Unless you are grazing the great plains like wild buffalo.
> just like raising nothing but corn and killing everything else on farmland will eventually deplete the soil.
What about clearing the land for avocado, almond, etc? Also, do you know what helps replenish the soil? Animals...
> the evidence is all around us that industrial-style
Except that the only way vegan diet works is through industrialized farming/transporting/etc. There are no such things as a vegan homestead. You cannot live harmoniously in nature via a vegan diet. Whereas an omnivore diet can be supported by a homestead.
You can argue industrialized farming is bad. But that's the only kind of farming that can support vegans. An inuit in alaska or a homesteader in vermont cannot survive on locally produced vegan diet.
As a matter of fact, no human can survive in nature on a vegan diet. All humans on a vegan diet would die of starvation/disease in nature. It's why no vegan human society has ever existed.
You can't be against industrialized farming and be for veganism. You have to be one or the other because they are necessarily contradictory of each other. Omnivore can be against industrialized farming because we can survive without it, unlike vegans.
In general, I like it when people make their objections to veganism explicit, rather than just going about their lives eating meat. It suggests openness to conversation that I appreciate. So an upvote for you.
To the point that veganism requires industrialized farming: this may be true, I don't know. I think we do know that widespread veganism would reduce some of environmental harms associated with industrialized farming, because:
* A lot of currently cultivated farmland produces feed for livestock (Vox estimates 36% [0]);
* This paper [1] estimates that switching land currently used for animals to plants would lead to a manifold increase in nutrient output per acre;
* The BBC [2] estimates that "A meat-eater’s diet requires 17 times more land, 14 times more water and 10 times more energy than a vegetarian’s;"
And so on [3] [4].
I don't think we know for sure what would happen if the world stopped eating meat, but I think overall, environmentally and ethically, it would be an improvement.
(To a point about worse nutritional profiles of vegan vs.
omnivore diets (raised in [4]), I think the answer is to eat oysters, clams and mussels, which are high in iron, protein, and fish oil, but don't have capacity for pain/experience, as far as we know. This is called ostroveganism and I picked up the idea from Michael Huemer [5].)
> To the point that veganism requires industrialized farming: this may be true, I don't know.
It's a fact. You can't even be a vegan on a family farm. Try it and find out. How is an innuit in siberia or alaska going to survive on veganism when native tribes in the amazon or lush jungles can't even survive on veganism?
> A lot of currently cultivated farmland produces feed for livestock (Vox estimates 36% [0]);
Don't link to vox garbage. They know as much about farming as they do about [fill in the blank]. A lot more farmland would need to be created for human consumption.
> This paper [1] estimates that switching land currently used for animals to plants would lead to a manifold increase in nutrient output per acre;
But it's not 1 to 1. Most of that nutrient output won't be any good for humans. And secondly, most of those nutrients can't be grown in the places you grow grain to feed animals. Meaning you can't grow avocado's, almonds and all the other virtue signaling vegan products in nebraska or iowa. Okay?
> * The BBC [2] estimates that "A meat-eater’s diet requires 17 times more land, 14 times more water and 10 times more energy than a vegetarian’s;"
Don't link to BBC garbage. Also,we were talking about vegans, not vegetarians. Nice try. That's another debate altogether.
> but I think overall, environmentally and ethically, it would be an improvement.
Nope. The most immoral ( both to humans and animals and plants ) is the vegan diet. Veganism is environmental catastrophe. It's mostly naive children who think a perfect utopia is possible. The kind of lunatics that try to force veganism on their infants/pets and starve them to death. Go ask any farmer or any person who has experience with life. It's like as a child wondering why we don't just send out garbage to the sun.
> I think the answer is to eat oysters, clams and mussels, which are high in iron, protein, and fish oil, but don't have capacity for pain/experience, as far as we know.
So, eat meat? I'm glad you finally came around.
> This is called ostroveganism and I picked up the idea from Michael Huemer
It's called pathetic rationalization.
1. If eating meat is wrong because of "pain/experience", then we shouldn't eat plants either.
1. Science shows that plants can experience/feel pain/communicate, then should virtue signalers abstain from eating plants?
2. If it is immoral to kill an animal for meat, then is it okay to eat roadkill?
3. If it is immoral for animals to be killed, then is it immoral to own pets ( dogs, cats, snakes, etc ) that eat meat?
4. If it is immoral for animals to be killed for meat, then must we protect animals from other animals? Should we stop wolves, bears, etc from killing other animals?
Or have the privileged pathetic few gotten so rich and lazy that their want to feel superior over nonsense?
Like I said, we can end industrialized farming and go back to an omnivore diet like our ancestors. But we can't end industrialized farming and go to a vegan diet because everyone would starve to death. I wish all the self-righteous and hypocritical vegans in the world would get together and buy a large farm and practice what they preach. Veganism would disappear within a season.
The issue is very much analogous. Lots of pigs getting culled (in many cases burned and/or buried alive on a grand scale) because they are infected with diseases that are dangerous to humans. Corona included.
I just keep being surprised that there is consensus forming around mink but the hog issue, which is very similar and actually a bigger problem by numbers, is not really part of the mainstream debate. For some reason being against mink farming is much more acceptable than being against hog farming and this is reflected in policy.
It could be because the interests of hog farmers and consumers of hog are a much bigger part of society. But the harm is also that much bigger.
A single hog being killed for 150000 kcal of sustenance is a lot more morally acceptable than 50 minks being killed for a single luxury coat. It's not cognitive dissonance to think this.
Google Snippet: To make one fur coat, it takes 150-300 chinchillas, 200-250 squirrels, 50-60 minks, or 15-40 foxes, depending on the animals' subspecies.
I don’t agree. Pigs are on the same cognitive level as dogs. Would it be morally acceptable to kill and eat a (big) dog for its 150000 calories after raising in terrible conditions for a few years?
I don't see why it matters if it's a dog or a pig. But to answer your question: it depends on a lot of factors, if you really want to go down the morality rabbit hole.
I guess I'll say it's less morally acceptable to slaughter a dog for food that's kept in terrible conditions than one that's kept in good conditions.
Not intensive farming is less bad than intensive farming but in your example, a cow still needs to have a calf and that calf slaughtered for milk to keep coming. And that cow will be killed off the moment it stops making enough milk which is a fraction of its natural life span. It’s not like not intensive farming is innocent either.
And for shit and giggles, check what’s the proportion of industrially farmed meat vs non intensive that’s sold every day.
Does the cognitive sophistication of the animals (their ability to feel emotions, form long term memories, etc) factor into that? Pigs are highly sophisticated. Minks probably less so.
I’d suggest you’d have to factor the perceived sophistication of the species as much as the direct benefits for the homo sapiens facing the moral dilemma (you).
Dogs, pigs, cows, are good examples with varying cultural responses.
Including Pigs. Never forget that when Fred dies early of natural causes, his life long friends will be munching on him soon. Note that this is while on full food and not at modern feed lot densities, just on a low rate family farm.
Increasing the cost of food is anti-poor. Increasing the cost of luxury fabric, not so much. Until poverty and hunger are eliminated worldwide, it's going to be hard to make me care more about how animals are farmed in order that the most possible people can afford enough to eat.
It's easy to not care about people not getting mink coats. Much harder to care about people having food taken out of their mouths by people who think they have a right to dictate that sort of thing. If you think eating pork should be forbidden, I've got a part of the world to introduce you to.
It is funny that you mention human need for food. Hog is actually an inefficient food production method because they need to be fed more corn/soy etc than the food they produce.
If your goal was to make food more accessible to the poor then one way to go would be to stop this inefficient food production method and just consume the corn/soy protein directly. That would be healthier also. Consuming corn/soy directly would drive down the price of food because we would need less of it.
Do not discount the value add of multiple digestive and organ systems worth of energy work, even if the numbers otherwise look attractive. The entire planet is interrelated.
"A diet of corn is turning wild hamsters in northeastern France into deranged cannibals that devour their offspring, alarmed researchers have reported."
Are you saying I might be a wild hamster from northeastern France? And I should not just be eating corn?
I am saying that mammalian research models have predictive power, and that shifting to a fully corn based diet without any of the livestock based foods we'd raise on corn could have unintended side effects. Not everything happens as a first order outcome.
Every creature in the logistical food chain is performing different nutrient accumulations for the next one in the chain. If you think about bioaccumulation as a mechanism, that research should have you realizimg that "You are what you eat" has a terrifyingly poignant meaning, in the sense that if we end up seeing a smaller creature fed on a single having potential in the wild population management problems, the same thing could happen to us. By the time we realized what was going on, the damage to the ecosystem could realistically already be done.
I mean, scoff if you like. Me? I'm trying to figure out how to companion farm. Better for the ecosystem as a whole, and I like the plethora of wildlife that end up benefitting as result too.
On another note, I don't remember making this posting twice? Did I pocket post somehow? Hrrm.
Do not discount the value add of multiple digestive and organ systems worth of energy work, even if the numbers otherwise seem unintuitive the entire planet is interrelated in ways we have not even scratched the surface of.
Meat is a disaster for the environment, in terms of the resources that grazing animals take, and the total energy needed for the same caloric amount of food from animals.
Meat needs to slowly be eventually banned. Plant-based meat is getting better and better. Initially, we should start with a limit on meat sales, and then gradually reduce the limit until it reaches zero.
And then impose sanctions, tariffs or embargoes on countries that refuse to reduce/stop meat consumption.
Contrasting opinion here (and that of the majority): stop anthropomorphizing animals.
They aren't people. Their "feelings" do not matter - what matters is ensuring that we have reliable, self-reproducing, adaptable sources of protein for the population. Your lab-grown burgers that depend on thousands of years of technological development and piles of infrastructure are not the solution. Forcing everyone to become vegetarians is not even an option at all; the market demands meat and factory farms have stepped up to fill that niche at scale, reliably delivering meat to everyone in the first world even in extenuating circumstances. It's quite phenomenal, what we have accomplished in terms of livestock agriculture, and to call it "horrific" is a massive insult to the hundreds of thousands of people who work in that industry keeping humans fed while keeping costs to a minimum.
I don't care if the animals I eat were happy, because no matter what happens they are going to be killed and I am going to cook and eat their bodies. Accepting that is simply part of being the omnivorous animal that millions of years of evolution has produced.
They aren't. No-one is saying that a pig has the same moral standing as a human.
> They aren't people. Their "feelings" do not matter
So you believe that animals are just automata with no consciousness? That animal cruelty cannot exist even in principle, any more than cruelty to sand?
Descartes believed this. Today, we know better.
> to call it "horrific" is a massive insult to the hundreds of thousands of people who work in that industry
This doesn't address the matter of whether or not it's cruel.
> I don't care if the animals I eat were happy, because no matter what happens they are going to be killed and I am going to cook and eat their bodies.
Do you believe animals are conscious and capable of suffering, or not? Either way, it doesn't matter that they die in the end. If animals are conscious, it doesn't inform our morality that they are destined to die. People are also destined to die, but this doesn't impact our moral obligation to care about their suffering. If animals are not conscious, it doesn't matter whether they are destined to die.
> So you believe that animals are just automata with no consciousness?
I don't think their consciousness matters. Obviously they're conscious and sentient to some extent; but that does not make them human, and I will not draw false equivalency here so as to be put in the position of having to have the same moral standards for how we treat animals as we treat people. Obviously, if I was going to do that, I wouldn't accept killing and eating them, either.
Herds of domesticated pigs exist because _we created them_, by domesticating and farming them over thousands of years. Evolutionarily, they owe their existence to mankind. We're certainly not going to let them die out.
> That animal cruelty cannot exist even in principle, any more than cruelty to sand?
There is a distinct difference between animal cruelty (hurting an animal for your own personal amusement) versus farming an animal in a cost effective way (which it may not enjoy). It's a slippery slope, for sure, and I'm fine with improvements to their standard of living as long as meat remains affordable to everyone.
> I will not draw false equivalency here so as to be put in the position of having to have the same moral standards for how we treat animals as we treat people
Again, no-one is suggesting this. Animals need only have some capacity for suffering (and pleasure), to have some moral standing.
> Herds of domesticated pigs exist because _we created them_, by domesticating and farming them over thousands of years. Evolutionarily, they owe their existence to mankind. We're certainly not going to let them die out.
This has no connection to the moral question, much like your earlier point about how the animals are destined to ultimately die.
When we reason about whether an action constitutes animal cruelty, it is of no concern where the animal came from, or whether its species will continue to survive, or whether mankind is the reason for the continuing survival of its species.
> There is a distinct difference between animal cruelty (hurting an animal for your own personal amusement) versus farming an animal in a cost effective way (which it may not enjoy)
In terms of the suffering imposed on the animal, there's no difference whether the action was done out of a sadistic motive, or a profit motive. Either way, the animal is made to suffer for the benefit of the person.
That said, I agree that intent is an important factor in moral (as well as legal) reasoning. Like anyone, I'd judge someone far more harshly for torturing a pig just for the hell of it, than someone who mistreats animals in their professional capacity as a farm worker. If someone harmed an animal in an act of self defence, we wouldn't call that an act of cruelty. Still though, I see no reason to dismiss the question of whether the meat industry is a form of industrialised cruelty. I can see plenty of reasons to conclude that it is, and little reason to conclude that it's not.
> I'm fine with improvements to their standard of living as long as meat remains affordable to everyone.
I don't see that we should necessarily make a goal of maintaining meat availability and low pricepoint. (All of this applies just as well to other animal products, but let's stick with meat.) Meat is currently cheaply available, but this hasn't always been the case, and it doesn't in itself mean it should continue to be so.
There are also other issues with animal farming. Animal farming is a major source of (human) infectious diseases. [0]
Well, I don't know where to start... to me animals are people, not human persons of course, but individuals with personality, thus "persons", i.e. people. To speak of "anthropomorphizing" animals is a bit outdated... as the primatologist Franz de Waal puts it, people who use that term are in "anthropodenial". Today's biologists and ethologists largely acknowledge that at least higher animals are sentient beings, with consciousness and a full complement of complex emotions and reasoning ability. You can argue that humans are on top in overall cognitive abilities, but it's really only by degree, not by fundamental kind... our cognitive machinery is only bigger than most other animals', not really different.
As for your statement that animals' feelings "don't matter", well, why not? Not too long ago humans of one skin color said that the feelings of other humans of another skin color don't matter. Then we made some progress, and now to say that is considered barbaric. And many humans today are beginning to think it's time to make some more progress and realize that non-human animals' feelings also do matter.
Is it to much to ask to talk about the actual article?
This article has nothing to do about minks and animal abuse.
This is a pandemic on track to kill 10's of millions of people.
Minks and farming is topic talked about constantly around the world for many decades. Attractive models made it cool, we get it. Plenty of article are posted on HN about animal rights.
No farmed animals social distance, so how intensive it is is irreverent. In fact because it's intensive an outbreak is immediately known, which is good. There is no segue here. How can we talk about things at an educated level when everything gets demoted back to the base.
They would be killed either way, to produce fur. That's like the entire reason for their miserable and agonizing lives.
The sad thing is not that they're being culled now due to COVID, but that we'll continue doing this generation after generation producing more suffering.
Environmentally plastic is definitely worse, but the quantity of plastic used is tiny compared to the rest of the oil industry.
The moral benefit comes from not farming animals to only use their fur. It's cruel and wasteful, and we have synthetic fur that's actually better than the real thing for warmth. The reason real fur is still used is because it's cheaper, which should tell you a lot about the conditions the animals are farmed in.
Doesn't seem like there's a lot of research, but the one study I could find seems to agree that specifically the climate impact of natural fur is quite a bit higher than faux fur: https://www.cedelft.eu/en/publications/download/1538
Fwiw, cotton crops are incredibly water intensive. Probably a better solution than factory farming animals or releasing more plastics into the environment, but it's not perfect either.
But definitely buy less clothes, take better care of them, and make sure to give/sell the good ones you have but don't wear to second hand shops instead of just throwing them away.
I went from a traditional dryer to a heatpump by bosch and I think my clothes just gained another 5yrs of lives... not sure if it's temperature related (80c vs 50c or so) but my clothes no longer pill at all
The minks/genes of the minks have done very well for themself being farmed. They are much better off in an evolutionary sense now that they have a symbiotic relationship with people. Just like cows, chickens, horses etc.
I think perhaps keeping animals in packed conditions should be reevaluated for human threat. We are essentially keeping animals in conditions that are not much unlike 14th century Paris where the plague ran rampant
Perhaps keeping humans in packed conditions should also be reevaluated. My whole family hasn't had as much as a cold since the lockdown began. Many others seem to be experiencing the same benefits.
I didn't downvote you, but perhaps as feedback on why your opinion may be controversial, most humans aren't forced to live in packed conditions. Generally you're free to pack up and move somewhere else if it's too cramped for your taste. Living in cities is usually a choice as it offers convenience and numerous opportunities.
Thanks for the feedback. Did not realize I was being controversial, it was just a random personal insight. Fewer crowds, fewer diseases. Of course its obvious but one thing is to read it in a book and the other is to live it.
It means the virus naturally developed a resistance being incubated in minks and everyone is afraid that it could lead to another pandemic wave where the sunk cost of already stuffing a vaccine early, could be useless.
Country loses, corporation loses, citizens lose if that's the case.
Just reading these headlines puts a damper on my ability to find joy in anything for a while. The words "cull millions" should not be happening to anything, in any sane world. How are people so fucking desensitized to the grim practices of factory farms?
Makes me wish for an alien species to do the same to us some day.
> Mette Frederiksen said a report from a government agency that maps the coronavirus in Denmark has shown a mutation in the virus found in 12 people in the northern part of the country who got infected by minks. Health Minister Magnus Heunicke said half the 783 human COVID-19 cases in northern Denmark ”are related” to mink.
That has been noticed in Netherlands for many months (including mutation). According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fur_farming it was 25 May 2020. Denmark ignored the issue for a very long time for economical reasons. Netherlands was slow to respond, Denmark: notified by Dutch around that time, they ignored it. They're risking that a vaccine won't work.
I recently learned that in various cases fake fur is made from minks. Because of that I'd appreciate is those mink farms were banned, though banning sometimes just increases the price.
It is happening in the wild. All the time. That’s how we ended up here in the first place. The best we can do is avoid getting close to wildlife, and leave nature alone.
Per "Guns, Germs, and Steel", it's not even strategic, because diversification of existing strains should naturally select the least deadly, as well as spread antibodies across species boundaries.
This only works for diseases where symptoms and being contagious are concurrent. In the case of Covid-19 we know that humans can be contagious without experiencing negative symptoms. The potentially fatal symptoms appear later on.
The danger with that is that there is no reason for evolutionary processes to favor a less deadly strain as the disease has a window to spread before it starts damaging you. The evolutionary pressure towards being less deadly only happens because a disease that kills people too fast doesn't have time to spread as far as a less lethal strain.
In the case of Covid the disease could easily evolve the opposite direction: to be 100% fatal after two weeks of non-symptomatic contagion. It would still be able to spread just fine using its initial two week period, so there would be little to no evolutionary pressure toward lower fatality rates.
Humans raise mink in horrible conditions just to be slaughtered so we can make a fashion statement. Then, when the very conditions we created become an inconvenience to us, we slaughter them and fail to make even frivolous use of them, rendering their tortured lives even more pointless and sad.
After all that you have to be pretty callous and self-important as a species to think "Humans > Minks"
You're giving human measures of value undue precedence here. It's the same way racists give precedence to their own race, colonialists give precedence to their own culture, and how most humans give precedence to their own species.
You belong to a certain group, in this case humans, and your tendency seems to be to apply measures of value that reward the traits at which your group naturally excels. Which all reduce to physiological traits which were no choice of your own.
If you can't judge one race superior to another for physiological differences (e.g skin color), then how can you in good conscious judge one species superior to another for the same thing, i.e. physiological differences?
I'm always surprised that people generally reject sexism, racism, nationalism, and various other forms of tribalism yet speciesism never seems to register as directly analogous and similarly worthy of condemnation.
Fully agree with you. But this is inconvenient to think about and a lot of people will make you feel like you’re an idiot for challenging our torturing of animals because it makes them uncomfortable. In a way it’s similar to how the most homophobic men are the ones who are the most afraid of their feminine side.
Great comment. Speciesism is just another form of bigotry similar to racism. Bigots try to justify this by pointing out some differences between humans and other species, but differences exist within human species and they are not the basis for discrimination.
I can't prove that a sufficiently impaired mentally disabled human can reason, think, or have values.
But I suppose if I wanted to raise thousands of mentally disabled humans in cages for the purpose of skinning them and selling their hides I would probably justify it to myself by asserting my inherent superiority based on their potential inability to replicate certain biological processes in the fatty organ within their craniums.
That was my point. Humans celebrate themselves for possessing the ability to reason, think, or have values. But judging other species by this standard is a preposterous notion. Just as a dolphin judging humans inferior for our limited ability to catch fish in our mouths via echolocation.
But if one can't judge species according to their own natural abilities we can still judge them according to their interactions with other species. This is where humans, come out looking poor. Mink do not negatively impact humans, and would have essentially no interaction with humans, but humans willfully imprison and brutalize millions of mink for frivolous pleasures.
It's a dismal reality, but the fact that they shouldn't have done this in the first place doesn't have an iota of bearing on what has to happen now. Good luck selling anyone on a rationale that asks them to risk human lives to buy a couple more years for the world's most miserable minks. Ergo, Humans > Minks.
Why are you putting the blame on the whole of humanity? Go place the blame on well off white western women, who are probably the main consumers of such products.
I literally never owned anything made of out fur, let alone mink fur.
The ACTAsia report "China's fur trade" points out that China is the world's largest importer of raw furs, and also consumes 80% of finished fur goods domestically. (https://www.actasia.org/resources/)
If you've got something that says otherwise, let's have it.
When you jump to conclusions you don't describe the world at large, you only describe yourself.
Cats need to be banned for a number of reasons, most importantly they can make people crazy and they kill an insane number of birds. It does matter that birds may be killed by windmills, when it’s not even comparable to the number cats kill.
I wonder if we will have future discussions about different programming decisions to cull various general intelligent computer programs that have converged on dangerous thought patterns (e.g. destruction focused).
These GI systems will have more advanced capabilities/intelligence than any known animal, and one could therefore argue they have higher moral standing. They will have evolved just like the animals, but on a vastly accelerated timescale due to parallelization.
Questions:
1. Is this worrisome?
2. If Denmark is catching this, should we be concerned that the virus has mutated in other animals and has thus far gone undetected?