Casual Culling of 15 million Mink.

Seems absurd to me. Will we kill all animals on the planet eventually to stop covid? I'm sure these minks won't be the last. It's going to become very hard to convince people any animals lives have meaning apart from their utility when we can casually extinct an entire species of otherwise harmless creatures.

But at least the fur business will fall....

[Laird]

I'll belatedly simply repeat the response I made when this issue was raised in the opt-in forums by chuck:

Atrocious. Presumably, the minks are captive. So, the opportunities for them to come into contact with humans and spread the virus can be contained. Keeping them captive and slaughtering them for their fur is bad enough. Slaughtering them for no good reason is even worse.

Keeping them captive and slaughtering them for their fur is bad enough. Slaughtering them for no good reason is even worse.

Is it Laird?  From the mink's perspective their slaughter is for human utility in either case; but they're still slaughtered regardless.

(To be clear: I don't have an active stance on this topic.  Passively I must admit I endorse the "animals as human utility" side since I'm a meat eater, etc.)

[Laird]

Is it Laird?  From the mink's perspective their slaughter is for human utility in either case; but they're still slaughtered regardless.

That's a fair point. On top of that, "no good reason" could be seen to imply that their fur is a "good" reason for which to slaughter them, which of course I don't believe and didn't mean to imply - it was just a hurried comment.

(To be clear: I don't have an active stance on this topic.  Passively I must admit I endorse the "animals as human utility" side since I'm a meat eater, etc.)

You can still change. Informing yourself about the issues is a good way to motivate that change.

The thing is it is horrible, but like it was said before this happened for a reason. A mutated coronavirus strain that also works against the immune system which is REAL BAD, which has already had some animal to human transmission. Even if you look at it from only a business perspective, you don't want to kill 15 million minks. But you just can't leave that be and risk a worse corona getting out.

The thing is it is horrible, but like it was said before this happened for a reason. A mutated coronavirus strain that also works against the immune system which is REAL BAD, which has already had some animal to human transmission. Even if you look at it from only a business perspective, you don't want to kill 15 million minks. But you just can't leave that be and risk a worse corona getting out.

Hundreds of individuals are already infected by various mink-derived strains of sars2. Worst case it can restart the pandemic. It’s just an extremely tough call how to deal with this. 

Animals are killed in the millions every day as part of the ordinary food production for 7 billion people. All this is jusr horrible as well.