To avoid a new scandal - ecological this time - the Danish government said it was ready on Friday November 27 to dig up and burn the hastily buried mink carcasses as part of the fight against Covid-19.
Eliminated because they can be the cause of a mutation of the new coronavirus potentially problematic for humans, these millions of animals were mostly buried in mass graves.
Read also: Covid-19: are the mutations observed in mink dangerous for humans?
"
The desire to have no more mink and to burn them, I have had it since the first day I heard about it,
" the new Minister of Agriculture, Rasmus Prehn, told public television TV2 on ranking behind the majority of parties in Parliament.
The political class fears phosphorus and nitrogen pollution from the decomposition of the bodies of dead animals and demands that the carcasses be dug up and destroyed otherwise, for example by burning them.
The gases emitted could in particular pollute drinking water and bathing water.
At the beginning of November, Denmark announced that it would slaughter its huge herd of more than 15 million mink, because of a mutation of the coronavirus via these mustelids which could, according to preliminary studies, threaten the effectiveness of the future vaccine for humans.
More than 10 million mink have already been euthanized, according to the latest report.
Two weeks after sounding the alert - and in the midst of a political crisis over the lack of legal basis for the decision that led to the resignation of the Minister of Agriculture - the government concluded that this potential threat to vaccines humans was "
very likely extinct
", in the absence of a new case detected.
Read also: Goals shot: in tears, the Danish Prime Minister apologizes for the management of the crisis
In Holstebro, in the west, carcasses have resurfaced from a makeshift mass grave on military land, drawing attention to the conditions under which the bodies of euthanized animals in areas at risk (either contaminated or adjacent to contaminated animals) were buried.
It also appeared that they had been buried 200 meters from a lake, 100 meters less than the recommendations.
The Minister of Agriculture warned that any final decision on the incineration of mink could only be taken with the approval of the Environment Agency.