(Beth Clifton collage)
36 viruses unknown to science found in 461 samples of mostly fur-farmed animals
SINGAPORE, SYDNEY, HONG KONG––Two years after fur farmers worldwide were compelled by law to kill more than 21 million mink to help stop the spread and possible mutation of COVID-19 into more dangerous forms, including 15 million mink in Norway alone, chances of a fur farming industry recovery were dealt a potentially lethal blow by the findings of a multi-national scientific team published by the peer-reviewed journal Nature on September 4, 2024.
University of Sydney virologist Edward Holmes and colleagues, “including several in China,” summarized Smriti Mallapaty for Nature.com, “sought to identify the viruses circulating in [fur] farms in China. They swabbed lung and gut tissue samples from 461 animals that died between 2021 and 2024.
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“Predominantly from intensive breeding facilities”
“Of these animals, 164 came from four species farmed exclusively for fur: mink (Neogale vison), red fox (Vulpes vulpes), Arctic fox (Vulpes lagopus) and raccoon dog [tanuki].”
The samples were taken “predominantly from intensive breeding facilities in northeastern China,” Mallapaty stipulated.
“The rest came from farmed and wild animals used for fur as well as food and traditional medicine, spread more broadly across eastern China. These included guinea pigs, deer and rabbits.
“The animals had all been sick and had probably died of an infectious disease,” Mallapaty continued.
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“Many influenza viruses & coronaviruses”
“The researchers sequenced RNA and DNA in the tissue samples and found a trove of viruses: 125 were identified in total, including many influenza viruses and coronaviruses.”
Thirty-six of the viruses were previously unknown to science.
“Many were found in species not previously known to host them,” Mallapaty noted. “For instance, they found the Japanese encephalitis virus in guinea pigs and norovirus in mink.
“The researchers found an H6N2 avian influenza virus in a muskrat (Ondatra zibethicus) — the first known identification of this subtype in mammals.
“And most notably,” Mallapaty said, “they found in mink a HKU5-like coronavirus related to viruses that have so far been identified only in bats — evidence that fur farms can act as a highway for viruses lurking in wild animals to get to people.”
Eddie Holmes.
(The University of Sydney: Louise Cooper photo)
“This is how pandemics happen”
Observed Holmes, “This is how pandemics happen.”
Most familiar farmed species, such as cattle, horses, donkeys, pigs, sheep, goats, chickens, and ducks, have been raised in proximity to humans and to each other for 5,000 to 10,000 years or longer, plenty of time to have exchanged viruses and to have evolved resistance to the viral diseases that most easily pass among the species.
Fur farming, however, is a relatively new branch of agribusiness, dating back barely more than a century in most of the world, involving species such as mink that in the wild rarely live in proximity to either other species or even others of their own kind.
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“These animals are a reservoir of viruses”
“Researchers have long suspected that these animals are a reservoir of viruses that can jump to people,” explained University of Hong Kong conservation biologist Alice Hughes to Mallapaty.
The new study, Hughes said, “highlights that these concerns are valid, and that the diversity of viruses with known risks to humans is even greater than was realized.”
Hughes and virologist Linfa Wang of the Duke-NUS Medical School in Singapore agreed that the fur industry should either be mandated to transition to the use of non-animal-based synthetic fur, or be obliged to adopt laboratory-like biosecurity measures, not even possible at most existing fur farms.
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H5N1 also afflicts fur farms
Before the COVID 19-driven shutdown of fur farming in 15 European nations, European mink farms produced nearly 40 million mink pelts per year; Chinese fur farms, with widely fluctuating production volume in recent decades, produced a crude average of about 25 million mink pelts per year.
Apart from the rapid spread of COVID-19 through mink farms in Europe and, to a lesser extent, North America, Mallapaty mentioned, “Mink farms have also had outbreaks of the highly pathogenic H5N1 avian influenza virus. And a popular fur animal, the raccoon dog (Nyctereutes procyonoides),” also known as tanuki, “could have played a part in bringing the virus that causes severe acute respiratory syndrome to people in 2003.”
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“Most concerned about bat coronavirus”
Finished Mallapaty, “The researchers classified some three dozen viruses as most concerning, because of their ability to jump between species. Raccoon dogs and mink each carried ten of these high-risk viruses — the most of any species.”
Added Josephine Ma, China news editor for the South China Morning Post, who was among the first journalists to see the Nature report, “The scientists said they were most concerned about the Pipistrellus bat coronavirus HKU5 in mink, as its lineage was closely related to viruses that had been only found in bats.
“Bat viruses have a history of recombination, meaning they can mix and form new strains when they infect the same host.
(Beth Clifton photo)
“Rabbit coronavirus”
“Other causes of concern,” Ma said, “were a new coronavirus – tentatively named as ‘rabbit coronavirus’ – and the divergent and high amount of coronaviruses found in the organs of the dead animals, according to the study.”
University of Sydney virologist Holmes told Ma, she paraphrased, that “The study was not aimed at finding the origin of COVID-19 because it would be impossible to find the ‘intermediate’ host that might have passed the virus to humans such a long time after the pandemic emerged.”
Explained Holmes, “While our paper is not about COVID origins, it clearly shows that viruses can move from wildlife species like bats into farmed species like mink. This leads to human beings being exposed to animal viruses. To me, this is exactly the sort of process that ultimately leads to pandemic viruses like Sars-CoV-2.”
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Plenty left to find
Continued Ma, “The authors clarified that small sample sizes in some cases and the focus on dead animals meant the study could not ‘provide information on the viruses that circulate in healthy farmed fur animals,’ while ‘the concentration on respiratory and gastrointestinal symptoms’ meant they could not ‘identify viruses that are present only in other tissues.’”
In other words, the viruses the team discovered were only the most hardy viruses carried by the fur-bearing animals, capable of survival and possible transmission after the deaths of the host species, and were only a fraction of the potential number of viruses that might be transmitted other than through urine, excreta, and/or aerosolized bodily fluids.
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“Farmed mink is now a biohazard”
“The farming of mink – the primary species used in fur production – is now a biohazard,” commented Animal Wellness Action and Center for a Humane president Wayne Pacelle, who amplified the findings by email even before most mainstream media had picked up wire service coverage of the Nature article.
“Fur farming of mink, foxes, raccoon dogs, and muskrats essentially places these wild animals under high stress,” Pacelle said, “in crowded, low-welfare, low-sanitation conditions.
“Workers must then be in close contact with these animals, conducting feeding and other animal husbandry duties. That human/animal intersection is a prescription for zoonotic disease transmission.
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“Negligible commerce”
“The most recently produced USDA annual review of mink production, released in July 2024, shows that we are taking this risk in the United States for a negligible amount of commerce,” Pacelle continued.
In inflation-adjusted dollars, Pacelle explained, the average price of a mink pelt has dropped from the equivalent of $183 in 1966 to $34 in 2023, which was actually a rise from $27.20.
“The farm-gate value of all U.S. pelts was just $33.1 million – a 10% drop from the prior year,” for a net 83% drop since 2013,” Pacelle said.
“As the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic receded,” Pacelle continued, “we recognized within the last year an even more ominous threat than COVID-19 mutations.
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“Case fatality rate of 53%”
“Among the viruses mink can contract and spill over to other species,” Pacelle mentioned, “is a deadly form of bird flu. An H5N1 mink mutant strain killed more than 200,000 farmed mink on six farms in Spain and Finland in 2022-2023.
“This bird flu strain has killed 458 of 873 of the people it has infected — a case fatality rate of 53%, much higher than any known influenza virus, including the infamous 1918 Spanish Flu that killed 50 million people.”
Such a mutant H5N1 pandemic might emerge from the Chinese fur farming industry, “But to be fair,” Pacelle acknowledged, “the virus could also easily be launched from a fur farm in Wisconsin or Utah – the two states with the majority of U.S. production.”
Pacelle called for the passage of the “MINKS Are Superspreaders Act,” introduced in 2021 by Congressional representatives Rosa DeLauro, a Democrat from Connecticut, and Nancy Mace, a Republican from South Carolina.
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Reintroduced in the soon-to-expire 118th Congress, the “MINKS Are Superspreaders Act, if passed, “would end mink farming in the United States,” Pacelle said.
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