Culled Mink Rise From the Dead To Denmark's Horror (theguardian.com) 108
Dead mink are rising from their graves in Denmark after a rushed cull over fears of a coronavirus mutation led to thousands being slaughtered and buried in shallow pits -- from which some are now emerging. From a report: "As the bodies decay, gases can be formed," Thomas Kristensen, a national police spokesman, told the state broadcaster DR. "This causes the whole thing to expand a little. In this way, in the worst cases, the mink get pushed out of the ground." Police in West Jutland, where several thousand mink were buried in a mass grave on a military training field, have tried to counter the macabre phenomenon by shovelling extra soil on top of the corpses, which are in a 1 metre-deep trench. "This is a natural process," Kristensen said. "Unfortunately, one metre of soil is not just one metre of soil -- it depends on what type of soil it is. The problem is that the sandy soil in West Jutland is too light. So we have had to lay more soil on top." Adding to the popular concern, local media reported that the animals may also have been buried too close to lakes and underground water reserves, prompting fears of possible contamination of ground and drinking water supplies.
Was burning not an option? (Score:5, Insightful)
Is there a reason why burning is not an option? So many corpses near freshwater does not sound like a great idea
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I'd wager the reasons are a combination of not wanting to pay the extra cost, a certain amount of nimby with regards to gigantic plumes of burning hair smoke, and the negative pr that the spectacle would generate. Also, and speaking purely as one who dislikes fur farming, I rather imagine the people involved aren't exactly types to contemplate the effects of their actions on other lives.
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So, better create a health risk for humans rather than some one-off CO2 emissions? Well, I guess karma-pr is coming for them
Re:Was burning not an option? (Score:4, Informative)
It was not to avoid CO2 emissions. Burning was by far the most preferred option, but just torching them out in the open does not burn them properly. They need to go into proper incinerators, and the capacity is not there to handle 50,000 tons of meat in a week.
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So...the pot is dark, therefore the kettle is not black. Well, I'll give you the credit you are due. Your post worked. I am feeling pretty depressed with Slashdot right about now.
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Because of CO2 emissions and smell. You better store the carbon right back into the ground before you burn it up and release it into the air. And burning a lot of bodies can produce quite a smell and make people feel uncomfortable.
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Nonsense. How do you think coal, oil and gas ended up being deep underground in the first place? Do you think God dug a deep hole and covered it all up? Of course not.
It's simply a slow process where soil builds up layers and buries the carbon underground over time. By burying it do we contribute to this process. Sure, some of it turns into gas in this process and escapes into the atmosphere, but by burning it up do you put most of the carbon right back into the atmosphere and all that ends in the ground is
Re:Was burning not an option? (Score:4, Insightful)
Coal was deposited because nothing could break down lignite at the time the coal deposits were formed. If you tried the same today, it would not work, because wood rots.
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I've mentioned coal as one of many examples of how carbon gets trapped in the ground. This is however not about creating lignite. The point is that one can trap a good amount of carbon by burring it and allowing it to turn into soil opposed to straight up burning it. There certainly is a biochemical exchange of carbon taking place between the ground and the air, which life depends on, but carbon that's in the ground does not cause the Greenhouse Effect.
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These are both very shallow reasons though. CO2 emissions would be one-off, and re smell/sight, well if people are happy to support a fur industry, why get uncomfortable with the not-so-out-of-sight corpse disposal?
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Are fur coats a carbon sink?
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Burning _mink_ ? Minks are closely related to skunks. Even in shallow graves, the scent is likely to be its own bio-hazard.
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Skunks are edible by the way. There's a thought ...
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To quote an old Boy's Life, it's "better than raccoon or possum". I'm assuming mink would taste much like skunk or ferret./ In this case, though, due to slaughter to control COVID-19, I don't think that skinning them and cooking them would be wise. "Wet markets", butchers that serve meat like bat and snake, are allegedly, how COVID-19 was contracted by humans in the first place, Repeating that experiment seems unwise.
Skunks are known to carry rabies: I assume minks can, as well, though I'd hope that domesti
Re:Was burning not an option? (Score:5, Interesting)
Fur is murder. Meat is murder. And before you reply, what if we killed your pets for fur and meat?
What are you so upset about? We have always done this!!
We have always been an intelligent predatory species with our own survival in mind. Just because you imagine yourself as something else doesn't change who you really are. The very fact that we care for other species isn't a random act of our ego. It is because our intelligence has shown us that our survival depends on others so that we then have started to care. This is an act of survival and our own selfishness. Don't kid yourself in thinking we're something we're not. The very moment you though about going after my pets shows that you are a predator, too. Deny it if you must, but it won't change who you are.
Imagining a mink farmer being some heartless person, without having spoken to them, knowing them and understanding them, doesn't make one emphatic either. To lash out is just another predatory impulse.
To make clothing out of animals is what we have always done. We used and still use the skin of animals to make couches, seats, shoes, bags and belts for our pants. Look around your home, you'll very likely find a few things that are made from animals.
I'm assuming you're still very young and have difficulties with this, but as you get older will you learn what the true human nature really is at its core. If you then want to fight human nature should you at the very least know who you are fighting.
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Is there something wrong with aiming for better? ...
Yes, there is, because one can do it wrong. Try to see what's really there. If nobody wanted furs, then these farmers couldn't sell them. Instead, there is a market and it has always been there, and it will always be there. These farmers help in avoiding further cruelty by breeding and farming furs for this purpose. It is not much different to farming chickens in massive farms, stuffed into cages, just so millions of kids can enjoy chicken nuggets, spaghetti, pancakes, ... you name it. Don't start with chil
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There's a market for MMA fighting too. I'm sure if someone opened a new Colosseum with gladiators fighting to the death the ratings would be amazing. Some humans would eat that shit up. Some humans are disgusted by it. I know which humans I prefer. What were we arguing about again?
Actually no. I think people who watched it will get bored by it quickly, because the thrill would eventually wear off. Others would use it for a massive virtue signalling of unseen proportions to express how they feel about it. Some of the protesters would even go as far as becoming violent just to stop it.
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As for your argument, it is specious. Humans have the capacity for choice. We don't have to factory farm, there are enough wild game animals that if we were willing to change our d
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...
What the hell are you doing on Slashdot you throwback?
What I do is that I'm reading articles and leave commentary. You seem like you're processing your own criminal history in search of redemption.
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Humans have capacity for choice and to pass knowledge on in our society, we don't have to be governed simply by our genetic programing.
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I freely admit I am a criminal, so are you, we all are.
No, I'm not. Nor was I ever convicted or in a court of law or just arrested by the police. You keep talking for yourself but you don't get to talk for me. You don't get to declare me a criminal just because you've fucked up your life and are now trying to find a cheap way to your redemption. It doesn't work this way. But keep trying.
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Is there something wrong with aiming for better?
When your "better" is fake fur make from plastic, or clothing make from plastics, and the whole environment ends up polluted with microplastics that every living being on the planet is infested with, then I question your idea of better. Fur is a renewable resource, unlike your alternatives.
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Here is your problem, and why people get annoyed with your argument.
Everything is hyperbolic.
You compare using animal products to making cups out of the skulls of vanquished enemies and talk about baby cannibalism and aliens herding humans into ships for food.
The people you are arguing with hear this and immediately reject your opinion as absurd nonsense.
And frankly, you know what? I'll take a meat eating, leather wearing nice person over an angry, berating vegan any day of the week.
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Go back to work and do what your boss says. Get the point, do you?
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And just to add to it, because I very much doubt you get it, do realise that you are also owned by your government. Humans have always dominated one another, and we always will. Parents dominate their children and sometimes beat them. The police will arrest you, beat you and even kill you when necessary. We have armies and we still have wars and kill one another. Slavery is little different to it, only is it based on racism mixed in with torture. We do torture less today, but racism is still very much prese
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We are all animals. As omnivores, it is natural for us to eat both animal and vegetable. Without modern unnatural supplements, a pure vegetarian diet is lacking vital nutrients for brain development. As to fur, use it if you can. We are not good stewards if we waste anything from the environment that we can easily avoid.
I have no trouble with people killing their non-farm pets for fur and meat. I would not do it because I find fur uncomfortable and most non-farm meats too gamey. People who live on farms get
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As far as vegans go, what you're saying about vital nutrients for brain development isn't really true. I'm not a vegan myself, but I don't see the need to perpetuate myths about them. The main nutrient for brain development that they may have trouble getting is basically just fat, and they can get enough of that just by choosing the right foods. Things like avocado, hummus, almond butter, spirulina, etc.
As far as your dogs, when you say you lived in the country, do you mean farming country? If your dogs wer
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All the products you listed depend upon unnatural human-created mutants to produce.
That's called agriculture. It's the same way we got our farmed animals. I don't really see your point.
Distinct lack of mutants (Score:2)
Hummus isn't an organism of any kind. It's a recipe typically made from chickpeas, sesame seeds, garlic, and citrus. All of which have been around since antiquity.
Spirulina has been around since the Aztecs and is simply a name for harvested cyanobacteria.
Almonds have also been around since antiquity.
The typical Hass Avocados one can buy at the store are not human-created mutants, at least in any genetic sense. It is true they have been cloned en masse via the ancient technique of grafting, but the original
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There are things that our body doesn't produce that aren't available in vegetables. Some of the B-complex vitamins that are vital for brain and general neurological development are among them. Not a myth.
An example that I've encountered was an engineer that I knew a few years ago who decided to go true vegetarian (no dairy products either) as well as to avoid prepared foods. After about a year, I noted he was not performing nearly as well as he had in the past. I talked to him about it and talked him into g
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There are things that our body doesn't produce that aren't available in vegetables. Some of the B-complex vitamins that are vital for brain and general neurological development are among them. Not a myth.
That simply isn't true though. Most of the B vitamins are available just from yeast. Add in legumes like peanuts and you have all of them. Plus there are foods like quinoa, chia, spinach, basically any cereal, etc. that vegans regularly eat that contain them. Let's not forget that I already mentioned hummus and spirulina. Basically, you're just peddling a bunch of meat-eating religious nonsense. I eat meat, but I don't make some dumb religion out of it.
An example that I've encountered was an engineer that I knew a few years ago who decided to go true vegetarian (no dairy products either) as well as to avoid prepared foods. After about a year, I noted he was not performing nearly as well as he had in the past. I talked to him about it and talked him into getting some tests. He was found to have a severe B12 deficiency. He caved in on his ideals enough to take supplements and improved greatly over the next couple of months. I still don't think he returned fully to normal, but whether that was due to other deficiencies or lasting damage from the B12 deficiency is difficult to know.
That's a nice anecdote, but all that represents is one
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Dogs, even feral ones, are smart enough to know which animals are farm animals and which ones are wild and that humans get upset about farm animals being attacked. Your dogs were only letting you see the kills that they knew would not upset you. I can pretty much guarantee you they were killing your neighbors chickens and other livestock. They were probably menacing and even attacking humans too. I've been attacked and threatened by packs of dogs like that before. I tend not to think very highly of their owners. Also, as their owner, I don't think you quite seem to understand that, when they do attack someone's livestock, or family member, that actually is on you. That's in both a legal and moral sense. Trying to disavow responsibility by just calling them "natural companions" does not absolve you of that responsibility. I can also tell you from experience that dog owners like you tend to throw hissy fits when someone fights back against their vicious, irresponsibly raised dog.
This wasn't a pack, just a couple of dogs either of which could easily take down a deer by itself. They weren't the least bit feral and were the gentlest companions imaginable - a Golden Retriever and a Black Labrador. They picked up a taste for deer when hunters gutted deer on the property. I saw one of them once taking one down. Very majestic sight. It is strange how silent and matter of fact it is. Many knew whose dogs they were and in fact knew the dogs who routinely roamed as far as 20 miles away but a
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Even primarily herbivorous animals like deer turn out to be opportunistic predators of rodents because they're a convient, dense source of nutrition.
Indeed. Deer event eat human remains if they get the opportunity [nationalgeographic.com]
Re: Was burning not an option? (Score:2)
"As far as vegans go, what you're saying about vital nutrients for brain development isn't really true."
It IS true. A child raised vegan will - on average, exceptions apply - be way behind the curve intellectually and physically.
A pediatrician I knew was sad everytime he was confronted with the long-term outcome for children denied proper nutrition and/or care by stubborn parents putting their vegan or other religious dogmas ahead of their children's development.
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Nothing you've written is inconsistent with what I'm saying. My position was that the statement: "without modern unnatural supplements, a pure vegetarian diet is lacking vital nutrients for brain development" is a myth. The position I am arguing with is that it is impossible to achieve a purge vegetarian diet containing the proper nutrients for brain development. I did not say that it can't be harder to meet nutritional requirements with such a diet, just that it isn't impossible. Any constraint on diet is
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Re: Was burning not an option? (Score:2)
"There is nothing immoral about an animal killing another animal for food."
Sure, but that is beside the point. Isn't this about mink farming for furs? I'm not a vegan, but I find mass farming of animals for their pelts to be sold as luxury goods to be a bit heartless. I get that it's a traditional occupation for some people, but "argument from tradition" is just not a good argument for it (not saying you made that argument, but someone in thos thread did make that point. I'm on mobile and can't go back to c
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Fur coats can be varying degrees of comfort. Mink has long been one of the best because it is soft, warm, and the skin is not stiff. It is a luxury because it takes many to make a coat, so only those with more resources to trade for it could afford it.
As to there being alternatives today, I don't like getting into the game of forcing people to modern alternatives. I'm not into mink, but I am into other forms of natural living and would not want those choices taken away. For example, I like real wood furnitu
Carrot Juice is Murder (Score:2)
Meat is murder.
So is carrot juice [youtube.com]. Good luck surviving without murdering something to eat.
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I don't have a pet, so go ahead, kill all of them.
Re: Was burning not an option? (Score:2)
Some were burned but it was simply not possible due to the huge amount of minks being culled (17 million in a few weeks).
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Why do they even have that many minks?!?!?!
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Denmark produces (or rather produced) almost half the mink fur in the world. Mainly due to a perfect climate for mink (originally from North America) fur production and an extremely successful breeding work over the last almost hundred years.
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Ah. All those poor minks. :(
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You'd be surprised how little actually travels through soil. The "near freshwater" is not really a risk.
As for burning, it's significantly more expensive / difficult especially en mass, so I'm not surprised that an industry that is already facing huge losses on account of having to dispose their product didn't do so in any other than the cheapest possible way.
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Are you sure about the near freshwater lack of risk? I know a few historical cases in the UK where cemetery + freshwater has caused numerous deaths, can't remember the museum I was reading this at, but here's a link I found that has a bit of info: https://www.groundsure.com/res... [groundsure.com]
Well too bad that it's expensive, I'm surprised that they were even allowed to be so careless. Maybe the state should have helped a bit, the case being so unprecedented.
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It was not about cost. The whole thing is going to cost something in the region of a billion USD, possibly more. The options were to either bury most of them or leave them alive longer so the incinerators can keep up.
Re: Was burning not an option? (Score:3)
There would have been a fire sale on mink coats. PETA won't dare touch you
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How is a burned Mink supposed to sing tjing tjang tjing when it rises from the dead? It still needs a mouth.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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Cambridge dictionary for corpse: a dead body, **usually** of a person.
Idiot.
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Yes. We are talking 17 million times 3kg or so. As many as possible are burned, but facilities are way overloaded.
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Why 3kg? Look at the wikipedia page, the largest ones seem to be 1.5kg.
But here's another idea. Dump/distribute them in the ocean as food for the fish? Doing the math it looks like a container ship can easily fit them all, and the fish should be more than happy.
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Uh-oh (Score:5, Funny)
Looks like something is rotten in the state of Denmark!
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Thought it was generally held (Score:2)
Re:Thought it was generally held (Score:5, Interesting)
This is where legends of revenants originally came from. If you look at actual documented vampire scares, it's actually never the dead noblemen of pop culture. It's usually some marginalized, unpopular person who received a hasty and sloppy burial. You also get them after epidemics where a lot of poor people have to be buried quickly.
One of the signs of a revanant grave is a hole through which the spirit of the interred person escapes to roam. Of course it can also be a burrow by which an animal gets *into* the grave. Many of the other signs of vampirism are signs of normal body decomposition. You'd think that 19th Century country folk would be familiar with death, and they were; but they weren't really so familiar with its aftermath. So when they were frightened into digging up graves, they saw a lot of things that they weren't expecting.
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This is where legends of revenants originally came from. [] You'd think that 19th Century country folk would be familiar with death, and they were; but they weren't really so familiar with its aftermath. So when they were frightened into digging up graves, they saw a lot of things that they weren't expecting.
The reports on vampire activity came from the eastern parts of the Austrian empire 1718 to 1755, not in the 19th century.
By the 19th century, vampire novels were a literary genre.
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Oh, no. The last vampire panic was much more recent -- in the 1920s as I recall. There was also quite a lot of vampire activity in New England throughout the 1800s.
Some have suggested that many vampire incidents correspond to tuberculosis outbreaks. It makes a lot of sense.
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It depends on terrain. 1 m is pretty close to 4 feet, and they tried going above the 1 m hole, but in sandy terrain I think 2 m might be necessary. Instead of using dirt on top (which sounds easiest), they're using fences t keep animals away. Sounds a little weird to me.
click bait titles even on slashdot? (Score:2)
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Too many submissions just copy the click bait title and first few paragraphs instead of a summary. It's fairly annoying. Like, I get that otherwise you have to edit it, but it results in a lot of high-noise submissions.
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I for one welcome our new zombie mink overlords.
Note who posted it. (Score:2)
This person is not famous for quality content.
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Covid is causing the zombie apocalypse! (Score:4, Funny)
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Its winter and you are worried about being attacked by fur coats? Those zombie minks are just trying to keep you warm.
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For better or worse, probably better, we don't have automated mink skinning machines.
Some (small) percentage of these minks had a novel mutation of nCov-19 with fifteen humans infected, so everything was hazmat.
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EU does not allow products from infected animals to be sold.
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Denmark requires killing of all minks in the country.
They still allow using the furs of killed minks from farms with no cases of Covid-19.
The Mink Stink Is Real. (Score:2)
Hydrochloric acid is always an option, folks.
IT'S 2020 (Score:4, Insightful)
This is not the year to get cute with headlines like that!
2019 me reading that headline: "Oh LOL funny, probably just decaying bodies being pushed out"
2020 me reading that headline: "Well, not entirely surprised. Honey did you put zombie or aliens on 2020 bingo?"
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Better check the Mayan calendar for events.
stop killing animals strictly for their fur ? (Score:1)
And no, it's not the same thing as a cow, or a goat, or some other animal that provides leather but also has significant value as a source of food.
These are furry little things be raised just to kill them to make coats.
I'm not really clear on how it would be a bad thing if we just stopped doing that.
Re:stop killing animals strictly for their fur ? (Score:5, Insightful)
> These are furry little things be raised just to kill them to make coats.
We wouldn't be here if our ancestors didn't use fur for clothing. We can't have an ethical system incompatible with our own evolution.
Disney aside, weasels are assholes. They're not lovable little fuzzballs.
That said, inhumane trapping and caging can be real ethical problems that are only an artifact of Industrialization.
Sure we can. It's not 100,000 BC (Score:2)
> We can't have an ethical system incompatible with our own evolution.
A few things have changed in the last million years. We actually DON'T need to go club the other turned over the head. We can now use economic sanctions to discourage bad behavior. We have the ICC.
Ethical choices today, in the modern world, are not in fact the same as they were for australopithecus.
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Slavery (Score:2)
Not to mention the slavery. The ancient Greek and Roman societies, the British Empire, and Arab Caliphate, and the Ottoman empire all used slaves.
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We wouldn't be here if our ancestors didn't use fur for clothing. We can't have an ethical system incompatible with our own evolution.
As far as I know, almost all ethical systems followed today assume that humans should not behave like cavemen. Some "natural" behaviours are curbed in the interests of civilisation. One notable exception was promoted by Aleister Crowley, and was practiced at the Abbey at Thelema. "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law". It ended badly.
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Good point - what actually happens to the mink bodies after the fur is removed? Do they end up in...hot dogs? :-) Prob in dog food and/or pig feed?
As for stopping rising them for fur...I'd hate we converted to make the fur out of plastics of any kind instead. At least, with some stretching of imagination, we could call this a "renewable" resource.
All in all - perhaps we do not need fur anymore at all?
So... (Score:1)
...like Trumpolini supporters?
Unbelievable, in this day and age (Score:1)
The most amazing takeaway from these stories of mink and coronaviruses is that that millions of animals are being raised in Europe in order to be slaughtered for clothing materials. I really thought this cruel practice was over in the 21st century.
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You can die wearing synthetic coats and hats at minus 40, furs are the way to go. Mink are just a well upholstered weasel, what's the big deal?
They have risen (Score:2)
Zombie Mink? (Score:1)
Does that mean those of use who had Zombie Mink for December will get the score?