COPENHAGEN, Denmark (CN) — Denmark’s “mink scandal,” when the government ordered a mass slaughter of the animals in 2020 over fears of a Covid mutation spreading to people, is raising a fresh outcry as politicians question the rising costs of the $4 billion-plus scheme to compensate mink farmers.
Initial estimates showed compensation for losses would cost around 18 billion Danish kroner ($2.5 billion), but in January the Danish Ministry of Finance adjusted the amount to 29.5 billion kroner ($4.2 billion).
Some politicians who originally supported the compensation law are now skeptical.
At the Red-Green Alliance party, agricultural rapporteur Søren Egge Rasmussen said that the “compensation had run wild,” calling it “unjust that the Danish taxpayers have to pay up.”
“There is no doubt that these expenses are the government’s responsibility. We already warned during negotiations in 2021 that compensation was too comprehensive. Now, we see the consequences,” he told Courthouse News.
Carl Valentin, agricultural rapporteur from the Green Left party, said that recent estimations had “taken the whole system by surprise.”
“One of the reasons that mink farmers receive bigger compensation than expected could be that they help decide case outcomes themselves,” he said.
Until now, seven out of 10 committee representatives have been appointed directly by the mink industry and the industry organization the Danish Agriculture & Food Council.
On Thursday, after hefty debates in the Danish Parliament, Minister of Food Jacob Jensen announced that mink farmers will no longer be directly represented on the committees deciding awards.
Valentin applauded the decision, noting that it will hopefully secure more fair results.
“It surprised us that the farmers had success in claiming that they were going to improve their businesses. The mink industry was definitely not a thriving industry, so the farmers have no evidence for their assumptions of an upcoming increase in demand,” he said.
In 2020, the country was one of the world’s leading exporters of fur. After roughly 15 million minks were culled, the industry almost completely shut down, but politicians quickly promised farmers compensation for their losses through 2023.
It took the government years to process claims, with a separate commission evaluating each farmer’s case. While only 70 cases are finalized, it is clear that the collective bill will be much higher than expected.
Danish broadcaster DR revealed this week that 14 of 21 mink breeders have argued for state payments exceeding expectations by millions of dollars, and documented that several farmers sought compensation for more animals than their licenses allowed.
DR found that most farmers asked for their compensation calculation to include more minks.
Farmers, however, say it must be a fair process. Reimbursement schemes for the 2020 government-ordered mink slaughter should be based on the projected number of animals they would have had in a normal year — not the actual number of animals they lost, they argue.
One reason they cite is low-quality animal feed from a popular central food station in 2019 that lead to fewer mink puppies in 2020.
Breeders also want the committee's evaluation to include planned business expansion and the purchase of more minks for an expected boom.
“We had bought equipment and machinery, which is still here. The law states that you can seek compensation for these things. It isn’t fair that we should just let it stand without getting a penny, when we were shut down from one day to another," mink farmer Henning Christensen told DR.
The mink case has been politically sensitive from the outset, since the Social-Democratic government spearheaded by Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen carried out the mink culling during Covid-19 lockdown without a legal mandate approved by Parliament. Ten high-ranking government officials faced misconduct charges for not following the rules.
According to law professor Sten Bønsing of Aalborg University, the compensation process has also been tricky from the beginning.
“It was a political choice to compensate the farmers. The choice depended on whether the mink killings were juridically considered 'expropriation,' which they were, or instead a 'general societal regulation,'" he said.
The former automatically triggered compensation, since the state acquires property belonging to an individual; the latter would be like implementing a new rule or law, such as banning a chemical in foods.
Bønsing noted that while compensation is important, the project requires a tremendous amount of public resources, including tax money.
Neither Danish Mink nor Danish Mink Breeders responded to interview requests.
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