Mink VIRUS Act (Federal)
H.R.2185
Ban on mink farming to protect public health and human safety from the risks of disease transmission, including COVID-19 and avian flu, to people and wild mink populations, as well as to address concerns of animal well-being.
Status
The Animal Legal Defense Fund supports this bill.
Sponsor: Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D-NY-13)
Introduction Date: March 18, 2025
Congress is considering a ban on mink farming to protect public health and human safety from the risks of disease transmission, including COVID-19 and avian flu, to people and wildlife, as well as to address animal welfare concerns and wasted taxpayer resources.
Mink farming, an industry in which mink are cruelly killed for their fur, poses a danger to public health and is a dying industry being propped up by taxpayer dollars.
The Mink: Vectors for Infection Risk in the United States Act, known as the Mink VIRUS Act (H.R. 2185), would prohibit the farming of minks for fur after a one-year phase-out period, while also creating a grant program that would reimburse mink farmers to help with their transition out of the industry. The bill also sets guidelines for euthanizing minks in the most humane way possible.
Why is this legislation important?
Mink farms confine animals in overcrowded, unsanitary cages where they live out their lives with no access to their natural environment and are unable to engage in natural behaviors. The results of housing minks in these poor conditions include:
- stress-induced self-mutilation, injuries, and illness.
- creating a breeding ground for zoonotic diseases, such as COVID-19 and avian flu.
Mink pose unique threats to humans because they can become infected by, and potentially transmit, some of the same respiratory viruses that affect us. They are unique in that they can transmit both animal and human respiratory viruses, which can lead to the creation, and spread, of new strains of these viruses.
Since 2022, there have been outbreaks of avian influenza throughout mink farms in Europe, leading to heightened concern of human spread. During the COVID-19 pandemic, tens of thousands of minks in the United States, and millions worldwide, become infected with COVID-19 with some instances of mink-to-human transmission.
Mink-to-human transmission of the COVID-19 virus has been reported in Denmark, the Netherlands, Poland, and the United States. Minks who escape from farms are also capable of infecting other animals. A wild mink captured in 2020 tested positive for a variant of COVID-19 indistinguishable from the virus found in nearby infected farmed mink populations. Aside from the welfare and public health concerns, mink farming is a dying industry that continues to be propped up by taxpayer money, including loans of $1.5 million from the US government in 2020-2021, the majority of which have since been forgiven.
Urge Your Rep to Co-sponsor the Mink VIRUS Act!
Urge you Rep to co-sponsor the Mink VIRUS Act to ban mink farming in the U.S.