Did I really need to add mink farms to my worry list?

I eat meat. I wear leather. I have a down jacket. And a down comforter. I have bunny-fur lined leather mittens. (A gift.)

But I don't have anything fur. No fur collar on a winter jacket. And no fur coat.

Fur coats, in particular minks, were quite the mark of luxury when I was growing up. 

A big payoff prize on the game show The Big Payoff was a mink coat, modeled by former Miss America Bess Myerson. In movies, on TV, the best gift imaginable from husband to wife (or old goat man to younger Marilyn Monroe style girlfriend) was a full length mink.

My mother didn't have a mink coat, but she did have a mink stole and a mink pillbox hat. As a young single gal in the 1940's, she had a mouton fur coat. My aunt didn't have a mink either, but she had an Astrakhan fur coat and - I think - one of those fox-head-chasing-fox-tail scarves that women wore over their suits.

As it turned out, once women of a certain age began dumping their fur coats in the late 1960's, they were all over the thrift shops. And, when I was in college, they became the rage among college girls. My sister Kath and I had a couple that we'd swap off: a mouton with these colossal balloon sleeves, and a gray Astrakhan fur mid-calf length cape that had originally come from luxe Boston furrier Kakas Furs. (The cape weighed a ton, by the way, and was a chore to wear.) Both of these coats were purchased for short money from the Salvation Army. Most of my friends had similar Sallie furs.

Today, of course, I wouldn't be caught dead in a fur coat. There's just something too, too, too awful about swanning around in a dead animal that to me is way more too, too, too awful than wearing leather shoes or eating bacon.

But although I wouldn't wear a fur, and I can't remember the last time I saw anyone wearing anything furrier than a fur-collared Canada Goose jacket, furs are, apparently, still a thing.

And one of the states that they're a thing in is Wisconsin which is:

...the country’s top producer of mink pelts, yielding 38 percent of the United States’ total. The industry generates $22 million a year for the state. (Source: WaPo)

Now, $22 million is nothing when compared to the Wisconsin dairy industry, which brings in nearly $50B in revenue to the state. Still, if you're a mink farmer, it's something.

But that something's got a problem going for it that's even more acute than the decline of interest in mink-wearing. And that problem is Covid related: 

The ferret-like mammals have shown a particular susceptibility to the virus. There have been outbreaks of coronavirus at 416 mink farms in 11 countries. Sixteen of those occurred at U.S. farms, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, including 12 in Utah and an outbreak in Oregon. And in Denmark the infected minks transmitted the virus back to humans, in a mutated form.

Not to mention that Denmark has decided to put down the countries entire stock of minks. (The animals, not the coats. There were 17 million of these little critters.)

What the state of Wisconsin has decided to do is jump mink farm workers to the head of the line for vaccine. There aren't many of them, but the fact that 300 mink workers are getting inoculated ahead of the likes of "non-livestock veterinarians, flight attendants, and librarians" is raising plenty of eyebrows. And, of course, it isn't making the non-livestock vets, flight attendants, and librarians all that happy.

Can't blame them, of course. Everyone wants the vaccine NOW. And there are plenty of professions that can make a righteous claim for priority. (In Massachusetts, they pushed teachers and retail workers down below the 65-75 cohort, mostly, I believe, because the Boomers squawked louder. While I benefit from this shift in priority, I don't think it was the right thing to do.)

PETA is taking the opportunity of the Covid-mink connection to lobby for doing away with the industry altogether. Don't blame them either. I'm sure they'd like to do something better with their time than run those protests where they spray paint the coats of mink wearers. (I don't know if they're still doing this, but it was a thing for a while.)

Even if they never find evidence that mink farming and Covid are connected in their state, Wisconsin is probably wise to make sure that mink farm workers get vaccinated. But, in truth, the world would be a better place if the mink industry went out of business. 

Maybe I'm splitting hairs here, but it does seem a lot worse to raise an animal just to kill it for its coat than it is to raise an animal to eat it. That said, I'll probably end up a non-leather-wearing vegetarian before I die.

Minks and Covid. It hadn't been on my worry list just yesterday, but - even though I'm nowhere near a Wisconsin mink farm - it's there now. Sigh.

(What's a day without a good sigh...)