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Animal welfare groups criticize response to bird flu outbreak at Utah mink farm
© iStock – nevarpp
Alixel Cabrera
(Utah News Dispatch)
After reports of a bird flu outbreak at a mink farm in Utah emerged, animal welfare advocates are describing the state’s response to it as “dangerously lax.”
Details about the outbreak are still publicly unclear. A spokesperson for the Utah Department of Agriculture and Food said that “due to the limited reach and ongoing nature of the outbreak, we are unable to answer some questions that are too specific about the case in order to protect the privacy of the producer.”
However, records from the U.S. Department of Agriculture show seven cases of avian influenza among captive mink in Salt Lake County collected and confirmed in August — though the data may be incomplete, the agency said in its website.
Animal Wellness Action and the Center for a Humane Economy, two advocacy groups, criticized the lack of information released to the public, including the mink population of the affected farm, whether there was mink-to-mink transmission of the virus, its source, or any worker exposure findings.
“This isn’t an obscure infection in an isolated wild animal,” Wayne Pacelle, president of Animal Wellness Action and the Center for a Humane Economy, said in a news release. “It occurred among intensively confined mink, animals with a documented history of amplifying respiratory viruses and providing opportunities for viral evolution. Americans deserve to know what happened and what government found.”
In 2020, COVID-19 killed about 12,000 mink in Utah, one of the top mink producing states in the country.
The bird flu outbreak is the first of its kind documented in the country, according to the Animal Welfare Institute. The group found through a public records request to the Utah Department of Agriculture and Food that the affected farm was expecting to lose about 80% of its mink to the disease, and that officials were uncertain on the appropriate protocol to contain the virus.
Without a standard to quarantine the farm, an official said: “our only options at this point are to watch them die or get emergency vaccine approval.”
Leon Page, a Utah Department of Agriculture and Food public information officer, said that because this is the first avian influenza outbreak in mink in the country, there isn’t an existing precedent for treatment or response.
“However, (Utah Department of Agriculture and Food) staff also do everything they can during the process to support producers and make sure that we maximize safety and minimize damage wherever we can,” he said.
But animal rights groups were not reassured.
“It only takes one unlucky mutation of this dangerous virus to trigger a human health crisis, and we can no longer ignore the threat posed by disease proliferation on mink farms,” Kate Dylewsky, assistant director of government affairs at the Animal Welfare Institute said in a release. “The failure of state and federal officials to prepare for this scenario, or to implement important biosecurity measures in response to the outbreak, demonstrates how mink farming operates with almost no oversight, compounding the threat to the public.”
The agency informed the Utah Department of Health and Human Services of the case while it investigated the possibility of transmission to humans, “which has not yet proven to be a high risk,” Page said. The department also issued a “verbal hold” to the facility rather than a legal quarantine, before officials continued their investigation.
Similar cases in other countries were solved through depopulation instead of quarantines, “so there is also little international precedent for a protocol that doesn’t immediately resort to depopulation,” he said.
The options the department has contemplated for the outbreak are depopulation, quarantine and vaccination, Page said. But the latter can only be approved by the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins, not by state departments.
In 2024, Colorado took its own steps against spreading bird flu by requiring regular testing of dairy products for avian influenza as the outbreak spread through cattle herds across the region.
“Because (avian flu) in mink is new to the US, research is limited, and there is little guidance for dosage or efficacy in mink specifically,” Page said. “If approved, the vaccine would be released to the state veterinarian and tracked closely by that office to ensure there was no diversion to poultry, dairy cattle, or other farms. USDA is having internal discussions on when they can or would allow vaccinations.”
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PETITION TARGET: U.K. Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Dame Angela Eagle
No fox should have to run in terror from a pack of hounds, desperately trying to escape before they are caught, injured, or killed. Yet that can happen during a trail hunt in England and Wales — only for the chase to be dismissed as an accident.
After England and Wales banned hunting foxes with dogs in 2005, hunt groups adopted trail hunting as an alternative. During the activity, organizers lay an animal-based scent across the countryside for hounds to track, while riders follow the pack. But the dogs can still pick up a live fox’s scent and give chase, allowing organizers to characterize the pursuit as unintended and skirt the ban.
Those dangers are far from hypothetical. Between August 2025 and March 25, 2026, the League Against Cruel Sports recorded 488 reports of foxes being pursued and said they were even deliberately targeted. In addition, its monitors saw scent trails laid at just 4% of the gatherings advertised as trail hunts.
The U.K. government has committed to banning trail hunting in England and Wales, but key details of the legislation have yet to be decided. To protect foxes, the law must clearly define trail hunting, bar animal-based scents in dog training, and prevent unsubstantiated claims that a trail existed or a chase was accidental.
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