Utah’s Mink Farm Flu Gap

The Guardian, drawing on ProPublica’s reporting and Utah public records, said a state veterinarian, Amanda Price, tried to get federal help as the outbreak spread at C&T Fenn Farms, a fur operation about an hour from Salt Lake City. Federal officials reportedly told her the USDA did not regulate mink and did not have a vaccine approved for the animal.

That is the kind of detail that makes an outbreak feel less contained than merely unglamorous. It suggests not just a sick farm, but a species falling into an administrative crack while state and federal agencies circle around responsibility.

The public-health experts quoted in the Guardian were careful about scale. Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiology professor and director of the pandemic center at Brown University School of Public Health, said the outbreak was unlikely to produce a “tidal wave of human infections”. But she was also blunt about what secrecy and weak oversight can do. “No animal or human will be protected from the toll of this virus through secrecy,” she told the paper.

The reporting does not show human transmission from the farm. It does show a response full of missing links. ProPublica reported that CDC officials spoke with Utah health department staff but did not communicate with Price. It also found that workers were reportedly not monitored for symptoms despite CDC guidance calling for that after exposure to infected animals. ProPublica located two people who worked at the farm, including one with a red eye, a symptom the CDC says should prompt testing. Farm owner Chad Fenn told the outlet the worker had dust in his eye and that the state health department did not recommend testing.

That leaves the sharpest concern where it usually belongs in outbreaks like this: with the people closest to the animals, not the broad public. Nuzzo’s warning, as quoted by the Guardian, was not apocalyptic. It was practical. Workers exposed to sick animals could get sick, and some of that risk may be preventable.

There is also the question of what happened to the mink themselves. The Guardian reported that in other countries, governments have ordered infected mink farms to kill their animals. Veterinarians told ProPublica that the Utah farm owners should already have done so. But a fur-trade representative told Price that culling the mink at C&T Fenn Farms would kill the business and the industry.

Economic panic is understandable. It is also a poor substitute for disease control, especially when officials already seem unsure who is supposed to lead.

Utah has been here before in one form or another. During the Covid-19 pandemic, nearly 10,000 mink in the state died from the coronavirus, and quarantines were implemented at nine farms, according to the Guardian. That earlier history does not explain this outbreak, but it does make the present confusion look harder to excuse.