Mink breeders experience enormous loss of control. There is a need for calm now, says head of psychosocial preparedness in North Jutland.
Thousands of thoughts and feelings swarm around the body. Sleep is nothing. The nerves hang in the laser.
For just over a week, North Jutland mink breeders and their relatives have had the opportunity to receive crisis help from the psychosocial emergency services – and they make use of it.
– Since Friday, I have spoken with breeders and their relatives and employees. They call and ask for help to understand and navigate the chaos they are experiencing, says Christina Mohr Jensen, who is a psychologist and professional leader of the psychosocial preparedness in the North Jutland Region.
Usually, the North Jutland crisis psychologists provide support to people who, for example, have had murders and violent suicides close to life. It is the same emergency preparedness that leads to major accidents.
Despite the lack of a legal basis, the government has decided that all Danish mink must be killed – in North Jutland, the decision entailed extensive restrictions , but several of them were lifted on Friday . Now citizens can once again move freely between the municipalities, and children can go to school.
After Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen (S) announced at a press conference on Wednesday 4 November that all mink in Denmark must be slaughtered for fear that new mutations of coronavirus could destroy the effect of a new vaccine , the North Jutland Region quickly decided to establish a emergency preparedness.
– Some of the most basic human needs are to have security, certainty and the feeling of co-determination in one’s own life. Those I have spoken to are told that there is no future for the mink industry, at the same time as all of us at that press conference .
Earlier in the day, for example, some have sat down and made plans for the generational change or thought about the future of the farm. It comes as a grenade shock to them, says Christina Mohr Jensen.
Desperate with changing messages
Since the government’s press conference on November 4, politicians have changed signals several times.
Most recently, Minister of Food, Agriculture and Fisheries Mogens Jensen (S) opened up for breeders to keep a small population of breeding animals and use them to rebuild the profession.
But subsequently, the Prime Minister has finally stated that all mink in Denmark must be killed.
