Letter to House and Senate Agriculture Committee Leaders Sounds the Alarm About Possible Biohazard of Repealing Gingrich-era Ban on Subsidies to Promote Luxury Fashion Exports
WASHINGTON, D.C. — In a letter to U.S. House and Senate Agriculture Committee leaders this week, veterinary experts for Animal Wellness Action and the Center for a Humane Economy issued a stark warning about a provision in the 2026 Farm Bill to reopen federal taxpayer support for mink fur exporters for the first time in 30 years. The letter from Jim Keen, DVM, Ph.D., a former USDA Research Scientist, and Colonel Tom Pool, DVM, MPH, former chief of the U.S. Army Veterinary Command, follows recent news of the first known outbreak of highly pathogenic avian influenza (H5N1) in farmed mink in the United States.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) terminated its annual Mink Survey last year, and the outbreak on a Utah farm this summer only came to light because independent disease watchers discovered seven mammalian H5N1 cases in a USDA database. The failure of state and federal authorities to alert the public sent shockwaves across Utah and the nation, because the disease caused by H5N1, though commonly called “bird flu,” can also infect humans.
“Mink farms are biological ticking time bombs. We learned from COVID-19 that mink can amplify dangerous viruses, generate new variants, and transmit them back to humans. Now H5N1 bird flu has invaded American mink farms. Packing thousands of highly susceptible animals on mink ranches together creates ideal conditions for the next pandemic virus to emerge. Why would Congress use taxpayer dollars to encourage more of this dangerous activity?” said Jim Keen, DVM, Ph.D., director of veterinary science for the Center for a Humane Economy.
The news comes as Congress is poised to vote on a Farm Bill this fall that would reinstate the luxury mink fur industry’s eligibility for taxpayer support from USDA’s Market Access Program, which funds advertising of certain U.S.-produced commodities to consumers in foreign countries. The mink export sector was barred from receiving funding through the program 30 years ago after the 1994 Republican sweep of Congress ushered in a class of lawmakers focused on fiscal responsibility. Ironically, it was Republican leaders in both chambers of Congress who wrote this year’s Farm Bill repealing that longstanding taxpayer protection.
“Why are we talking about using federal resources to promote American mink products overseas while we have stopped annually surveying the industry and cannot get basic epidemiologic information about the first recognized H5N1 outbreak on a U.S. mink farm?” said Colonel Pool, DVM, senior veterinarian for Animal Wellness Action. “Disease surveillance and public-health transparency should come before market promotion.”
“America’s taxpayers should not be asked to bankroll a biohazard,”wrote the veterinarians, noting that U.S. demand for mink fur is at an all-time low, and giving taxpayer support to this export industry would primarily benefit Chinese consumers while keeping the biosecurity risks of production inside the United States. In contrast, 23 countries in Europe have either banned mink farming or begun phasing it out, including Poland, the world’s second largest fur-producing nation.
“Subsidizing a declining industry is bad economics. Subsidizing one that could incubate the next pandemic is reckless public policy,”added Dr. Keen.
The House of Representatives voted to end domestic mink farming in 2022, but the Senate failed to follow suit. In their letter, Drs. Keen and Pool encouraged congressional leaders to rethink mink policy and pass that legislation again. “If Congress rushes to reverse course on mink policy without considering the consequences,” wrote the veterinarians, “it is not implausible that the epicenter of the next pandemic could be a mink farm in America’s heartland rather than an urban setting like Wuhan, China.”
The full letter can be found here.