Agribusiness

Possible punishment for revealing the names of pig farms

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Two Danish journalists wrote about abscesses in children – accused of having named 12 infected farms.

Children with abscesses at the size of tennis balls in a Kindergarden in Løgstør, Denmark. Flickr. On 21 October 2010, journalists Nils Mulvad and Kjeld Hansen published an article on the website Aabenhedstinget.dk, a forum for debate on public law and journalism. They wrote of a silenced case about the difficulties in treating abscesses and ulcers in two children in the city of Løgstør in Jutland. The children were carrying resistant bacteria (MRSA).

Agribusiness

Furs for billions with a deathly price tag

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When nouveau riche millionaires in Hong Kong, Shanghai and Beijing shop for fashionable fur, there is a hidden item on the bill for the beautiful Danish mink coats. Cold winters make mink fur more popular in China, Russia and South Korea. See photos of fasion and mink by Danish Fur. It is the price of the serious health threat that the majority of the 1,600 Danish mink factories have become. The bill is paid neither by the Chinese nor by the mink industry itself.

Agribusiness

MRSA out of control: Hazardous multidrug-resistant bacteria jumps from mink to humans

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In 2009 the first human case of MRSA-infection by mink was registered in Denmark. Since 2011, twenty-four more cases have been identified, creating fears that the drug-resistant bacteria, normally transferred through pigs, are now also easily transferred from mink to people. Humans infected with MRSA, Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, can cause serious outbreaks on the skin, respiratory tract and the urinary tract. Infections with the bacteria, resistant to antibiotics and therefore very difficult to fight, can last for years. The symptoms of infection depend on the part of the body infected.