CPOY 76 Domestic Picture Story Award of Excellence: The Last Mink
A narrative picture story or thematic essay photographed in your home country that either reports on significant events, celebrates life, portrays sport or explores environmental, social, economic or political topics. 8 photos maximum per story.
Caption
Slide 1 of 8
October 14, 2020
A sour, sweet and nauseating smell is filling up the air those days in mid-October 2020, west of Aalborg in Northern Denmark. On the way up the driveway to Linda and Kaj Christensen's farm, a rancid smell of agriculture takes over. But close to a red container inside the courtyard, it becomes clear that the smell is so intense and rotten that it cannot be normal. And neither is it. It's the smell of thousands of dead mink.
Project Description:
In the autumn of 2020 the entire mink industry in Denmark was killed. One of the biggest animal industries in the country with a worldvide highly recognised export of high end fur. The danish Prime Minister, Mette Frederiksen, decided that the 14 million mink had to die to prevent a presumed covid-mutation. In mid-October, Linda and Kaj Christensen, as some of the first mink breeders, had to kill their healthy mink population. But it was not only the actual killing of the mink but also what followed in the weeks and months after that showed the actual consequences of the killing. Because the killing not only hit the farmers. But an entire industry was put to hold, turning a lot of peoples lives upside down.