The fight went on, for several weeks until the government summit on November 3 decided that all mink should be killed.
On Friday, the Mink Commission saw an internal email from September 2020 from the special consultant Niels Torpegaard Christensen in the Ministry of Health.
In it he writes that in his eyes there was a legal basis in the law on keeping animals, which belonged to the then Ministry of the Environment and Food.
– I do not understand why we should enter the epidemic law. The law on keeping animals has a legal basis for killing, it says in the email.
On the contrary, the Ministry of the Environment and Food was of the opinion that the killing of all mink should belong in the Epidemic Act, which belongs to the Ministry of Health.
Previously, department head Tejs Binderup from the Ministry of the Environment and Food has explained that his ministry has never believed that there was a legal basis for killing all mink in the law on keeping animals.
– Then there has been a short period from 4. (November) at noon to 5. (November) at noon, where there are some who say that we think we can use your legal basis anyway, it sounded from Binderup in his interrogation.
The “someone” is apparently the Ministry of Health.
The government’s coordination committee with a number of top ministers – including Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen (S) – decided on the evening of 3 November that all mink should be killed.
The next morning, the various ministries spoke together. Here, Tejs Binderup raised that the Ministry of the Environment and Food did not believe that there was a legal basis for the killing.
But that interpretation was not shared in the Ministry of Health. Here, department head Dorthe Søndergaard asked if it was not just a matter of asking the right questions to the health authorities, and then a legal basis could be found.
On Friday, she explained to the Mink Commission that she had previously experienced that the Ministry of the Environment and Food could change its mind.
– I have just learned that their first starting point is: We can not handle it within our framework. And they can do that anyway, she said on Friday.
She also stated this later on the morning of 4 November in a conversation with two officials from the Ministry of Justice.
Here, Niels Torpegaard Christensen’s email, which at the time was over a month old and had been prepared in a different context, was highlighted.
Niels Torpegaard Christensen himself had meanwhile changed jobs. He explained on Friday that his mail in September was based on about 10 minutes of work.
After the interview, one of the Ministry of Justice’s officials, Head of Department Anne-Mette Lyhne Jensen, writes that it is the “working thesis” that there is a legal basis in one of the Ministry of the Environment and Food’s laws.
Thereafter, there are exchanges back and forth for approximately 24 hours before the Ministry of Justice must state that it has no reason to override the Ministry of the Environment and Food’s assessment.
Then work begins on making a new law.
Meanwhile, in the afternoon of 4 November, the government had told the public at a press conference that all mink in Denmark should be killed.
Source: The Nordic Page