Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen has appointed a new agriculture minister after Mogens Jensen resigned for illegally ordering the culling of all minks in Denmark.

Development Cooperation Minister Rasmus Prehn has been selected to take over from Jensen.

The mass cull was ordered after a mutated form of coronavirus was found in the mink population.

Dead mink are rising from their graves in Denmark after a rushed cull over fears of a coronavirus mutation led to thousands being slaughtered and buried in shallow pits – from which some are now emerging.

“As the bodies decay, gases can be formed,” Thomas Kristensen, a national police spokesman, told the state broadcaster DR. “This causes the whole thing to expand a little. In this way, in the worst cases, the mink get pushed out of the ground.”



Police in West Jutland, where several thousand mink were buried in a mass grave on a military training field, have tried to counter the macabre phenomenon by shovelling extra soil on top of the corpses, which are in a 1 metre-deep trench.

“This is a natural process,” Kristensen said. “Unfortunately, one metre of soil is not just one metre of soil –it depends on what type of soil it is. The problem is that the sandy soil in West Jutland is too light. So we have had to lay more soil on top.”

Adding to the popular concern, local media reported that the animals may also have been buried too close to lakes and underground water reserves, prompting fears of possible contamination of ground and drinking water supplies.

Photos and videos of the emerging bodies have set social media buzzing in Denmark, with one Twitter user calling 2020 “the year of the zombie mutant killer mink” and another calling on the population to “run … The mink are coming for you.”