Bird flu has reached a US fur farm for the first time. This summer, H5N1 tore through a mink farm in Utah, where officials expected around 80% of the animals to die. Months later, the public still doesn’t know where the farm is, how many animals got sick, or whether workers were exposed.

This is exactly what public health experts have warned about. Mink can catch flu from both birds and humans, which makes fur farms ideal places for a new pandemic strain to emerge. During COVID, tens of thousands of mink in the US were infected, and mink passed the virus back to people.

Fur farms pack mink into rows of small wire cages, where the animals live in constant stress and disease spreads fast. It’s cruel to the animals and dangerous for everyone else.

There’s a bill in Congress that would end it. The bipartisan Mink VIRUS Act (H.R. 2185), introduced by Rep. Adriano Espaillat, would phase out mink fur farming in the United States within one year and help farmers transition to new livelihoods.

Add your name to tell Congress: pass the Mink VIRUS Act and stop fur farming now.