Directions: After reading the passage below, fill in the blanks to make the passage coherent and grammatically correct. For the blanks with a given word, fill in each blank with the proper form of the given word; for the other blanks, use one word that best fits each blank.
Animal-rights activists often complain that cute beasts get more sympathy than ugly ones. If so, one would think a lovely creature like the mink (貂) would be easy to protect. Yet in the Netherlands, mink is the only animal 【小题1】 can still legally be farmed for their fur. That is about to change. On August 28th the government brought forward to this year a ban 【小题2】 mink-farming that had been scheduled to take effect in 2025. The timetable was sped up not because mink had become more adorable, 【小题3】 because they can contract COVID-19 and spread it to humans.
Dutch farmers normally raised about 2.5 million minks a year, 【小题4】 (make) the Netherlands the world’s fourth-largest producer after Denmark, China and Poland. In April, a couple of minks and the farm hands who tended them 【小题5】 (diagnose) with COVID-19. Genetic tracing showed that at least two workers had probably been infected by mink, rather than the other way around. The affected animals were destroyed and stricter hygiene rules were imposed, but by summer the virus had spread to a third of the country’s farms.
That was a win for the Netherland’s Party for the Animals, which has four seats in the 150-member parliament. In 2013, 【小题6】 helped pass the law that gave mink farmers until 2025 to get out of the business. Some members of parliament claim that the compensation 【小题7】 (pay) for destroying the infected minks was higher than the market price for their fur.
Fur farmers say modern standards allow minks to be raised humanely, and 【小题8】 they are not a big reason for the spread of the virus. But minks tend to live by themselves instead of living in groups; animal-rights advocates say they cannot be raised humanely in small cages. As for COVID-19, the worry is 【小题9】 mink could serve as a medium for it to attack human immunization (免疫) programs. The industry’s value is modest, and polls show the public overwhelmingly opposes it. “In a democratic country, that widespread belief 【小题10】 translate into a political decision to ban fur farming,” says Esther Ouwehand, leader of the Party for the Animals. The farmers accept they are shutting down. The remaining argument is over money.
