Saturday 8 January 2022

This Little Piggy Went to the Market

 It all started with an interview given by the Minister of Consumer Affairs Alberto Garzón to The Guardian (here) where he insisted that the Spanish should eat less meat. While the meat lobby were unhappy to read this (they’d heard it all before, last summer, with Pedro Sánchez putting out the flames at the time by saying ‘I don’t know about you, but I enjoy a nice steak, me’), they were incensed to read in a foreign newspaper that Garzón contrasted ordinary extensive farming which, he says ‘…“is sustainable” with “what isn’t at all sustainable is these so-called mega-farms … They find a village in a depopulated bit of Spain and put in 4,000, or 5,000, or 10,000 head of cattle. They pollute the soil, they pollute the water and then they export this poor quality meat from these ill-treated animals’. Amen to the giant piggeries.

Understandably, the industry giants and any opposition politician worth his salt is through the roof with righteous rage. Telling the foreigners that our meat is shit.

Mind you, who likes battery farms, or pigs reared in a cage? Apart from the treatment of the animals concerned, doesn’t the quality suffer too?

Several politicians have asked for Garzón to recant (and then quietly resign); but he is standing firm.

Now it has become the leading political issue of the moment, as the upcoming February 13th elections in Castilla y León (a high-octane agricultural area currently under the control of the PP) approach. The PP is almost certain to win the elections there, cue a sigh of satisfaction from the Head Office in Madrid, but any extra push would be (excuse the pun) popular – maybe enough to govern without Vox as a slightly heathen partner.

While many are against this betrayal of Spanish meat by a foolish lefty (Garzón is secretary of the Izquierda Unida) and even some PSOE barons are raising their voices against him, there are also many who agree that the macro-farms are doing major damage in various ways. In the last six years, there are 35% more pigs in Spain than before, yet the number of farms under 1,000 animals have dropped by 30% - showing that the larger, industry-owned macro-farms are becoming the norm.  The main problem though is the massive amount of animal waste – called purín in Spanish: a mixture of urine, poops and brown water – high in nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium. It is used initially as fertiliser, but the excess can end up in underground aquifers – with over 1,000 of these now affected according to the Ministry of Ecology. Of course, the costs in these macro-farms are, per unit, cheaper that traditional farms can match, leading producers to prefer them, and in some cases, operate them themselves.

  

Some Notes from the Media:


 

Spanish News Today here: ‘Spain is the fifth largest exporter of meat in the world’. It says that ‘Garzon’s contentious views could do untold damage to Spain’s meat industry, which was worth over 7,000 million euros in foreign sales last year’.

LaSexta here: ‘Presidents Lambán (PSOE - Aragón) and Mañueco (PP - Castilla y León) call for Garzón's resignation, claiming that he attacked Spanish livestock in his interview in The Guardian'.

AraInfo here: ‘A number of Aragonese environmental groups criticize the Aragonese president Javier Lambán for "contradicting the decisions taken by his own government" and "confusing the citizens." Equally (we read), they support Alberto Garzón who "has done nothing more than defend a model that is based on extensive cattle ranching and employment in our rural environment"…’. They are calling for Lambán’s resignation (Heh).

elDiario.es here: The president of Castilla-La Mancha Emiliano García Page (PSOE) also criticises Garzón’s remarks – as does Vox and the PP. Then, it says, ‘…Garzón answered first that the president of Castilla y León, Alfonso Fernández Mañueco, is "desperate for far-right votes and that is why he is resorting to the lies and manipulation from the lobbies"…’.

LaSexta here: ‘Garzón repeats his remarks: saying that he is right to point out that the meat from macro-farms is "of worse quality". The Minister for Consumer Affairs has also pointed out that his statements are "impeccable" and that he made them "as minister, and not just as a personal opinion"’.

La Razón, in an opinion piece, says that we wait impatiently for the inevitable departure from the government of the Minister of Consumer Affairs (and, we can infer, the welcome collapse of the socio-communist regime).

NuevaTribuna says ‘Industrial meat-farming aggravates depopulation while causing a huge environmental impact’. It also says in the article that it’s pretty obvious that poorly and cheaply fed animals will produce lower-quality meat.

Then of course, there’s the destruction of the Mar Menor – pretty much down to the pigs.

Segovia – where there are eight pigs to every person – is also against the macro-farms. ‘We don't want to be the pigsty of Spain’, they tell Epe here.

From El Confidencial here, under the heading ‘the most meat in the least time possible’, we visit a macrogranja ‘like the ones Garzón talks of’. With video.

Greenpeace has a brief video from a year ago here called ‘¡Macrogranjas no!’

Further afield, from El País here: ‘The increase in livestock and industrial agriculture has a huge environmental cost, but Spain has not done enough to control and prevent it. With this thesis, the European Commission has decided to bring Spain before the Court of European Justice, with the understanding that this country has not adopted sufficient measures to prevent water pollution caused by nitrates derived from this activity, as required by community regulations…’.

Deutsche Welle says that ‘Germany declares war on cheap meat’.

Meanwhile, says El País here, ‘The Netherlands has created a new ministry (of ‘Nature and Nitrogen’) to reduce the impact of increasingly large pig farms. The department will be responsible for reducing emissions from the entire livestock sector in a country that has subsidized since 2019 the voluntary closure of pig farms’.

It is, in short, a rift between those who hope that life will continue in the way it’s been going, and those who know that it can’t.

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