Friday 22 of March of 2024 the colleagues of the Ter Defense Group (GDT) they visited Mollet and we welcomed them to our premises to share their struggle and make visible the state of the waters, of the air and the social injustices of the pig sector in Catalonia.
The GDT is historic for having quarreled, fa 35 years, against the Puigneró textile for the pollution of the river. A historic victory for environmentalism and to defend the health of people and the environment before justice.
With the motto: "There are pigs left over, there is a lack of farmers" in the talk it was made visible that the raising and fattening of pigs has become a sector of speculation by capitalism. What, like everything where it is installed, it leaves negative externalities on the territory while business profits grow by creating a political lobby to keep the scam going. Money for four international vulture funds and as waste in the territory: slurry, disappearance of small farms, contaminated sources, methane emissions, increase in road transport, animal discomfort, exporting virtual water and creating a bubble about to burst.
To enter data, pig fattening means a consumption of 11l/day per pig, daily in Catalonia they stay there 8 millions of pigs. Slaughterhouses must be added to the accounts, on s'hi mates 40.000 pigs per day also from Aragon. It is an industrialized sector, where the feed already includes preventive antibiotics, hence we find both nitrates and antibiotic residues present in bodies of water. This implies that groundwater is no longer potable and increases the risk of bacterial resistance for people's health.
The analyzes carried out in the sources prove it to us and the politicians look the other way in the face of pressure from the business sector to continue growing despite the prevailing drought in Catalonia. The only solutions proposed by the administration are technological ones that are not very efficient in practice. We do not want to deflate a bubble that keeps Osona's economy by a thread dependent on a single sector.
There are alternatives: stop exporting pigs and maintain the sector and water for Catalonia's food sovereignty, compel companies to use their profits to restore Catalonia's bodies of water, to promote ecological and traditional livestock farming that keeps the rural population in dignified working and living conditions and to extend the debate between our spaces.
Fewer pigs and more farmers!!
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