“The image we found was Dantesque.” Guillermo Amengual remembers with horror the afternoon when, after being warned by several neighbors, he went to a farm with animals on the outskirts of Palma. He had been warned of the presence of animals in terrible condition, but what he saw left him breathless: “Dying sheep that had only a few hours left to live, nauseating smell due to the removal of some corpse in the last hours and animal bones for the farm.” In total, up to two hundred animals in poor conditions and two decomposing corpses. The president of the animalist party Progreso en Verde immediately brought the facts to the attention of the local authorities, although he regrets that the institutions “do nothing in the face of cases of mistreatment, torture or death of animals.”
The owner, 84 years old, has already been reported on previous occasions and has accumulated more than 60,000 euros in fines, according to data provided by Progreso en Verde and the Balearic Government. In fact, according to the investigations of the animal rights party, this land located between the neighborhoods of Son Roca and La Vileta has been used as a clandestine slaughterhouse without any type of health guarantee, and its owner has also dedicated himself to the sale of raised donkeys. inside the enclosure. “How is it possible that animals are allowed to die on the farms of supposed ranchers? Deaths due to malnutrition or diseases that are reported year after year without anything happening. And when those responsible for the Department of Agriculture and Fisheries appear, it turns out that everything is fine. What are they hiding? Who are they protecting?” Amengual asks.
Warning: this news contains photos that show animal suffering
The activist criticizes the slowness with which, “unfortunately,” judicial processes against this type of cases are processed. However, their aim is above all one: the seizure of all live animals on the land and the disqualification of the owner from possessing any type of animal. “This person cannot have more animals because we have already seen the result. It is no longer once or twice, but several years doing the same thing,” he reproaches in statements to elDiario.es. The president of Progreso en Verde criticizes that the owner of the land “does not seem to have learned a lesson, but quite the opposite.” For now, the entity is waiting for the neighbors to report if there is any more movement or if there are animals again “in order to act immediately” and “prevent more animals from dying.”
How is it possible that animals are allowed to die on the farms of supposed ranchers? Deaths due to malnutrition or diseases that are reported year after year without anything happening. And when those responsible for the Department of Agriculture and Fisheries appear, it turns out that everything is fine. What are they hiding? Who do they protect?
Guillermo Amengual
— President of Progreso en Verde
Violations “very subject to interpretation”
Specifically, the regulations that apply when carrying out the relevant inspections on these lands, both those related to the control program that the Government has and those derived from complaints filed by neighbors or animal activists, are Law 348/ 2000 for the protection of animals in livestock farms, as well as 32/2007 for the care of animals, during their exploitation, transportation, experimentation and slaughter. From there, each livestock sector has its own management decree with its specific animal welfare standards, something that does not happen with the sheep and goat areas, as the general director of Agriculture, Livestock and Development points out in statements to elDiario.es Ruralca, Fernando Fernández, who asserts that in these cases the infractions “are very subject to interpretation” and “sometimes it is difficult to classify them as minor, serious or very serious.”
“What we apply is a criterion that is risk analysis: when we are going to do an inspection for the first time on a winning farm that does not have a previous history of violations and we see things that are not entirely correct, an infraction is applied. mild. But, obviously, if it is repeated over time, a risk criterion is applied and the category of the infraction is raised, even though the facts are the same,” explains Fernández, a specialist in agrarian policies, rural development and food sovereignty. This is the case, specifically, of the La Vileta estate. “There are people who should not have animals,” adds the general director, who points out that in the most serious cases the exploitation code for production and reproduction is withdrawn from the owner.
What we apply is a criterion that is risk analysis: when we are going to do an inspection for the first time on a winning farm that does not have a previous history of violations and we see things that are not entirely correct, a minor violation is applied. . But, obviously, if it is repeated over time, a risk criterion is applied and the category of the infraction is raised, even if the facts are the same.
Fernando Fernandez
— General Director of Agriculture, Livestock and Rural Development
Faced with criticism from Progreso en Verde that, after their complaint, several of the animals on the La Vileta land have disappeared, Fernández acknowledges that this has happened with some of the specimens, but “not with all.” In fact, he explains that what the owner did do after the events became public was to regularize them “from one day to the next.” “But people also have to know that when a man suddenly arrives and regularizes a bunch of animals at once, it is assumed that he already had a farm. [de forma irregular] and that already entails a sanction,” he adds. At the moment, the file opened against the owner of the property is pending resolution.
The “horror farm” in Palma “is not the only one”
Amengual regrets that, in recent years, this “animal cemetery” is not the only one detected in Mallorca. One of the most “egregious” cases, he recalls, occurred in 2017 on another property in Palma, in the sa Indioteria neighborhood. Several neighbors reported the presence, in the middle of summer, of more than twenty abandoned and malnourished sheep, with hardly any food or water. The Nature Protection Service (Seprona) of the Civil Guard immediately arrived in the area and summoned the owner of the animals to provide them with waterers and covers so that the sheep could protect themselves from the high temperatures. However, the agents stated that they had not seen any crime for animal abuse while the Animal Welfare technicians certified that the sheep were in good condition, as the newspaper Última Hora reported at the time.
After the seal of the property and the removal of the sheep, the Rescatando Juntos Mallorca association made public, through photographs, that the owner of the plot had recovered the animals: they were now shorn, with marked ears, with food and grazing in a nearby area. “The water, yes, follows the sun,” they criticized from the entity, showing that the Government had “enforced the protocol established by the law”, but warning: “We are going to continue monitoring them and pending this case very closely.” ”. They then thanked the work of those who had reported the case to the authorities.
In 2021, Progreso en Verde denounced another “farm of horrors” in Port d’Andratx in which they claimed that “the sheep were being left to starve” despite the multiple complaints that, the entity claims, accumulated its owner by animal activists and neighbors, who “even mobilized to feed them and provide them with water,” as Amengual recalls.
“What is happening so that the owner of a farm where there are dozens of animals and they are abandoned until they die of hunger always emerges unscathed from such a situation? Why is he protected so much? “What contacts do you have so that absolutely nothing happens to you?” Amengual then asked, pointing out that the first complaints filed against the owner of the land dated back to 2017. Likewise, a year later Progreso en Verde reported on another plot of land. in the town of Campanet in which “sheep were left to die of hunger or disease.”
Despite having been fined for the possession of animals in poor condition, Amengual emphasizes that economic sanctions “do not solve the problem.” “We are denouncing that animals have been left to die in deplorable conditions, due to hunger, thirst or illness. There are many farms that have been reported and the pattern is always the same. In the end they are animals in poor condition, that die, neighbors who mobilize because they see that the animals can’t take it anymore, and numerous complaints that end in simple sanctions,” he laments.
In this regard, the general director of Agriculture points out that the role of both the technicians and him is not to “get carried away by alarmism or by the associations’ way of seeing things or, of course, by what the owner of the farm says. exploitation.” “I try to maintain a more even-handed position between one thing and another. That is not inaction. There are control programs that we apply and we always respond to all complaints made to us by associations, individuals, town councils or Seprona. “We always open inspection procedures and, when appropriate, we always upgrade inspection procedures to violations,” he says.
My role and that of the technicians is to not get carried away by alarmism or by the associations’ way of seeing things or, of course, by what the owner of the farm says. I try to maintain a more even-handed position between one thing and another. That’s not inaction.
Fernando Fernandez
— General Director of Agriculture, Livestock and Rural Development
However, it alludes to two problems that they face: one, that the prescription periods for minor infractions, such as not having the livestock exploitation book updated, are “extremely” short – six months – for the violations often come to fruition. The second, the fact that numerous times the files opened by the Ministry end up being archived through criminal proceedings. “In many cases, judges end up issuing acquittal sentences because the fraud or guilt of the accused is not sufficiently proven,” says Fernández, who points out that sometimes his department chooses not to go to court to avoid the paralysis of the proceedings. sanctioning procedures, as well as to prevent complaints from “ending in nothing.”
In this sense, the head of Agriculture appeals, “without wanting to interfere” in the judicial action, to the need for judges to have “greater training in animal welfare” to be able to efficiently deal with these matters, by These are areas “in which society is advancing very quickly.”
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