It was a distant year of 1945 when a visionary George Orwell wrote "Animal Farm", a peculiar vision of a totalitarian society, brilliantly stunned in an ingenious allegorical fable recreated on a farm where the animals rebel against their human owners and defeat them. But, as happens in reality, that rebellion fails as a result of the rivalries and envies between the animals themselves, some of whom ally themselves with the masters they overthrew, thus betraying their own identity and the interests of their class.
Much later, at the dawn of a newly started year of 2022, a talkative Minister of Consumption of the kingdom of Spain named Alberto Garzón, stated shamelessly in an interview granted to the British newspaper The Guardian that macro farms "pollute the soil, pollute the water and then export poor quality meat from mistreated animals", while describing extensive livestock farming as "environmentally sustainable".
But, contrary to what the shrewd minister said, the reality in our country is very different. In Spain, livestock farming is familiar, sustainable and struggles every day to be profitable, compared to the models based on macro farms that prevail in other countries, something that Spanish farmers have been denouncing and fighting for years to try to prevent their proliferation and all this without the need for visionary ministerial statements that do not help an already damaged sector.
In Spain there is room, and it is necessary that there are, different types of livestock farming: ecological, extensive, semi-intensive and intensive family farming. Fortunately, all of them are sustainable and strive to be profitable, adjusting to the controls set by the European Commission, which are the strictest in the world.
Minister Garzón's statements in a foreign media are, in addition to being untimely and unfortunate, not very exemplary as they cast a shadow of doubt on the Spanish livestock sector, at a time when it aspires to consolidate itself in foreign markets, like all Spanish agriculture and livestock, and whose greatest value lies in the quality of its productions.
The Ministry of Consumption would do well to ensure that prices are fair and that high production costs are reduced, which do make it difficult for family farms to survive, in a country like ours where about five small and medium-sized farms close due to the profitability crisis they face.
Freedom, said Orwell, means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear, but it does not mean lying or telling half-truths. That's how it goes for us.
Alfonso J. López Torres
Former Director of the Canary Institute of Agri-Food Quality
of the Government of the Canary Islands
