Madrid, Feb 2 (EFE).- The group of senators from the Confederal Left has registered a battery of questions to demand from the Government an “urgent” conversion of American mink farms due to “the risk to environmental health” that they pose.
In a statement, the parliamentarians endorse the European report published in the magazine “Eurosurveillance” which studies the outbreak of avian flu that occurred in October 2022 on a farm in Carral, in the province of A Coruña, warning of “the detection of a mutation already present in the 2009 swine flu pandemic.
In their explanatory statement, they abound in the risk of these places, explaining that “they are a hotbed of viruses, as was demonstrated during the most complicated stage of the pandemic, where more than half of the venues reported outbreaks of this coronavirus.”
Faced with the proposal of the Ministry of Ecological Transition to close farms in 2030, the Confederal Left opposes the current health “threat” “while a large part of Europe prohibits this industry due to its danger to public health and biodiversity, promoting conversion programs ».
The initiative also echoes the video released by the Franz Weber Foundation where it can be seen that “the farms are semi-open and the cages are in contact with the outside and at the mercy of any interaction between species”, which “would prove the weakness of the current biosafety protocols put in place by the executive of Pedro Sánchez.
The parliamentary group has presented this petition considering that the central government has “sufficient” capacity to start a program of business transformation, recycling and professional training, and acceleration of new companies.
In the question form, the groups inquire about the protocols to avoid contact between species within the farms or the existence of conversion procedures already underway in Spain.