The investigation by the Spanish NGO Animal Welfare Observatory (OBA) reveals the unsanitary conditions of a pig farm in Quintanilla del Coco (Burgos, population 50), which has a capacity for about 5,000 pigs and which it calls the “Farm of Terror”. The investigation can be seen in a crude video shared with EL PAÍS, which shows severely injured pigs, food contaminated by feces and rats and even “frequent cannibalistic behavior,” says the complaint filed by OBA with the Court of First Instance and Investigation. only one from Lerma (Burgos), for cruelty to animals with aggravating circumstances of death and for fraud. The farm, owned by the mayor of the municipality, Domingo del Pozo Martínez (PP), was certified in October 2019 with two animal welfare seals issued by AENOR, a private Spanish company with global reach, and IRTA, an entity of the Generalitat of became Catalonia. The pigs were slaughtered in two slaughterhouses, one in Zaragoza and the other in Burgos. The first produces packaged foods that are sold in several supermarkets in Spain.
Around the farm, EL PAÍS has noticed that the skulls shine like white stones. Jaws, hooves, pig heads, vertebrae and other bones lie scattered in a forest behind the property. The stench, mixed with the screams of animals and heard behind the fences, caught the attention of a neighbor who decided to find out what was behind it. The 35-year-old man tells this newspaper how he invaded the farm for several nights between May and October 2023. At the beginning of each recorded sequence, he used a daily newspaper and a GPS tracking device to confirm the time and location of the filming location. “What I saw there was the most horrific thing I have ever seen in my life,” he says over the phone, before detailing what the videos confirm: “Pigs that were blind or had hernias that exceeded seven Kilos weighed, others who couldn’t move and then had to crawl to eat. They also had no veterinary care, some died of starvation because it is easier to let them starve than to urgently sacrifice them,” he says.
The bodies were then loaded by the owner onto the bucket of a tractor, which dumped them in the woods next to the farm, where “they decayed for weeks or months until the vultures devoured them,” describes the intruder from a line with Hidden Number.
Animal cemetery next to the Domingo del Pozo farm in Quintanilla del Coco (Burgos), on November 27, 2023.
For more than four years, the farm has had the Welfair animal welfare certification issued by the companies AENOR, a Spanish private company with a presence in 90 countries, and IRTA, a Catalan public authority. This newspaper asked both companies about the certification on Monday. A day later, after a joint emergency inspection, both agreed to suspend the animal welfare seal and remove the business from the Welfair system, IRTA said in a statement. “It was an exceptional measure,” explains Marta Santos of AENOR, highlighting that since 2018 they have canceled the animal welfare certification of more than a hundred companies, “representing less than 1% of the total number of certified companies”. .”
The owner of the farm is Domingo del Pozo Martínez, mayor of the municipality of Quintanilla del Coco. EL PAÍS interviewed him this Tuesday and he said that “the permits are in order, those of the veterinarian and those of the food chain, as well as animal welfare.” A similar version is presented by the Ministry of Agriculture of Castile and León, led by Vox, which on Wednesday, after receiving the videos of the complaint, said it had inspected the farm and concluded that “everything was fine.” The night before, certifiers had removed the seal due to the abnormalities they found.
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AENOR has audited the company six times since its first certification in 2019. The last registration is dated August 24, 2023, according to a document accessed by this newspaper. But a week later, images taken by the intruder show a piglet dying on the floor of a stable and, a few meters away, the corpse of another piglet with its intestines out.
Julia Elizalde, OBA project manager, emphasized that it is not enough to pick out the bad apples. “We demand measures of a more structural nature, that the seal (AENOR and IRTA) stop certifying inherently cruel farms,” he explained. The NGO has classified the lawsuit as a fraud offense because “consumers rely on this animal protection seal when making their purchase decisions, completely unaware of the reality of the products they are buying,” the lawsuit says.
Certification company sources say that during the surprise visit they identified, among other things, more animals than were supposed to be on the ships, which could make access to water and food more difficult. What was also striking was the high age of the caregivers, “all over 65 years old,” which makes the researchers question their suitability for caring for the 2,200 pigs currently on the farm. IRTA has indicated that they will re-evaluate the inspection methodology on the farms, which could change, for example, to conducting visits to the farms without prior notice, unlike before.
Exterior view of the pig farm in Burgos with 2,200 pigs that has been reported for animal cruelty.
The person who sneaked in and worked with the OBA followed the pig truck that left the so-called terror farm to a slaughterhouse in Zaragoza, where the animals are killed and processed food is produced that is sold in large supermarkets.
This is the fourth investigation by the animal protection agency against suppliers to a German supermarket chain. The two complaints lodged in Spain have been accepted for processing and are currently in the investigation phase. One of the proceedings in Germany was temporarily archived because the origin of the images could not be verified, although “the exploitation has been established and the other is still ongoing”.
The NGO has announced that it is investigating a second complaint of a crime against the environment over the dumping of bodies around the farm. The company responsible for transporting the pigs is also a defendant, as the videos show workers “continuously” hitting the pigs with a tool “resembling a hammer” before loading them onto the truck , says the veterinary report from the OBA.
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