On the situation of swine fever in the Piacenza area intervenes the president of Confagricoltura Piacenza, Filippo Gasparini who has lived and denounced for many years the drama of the uncontrolled proliferation of wild boars found firsthand even in his own fields.
SWINE FEVER, GASPARINI’S STATEMENTS
“The statement in which Confagricoltura Emilia-Romagna denounced a few days ago that we are essentially at a standstill had provoked a harsh response from the Local Health Authority in which it was declared that we were gearing up and that it was the ATCs who had to send more carcasses.
I understand that the desire to establish other collection centers for carcasses was reported in the control room that met yesterday. So it doesn’t seem to me that much has changed in the meantime. Currently only the Bobbio collection centre, which is decidedly decentralized and still in serious organizational difficulties, is operational. Between the lines it also emerges that initially it was considered to allocate the hunting cabins to collection centers, but it was not possible as the biosecurity requirements would not have been respected.
In Piacenza, the war line against PSA, we are still at the “what we will do” while in Parma, with a much smaller emergency situation, they already have more than 15 storage cells available. Now, even at the level of regional operations there is a discrepancy that cannot be explained.”
The pig farmers of Confagricoltura Piacenza they have even reiterated on several levels their willingness to make a contribution to support the costs of equipment for a radical and rapid depopulation that has been called for for too long, despite not wanting to replace the institutions that are required to face the pandemic by finding the appropriate solutions.
The farmers of Confagricoltura Piacenza also put forward the proposal to provide, by directly contributing, a reward for the hunters called upon to stop the advance of the epidemic by killing them.
“There is a lack of storage centres, perhaps due to an initial error of assessment, but there are also a lack of bags in which to lock up the carcasses – highlights Gasparini – it is not certain whether the regional funds, two million euros, not used for the fences can be diverted immediately for the supply of essential storage equipment. The system sells us welfare control and environmentalism for biosecurity with immediate obligations in the company that have nothing to do with the biosecurity of the system and then when it is time to protect animals from epidemics, implementing real biosecurity actions, we we stop because there are no funds. The diligence with which the control bodies are obliged by law to monitor compliance with animal welfare does not match the slowness with which they react to this epidemic. We really don’t understand what this inertia is due to.
It is an incomprehensible degree of uncertainty, if one considers that the system is able to sustain the shocking control costs for the presence of an official veterinarian in emergency slaughters and for a whole other series of obligations, with which the breeders according to the provisions of the Classyfarm system, which are of no use to the system and then faced with a pandemic emergency of this or that level, it continues to be managed with ordinary times. Help us not to think that it is a conspiracy – thunders the president of the Piacenza farmers – and a strategy to destroy the farming system”.
