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Date Published: 05/01/2022

ARCHIVED - Calls for Spanish Minister to resign after questioning industrial meat farms

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There was cross-party outrage over Alberto Garzón’s suggestion that Spaniards eat less meat from farms that pollute and mistreat animals

<span style='color:#780948'>ARCHIVED</span> - Calls for Spanish Minister to resign after questioning industrial meat farms

Spain’s Minister for Consumer Affairs, Alberto Garzón, has been roundly criticised by both the conservative opposition party and the socialist party currently in government for comments he made in an interview with the UK paper The Guardian about the “contamination” and “poor quality” of intensive animal farms in Spain.

Pedalling back on comments that “these so-called mega-farms” aren’t “at all sustainable”, and that they “pollute the soil, they pollute the water and then they export this poor quality meat from these ill-treated animals”, Mr Garzón, the leader of the Izquierda Unida (United Left) political alliance, rectified that he was speaking purely “in a personal capacity” and was not speaking on behalf of the government.

There have been calls from his colleagues in parliament and from Spanish farmers for him to hand in his resignation over such comments that dare to criticise or question the quality of Spain’s meat and its industrial agriculture practices.

Minister for Territorial Policy, Isabel Rodríguez, said “For us, the livestock sector is a priority. It is one of the main products that we export and it is of the highest quality.” She pointed to the fact that both agriculture and livestock farming in Spain “guarantee rural development” and that the government supports both sectors “with the Food Chain Law.”

Her comments belie findings by Greenpeace documenting the mistreatment of animals in industrial farming factories in Spain and the assertion that such farms contribute to a loss of biodiversity, excessive contamination of water, and high levels of methane and ammonia emissions.

Mr Garzón, for his turn, has responded by assuring that in the interview he was stressing that the extensive livestock farming practised in areas such as “Asturias, Castilla y León, Andalusia and Extremadura” is environmentally sustainable and that the headline was out of context.

He even published the transcribed interview in full on his Twitter account, stating that “for reasons of space, the journalist had to exclude some elements that today, in the heat of the hoax and lies promoted by certain actors, have been highlighted.”

Aprovecho para publicar la transcripción completa de lo que dije en la entrevista, pues por motivos de espacio el periodista tuvo que excluir algunos elementos que hoy, al calor del bulo y la mentira que ciertos actores promueven, salen realzados. pic.twitter.com/ljR2x3n5Bu
— Alberto Garzón🔻 (@agarzon) January 4, 2022

Garzón tried to clarify that a distinction must be made between industrial and extensive livestock farming. While one is ecologically sustainable and has “a lot of weight in certain regions of Spain”, the other “pollutes soil, water and is then exported”.

“It is a poorer quality meat, it is also a mistreatment of animals and it has a huge and disproportionate ecological impact,” he said.

The minister explained that extensive livestock farmers, those whose production is sustainable, “should agree” with his position, since “we have never said that meat should not be eaten, but that its consumption should be reduced and that the meat consumed should be sustainable”. He also put the spotlight on the big companies in the meat sector, claiming in a tweet that the witch hunt against him was “driven by the lobby of certain big companies that promote polluting macro-farms... and you know the rest”.

It is not the first time that Mr Garzón’s words on this subject have landed him in hot water. Last July, when he proposed reducing meat consumption, even President Pedro Sánchez said: “For me, wherever they give me a chuletón al punto (well-done steak)... that’s can’t be beaten.”

Industrial animal farming is big business in Spain, with the country slaughtering 910 million animals for meat exports each year but with the fewest free-range animals of any other country in the European Union.

Image 1: La Moncloa

Image 2: Archive

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