What truths are they hiding from us about the Son Brau farm?

About seventy residents demonstrated in front of the Manacor City Council with banners and shouts of ‘No Macro-farm’ just before the ordinary plenary session of July. During the session, the plenary approved a motion presented jointly by the governing team (MÉS-Esquerra, PSOE and AIPC) and the PP against macro-farms in Mallorca.The affected neighbours left the plenary session happy. The motion, generic and which does not explicitly mention the toponym of Son Brau at any time, nor the company Avícola Son Perot, which is the one that wants to build this farm of 80,000 laying hens, was approved, with the only votes against from Vox. They asked for a statement from all parties, who showed themselves, with more or less vagueness and with more or less arguments, contrary to “intensive exploitations like this one”.Avícola Son Perot has presented a project that seeks to comply with the provisions established by law 2/2025, approved, precisely, to prevent the construction of a mega-farm by this same company in the municipality of Sineu with a load of 800,000 chickens.In fact, Avícola Son Perot also owns the Llucmajor mega-farm, sadly known as 'the farm of horrors', after images of the interior of the facilities were leaked showing that the animals are in "deplorable conditions". "Live hens coexist with dozens of carcasses in different states of decomposition, including skeletons and other animals, such as rats (alive or poisoned) and hedgehogs, expired fire extinguishers and containers with carcasses in a state of putrefaction and full of worms" an informant who allegedly took the images told a media outlet. Avícola Son Perot received a fine of 200,000 euros for the conditions of the facilities.Now, the company presents itself as a modern entity adapted to the times and current law. But we must have memory and remember what actions it has carried out previously.Meanwhile, there are many questions that our representatives in the City Council could answer. Why, despite the verbal agreement that the government team had with the representatives of the Macrogranja No platform, did the motion finally have to be presented urgently? Did they have doubts about the advisability of presenting it?Why does the motion speak exclusively of mega-farms and not mention the concept of 'farm' at all? Is this absence intentional? Does the fact that the farm planned in Son Brau is for 80,000 chickens, ten times less than the load projected in Sineu, have anything to do with it? Is the one they are now asking to build in Manacor really considered a mega-farm?

Petra and Ariany oppose the Son Brau chicken farm in Manacor

The four parties that presented the motion positioned themselves “against factory farms”. Can we know if they have submitted allegations to the project? Or have they limited themselves to approving a symbolic motion that does not commit them to anything else?Has Mayor Miquel Oliver explained to the affected neighbors that the General Plan allows the construction of intensive farms of this kind on rural land in Manacor? Could it be that both in Manacor and Palma they are clear that as the Son Brau project has been presented, it is very difficult to stop it? Could it also be that MÉS-Esquerra looks favorably on local egg production, even if it is intensive, as some of its representatives have already publicly stated?We live in a finite and vulnerable territory, strained and devoured by an industry that robs us of our soul and our land. Intensive food production, in this case of eggs, poses a proven risk of leakage and contamination of underground water resources. Avícola Son Perot explains that the hens are not in cages, but does not mention the crowded conditions in which they live. Certificates, however European they may be, cannot be just paper.Among the arguments of those who advocate for the construction of the farm are those of food sovereignty and the promotion of local produce. That a food is produced here does not mean that it meets all the necessary requirements to be considered healthy and not harmful to health, nor that the production process has been the most adequate. It is clear that we consider farms and the production of meat, or eggs, necessary in this case. The forest area in Mallorca is growing at a rate of 1,100 new hectares each year due to the abandonment of agricultural land. We do want eggs, and hens, and chickens, and lambs, and piglets. But let them graze and occupy the territory that we have usurped from the primary sector to build chalet developments every two acres. We do want to promote local produce and ensure that the consumption of produce made in Mallorca by the hotel industry, which in most cases never reaches the miserable 3% established by law, is complied with through severe inspections, in a further demonstration that the wealth generated by the tourism industry is not for the island's residents. Sustainability must not be economic, but human, environmental, energetic, water, and food-related. We do not want more intensive farms like Son Perot, because we do not want to sustain this macabre system any longer that seeks to turn our home into the dunghill of Europe.