Call to form a common front of all peoples against chicken mega-farms

PetraThe meeting in Petra to report on the Son Brau chicken mega-farm project in Manacor became a call for unity of "all the municipalities of Mallorca" against this project that the promoting company wanted to launch in Sineu and has now moved to the capital of Llevant, as well as against other similar initiatives that may be promoted on the island's rural land.

A hundred people gathered at the Escoles Velles of the municipality in an event promoted by OCB of Petra, with farmer Biel Bauçà as organizer and spokesperson. The meeting was attended by the mayor of Petra, Salvador Femenias, councilor Miquel Jaume, and opposition councilor Antònia Gual, accompanied by deputy Marta Carrió and representatives of the Manacor City Council. The platforms No Macrogranja Son Brau and Macrogranja No, from Sineu, also gave their support.

The meeting served to send a clear message against "these speculative intensive livestock farming macro-projects" and in favor of the preservation of the territory, traditional farming, and also the aquifers.

Therefore, the organizers hope that motions will be presented in the plenary sessions of as many town councils in Mallorca as possible "against this kind of projects" and foresee an avalanche of allegations to the Son Brau initiative.

Bauçà addressed the attendees and assured that "as it has already demonstrated elsewhere, this mega-farm is being built by a company that does not love our land, loves nothing more than its pocket, and, as it has demonstrated with other farms and facilities they already have in other towns, this company is a bad neighbor".

The farmer from Petrer added that "the countryside is for farmers, it is for livestock, for having sheep at large, and the countryside is a space to teach our children to love their territory". He also remarked that "what we need is balance, and all economic activities that move away from the traditional agricultural model unbalance an entire ecosystem". "This mega-farm is a terrible project made by a company harmful to Mallorca, which does not love its land", he insisted.

Furthermore, he defended that "we want a clean town, a town that doesn't smell, a town that doesn't have flies, but, beyond all that, a town that has drinking water".

Both Bauçà and the representative of the Sineu platform, Joana Maria Antich, insisted on calling for the unity of all the towns of Mallorca to confront this project and others like it: "First it was us in Sineu, where our fight is not yet over, and now the Manacor project shows that this affects everyone and that any town can be affected."

Along the same lines, Sílvia Llull, daughter of farmers from Manacor and a neighbor directly affected by the mega-farm planned in Son Brau, expressed herself, explaining the disbelief with which she received the news: "You see it on television and you can't imagine what it's like to have the threat of such a project until one day you find it as your neighbor." That is why she insisted on avoiding "selfishness" because, as she said, "humans are selfish and think it can never happen to them, but it is not so."

Nitrates map

Finally, geologist Damià Perelló projected a study on the Son Brau chicken macro-project and warned that it will affect the entire water mass of Son Real, which extends from Manacor to Son Serra de Marina and Can Picafort. "This goes beyond municipal boundaries, it will affect a very large region and it is advisable that all affected town halls join forces," he said.

Perelló explained with a plan that, unlike many aquifers in Mallorca, Son Real's has an excess of chlorides due to marine veins, but it does not have nitrates like many other water masses. In this sense, he argued that, beyond a supposed food sovereignty with which projects like the mega-farm are justified, "water sovereignty to leave it to our grandchildren" is more necessary and this can only be guaranteed "if water masses without nitrates are preserved".

As an example that "the nitrate map is spreading like wildfire" beyond a municipality's agricultural practices, he cited the case of Ariany, which already has nitrates without having particularly large intensive agriculture. "Adding 80,000 chickens is a very big problem for all of Mallorca and not just for the directly affected towns or those nearby," he concluded.

It should be remembered that the mayors of Petra, Salvador Femenias, and of Ariany, Joan Ribot, have already shown their rejection of the Son Brau de Manacor project. Before Tuesday's meeting, Femenias had stated to the media that "obviously we are against the mega-farm, it is not within Petra's term, but it will affect us. In fact, at the assembly of mayors we have discussed it and these facilities cannot be built, because, in this case, it is not good for Manacor or for Petra".