[Animals] The unhealthy delicatessen of the 600 wild boars

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Investigators are surprised by the arrogance and sense of impunity with which the owner of the Elaborats Sant Joan deli, in les Fonts (La Garrotxa) continued to work. In less than a year, the Agents Rurals corps has intercepted up to 600 pieces, the vast majority wild boars, opened in the carcass and prepared to be illegally marketed in Andalusia. The problem is that the factory, in theory, had been closed since April by the Generalitat for not meeting the minimum sanitary standards. In practice, the story was different.

On November 19, Agents Rurals stopped a refrigerated truck on a road in Alta Garrotxa. It was not a routine check. Therefore, the operation was not surprised to find 344 pieces hanging and open in the channel inside the vehicle. The rural corps had been guarding the meat plant for days. The agents knew that, sooner rather than later, the businessman would soon give the order to his employees (who were still working) to send the fully loaded vehicle to Andalusia, where he intended to market the animals.

His intentions were known. The businessman had been contacting hunters in the area in the previous days to buy the animals for their hunts. The stealth operations were carried out, literally, with the barriers lowered. But as happens in small municipalities thrown into the economy of the countryside or the sea, in the end the easy and confidant languages end up making the illegalities of neighbors and enemies reach the ears of the authorities.

"He transported them [the wild boars] at dawn," explains a senior official, familiar with the operation, from the Department of Climate Action, the highest competent in hunting matters in the community. “In the end, in these environments, everything is known, everything is known. We were aware of this, ”explains another senior officer from Agents Rurals, who adds that it was not very difficult to find the butcher loot, since the businessman was well known in the area. Before, he had operated together with a former partner in the same municipality with another company. But they separated and he set up his own business, although founded on numerous outrages. The one from two weeks ago was not the first.

https://elpais.com/espana/catalunya/2021-12-05/la-charcuteria-insalubre-de-los-600-jabalies.html