Intensive pig farms accused of mass deaths of fish in the Mar Menor: "guilty of environmental disaster"

The fish slaughter in the Mar Menor was caused by pollution caused by intensive agriculture but also by pig farms

He is about to end up run over, his mother saves him

What connection can there be between pig farms and a fish death? Apparently none but, on closer inspection, the impact of intensive farming (and their sewage) inevitably affects the environment. In Spain, this appears to have contributed to the killing of marine animals in the Mar Menor.

A survey, conducted by Lighthouse Reports and by journalists from elDiario.es e The tide, revealed that the role of the pork industry in the pollution of one of the largest saltwater lagoons in Europe may be greater than previously imagined.

But let's start from the beginning. In August, residents of the southeastern region of Murcia, Spain, sounded the alarm after they spotted dozens of dead fish on the shores of the Mar Menor lagoon. After a few days there was a real massacre: we are talking about almost 5 tons of fish carcasses that were deposited on the beaches where they began to decompose.

The waters were murky, the stench was unbearable and the question, of course, ended up at the center of public opinion and the Spanish press.

Scientists immediately began to blame the situation for decades of nitrate-laden runoff that triggered algae blooms and depleted the water of oxygen, thus creating a situation unsuitable for fish survival.

At the center of attention, as the primary cause of the pollution of the lagoon, is the intensive agriculture of the area and the fertilizers used by the farmers. These have made the water of the Mar Menor contaminated with high levels of nitrates and phosphorus.

Read also: Massacre of fish and marine animals in Spain, thousands died from toxic spills from the countryside

However, there were also other culprits, hitherto totally ignored. It is precisely the intensive pig farms of Campo de Cartagena and in particular their slurry deposits (a mixture of feces, urine and food remains) which presumably do not comply with the regulations and contaminate the groundwater.

Now the new survey, conducted for 4 months, wanted to examine precisely the role of these farms that have increased dramatically in the last ten years in the Mar Menor area and which would have contributed to fuel one of the worst environmental disasters in Spain in recent years.

Photographs taken by drones and satellite images of the area, collected by the survey, show pig waste escaping from sewage ponds, dumped onto nearby land or stored in large holes in the ground.

Already a 2019 report by the Spanish Ministry of the Environment had shown that many farms did not comply with the regulations according to which pig waste must be kept in sealed waterproof ponds. The report reads:

Serious deficiencies have been found in livestock waste storage facilities… waterproofing is almost non-existent, allowing the waste to leak directly into the ground and resulting in contamination of the aquifer.

The dead fish that spilled onto the shores of the Mar Menor this summer are just the latest chapter in a dramatic environmental situation that has lasted for some time. In 2016, algae blooms transformed the lagoon's waters into an immense green expanse, while in 2019 thousands of dead fish and crustaceans poured onto the coasts.

A great responsibility of this situation is, as already said, of the local agriculture but we must not forget, as this survey underlined, the role of pig farms.

Andrés Pedreño Cánovas, professor of sociology at the University of Murcia said:

Pig farms have grown out of control, creating a bubble driven by international markets and especially by exports to China. But bubbles always burst, and this will leave behind a devastated, polluted and crisis-ridden territory.

The death of the Mar Menor symbolizes a much wider crisis created by the desire to produce cheap meat in Spain. A fact that, however, involves us all and reminds us how important it is to try (at least) to limit its consumption.

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Source: DW / The Guardian / El Diario