Swine fever, what is happening in Lombardy and why even freed pigs are killed

The story of the violence and the slaughter of the pigs hosted at the Cuori Liberi refuge, after the order of the Lombardy ATS for the containment of swine fever.

It's five in the morning.We can barely distinguish each other in this dark gray that encompasses everything.The air is tense, the cars are filled and we are mobilising.In a few minutes the cars surround the vicinity of the Cuori Liberi anti-speciesist shelter, where released animals, including pigs, are guests.We proceed on foot, into the night.The activists wear shoes, protective suits and gloves.They tie their hair, disinfect the surfaces and the wait begins again, which lasts just long enough to understand how to protect the refuge.You enter from the back, in line and with order, counting, division of chains, pipes and then off, shelter and padlocks close.To prevent the law enforcement officers come in to kill the resident pigs at Free Hearts.To prevent the forced culling to contain swine fever ordered by the Lombardy region from being carried out.To give those who remain time to mourn their dead, the possibility for those who suffer to be cared for, for those who die to do so with dignity and for those who survive to live.Because today will not be like last Friday, today they will not retreat after a four-hour barricade.Today the police arrive, the riot police.

Pigs and swine fever in Lombardy

In Lombardy there are approximately four million pigs.Four million animals, approximately fifty percent of the total present on Italian soil.The intensive farming they forcefully occupy the territory and not only in terms of ground and perimeter.Even the air is full of their presence, miasmas and acrid odors that suggest how much they also exude into the aquifers, contaminating water and agricultural land.Entire countries revolve around the economy of these meat production giants.A routine that involves engineering, birthing, fattening and killing millions of pigs.Which concentrates them in spaces optimized for production and which, with increasing frequency, they are becoming places where epidemics incubate.

This is the case of swine fever (PSA), a viral disease that affects i pigs.The symptoms are varied, from fever, loss of appetite, weakness of the hindquarters - therefore motor slowing - and hemorrhages.The virus finds more than fertile ground on farms, where contact between farmed animals is inevitable, as much as that between them and potential vector animals, such as passing birds and wild rodents.Thanks to the state of some breeding facilities, whose roofs are riddled with collapses and holes, and the damage has been done.Psa has been spreading in the Pavia area for months a silent silence which amplified its diffusion.

The spread of the swine fever virus

Testimonies differ, the official version is that Psa was found by some farmers who did not report the first cases to theLombardy health protection agency (the body responsible for providing health and social care services) delaying the activation of adequate measures.For many people, however, especially here near the outbreak farms there are those who testify to a further degree in the search for the principle of contagion.The no complaints have played a preponderant role in the spread of the pathogen, as well as the inevitable presence of vectors, but it seems that perhaps a further degree of blame can be traced back to a specific slaughterhouse from which the vans and trucks for unloading and transporting the animals would enter and exit.The pathogen, in fact, has an excellent ability to survive, so much so that it can remain on surfaces for months and then spread, carried by clothes, wheels and shoe soles that are not properly disinfected.And even then, zero risk is not insurable.

The abatement order

The pathogen found in hyperproductive Lombardy an environment suitable for propagation, virtually undisturbed, strong in its virulence and concentration of pigs.Thus, Ats Lombardia, albeit with due delays, began to receive reports of suspicious deaths.Posthumous tests therefore began which confirmed the presence of swine fever.The action chosen by the entity is a containment maneuver which involves theculling of all infected and potentially infected pigs.A massive operation which, to date, has led to the killing by means of CO2 of at least 33 thousand pigs considered animals intended for production food, therefore income domestics.The economic damage for farmers is enormous, so much so that they have been prepared cheap restaurants which will be paid to some of them.Those who, for one, didn't have holes in their roofs.

While the Lombardy counts the economic damage, Tcc Group Bv, the only company in all of Europe capable of providing this service, it collects 72 million euros per day for its abatement activity.Ruud Larman, CEO of Tcc, follows the procedures closely, so much so that we meet him while traveling in his pickup between the various killing hubs.The killing process is reportedly painless and peaceful for the animals.The testimony, however, is widely denied by the investigation Being Animals which he documented gassing procedures which involve the often violent pushing of suffering and healthy animals towards containers where, for 25 minutes, they are suffocated with a CO2-based mixture.According to Laarman, the animals should be unconscious in less than a minute, but if they survive they will be given the same treatment as those too debilitated to be loaded onto transport trucks: electric shock.Once dead, the animals are taken from the Manitoba bucket and dumped into other containers one on top of the other, for the final transport which will take them to the nearest incinerator, the one in Piacenza.

The slaughter of freed and healthy pigs

The abatement order, however, it did not limit itself to affecting the lives of farmed pigs, but also of the free and liberated ones.This is the case of wild boars, whose hunting has undergone a dramatic surge in the last year, but above all in the last few months due to swine fever.The threat looms over those too non-Dpa domestic pigs (not intended for food production) residents in anti-speciesist shelters, spaces recognized by law as environments of liberation, in which animals live without suffering any form of exploitation or abuse.

Specifically, the Cuori Liberi sanctuary was notified of an ordinance, a death sentence, for both sick and healthy pigs.A sentence that would have been applied using the same method applied to animals confined on farms.The sanctuary immediately alerted the network of Free Sanctuaries which issued the alarm, mobilizing legal action which led to a appeal to the TAR (whose hearing will take place on 5 October 2023) and a garrison of activists who, for two weeks now, have been guarding the area, preventing with their presence the police from entering the refuge in violation of the laboriously negotiated agreements, according to which the possible procedure applied for the most suffering animals would be euthanasia with sedation identical to that reserved for company servants.The killing procedures currently underway, however, do not only include infected animals, but also those found on farms experiencing outbreaks, as well as those found in neighboring areas. The slaughter proceeds at a rapid pace, fills container after container, in the hope of freeing the Pavia area from an "infected production" and restoring a "healthy" one.

Ats, however, does not have the material time to wait for the residents of Cuori Liberi to die with adequate medical attention.Pavese farms must be emptied and refilled as soon as possible to restart production.This pressure pushed the police to try to carry out a forced intervention on Friday 15 September.The armed mobilization of foresters, carabinieri and digos, pushed activists and activists present in the area to barricade the shelter, tying themselves with chains and pipes to prevent access and killing of the pigs.Material protection, not without risks, is in fact preventing unjust deaths and the creating a dangerous precedent for all Italian shelters.The forced entry of law enforcement would violate the protection enjoyed by shelter residents, returning them to being considered nothing more than objects to be managed, cannon fodder or obstacles.

Fear and violence at the Cuori Liberi refuge

Fear is violence coming soon.Which is quantified as soon as we see the disproportionate number of trucks parking.Police, carabinieri, then firefighters.They line up quickly, ready to attack.They are loaded, visibly encouraged by those who coordinate the police.He laughs at the people sitting in front of the gate, claiming that there is no more time to talk, let alone negotiate.They untie people by pulling on their arms as if they were made of dough.They yank those blocked by the pipes, they pass the hose near the fingers of a companion who is holding on to the gate.This is torn up immediately.The activists flee towards the heart of the shelter, the riot police behind making way with truncheons outstretched.They hit hard and immediately.
But it is behind the barricades that they rage.Kicks, punches, insults. Psychological and verbal violence.An activist is hit in the chest with a fist, it is later discovered that she has a microfracture of the sternum and a pericardial effusion.One of the policemen punches his testicles and crushes them.Another, rages on a girl, filling her with insults about her body and her sex life.

They use force, on the shelter, on the pigs and on the activists and the activists themselves, to remove them.The people who have chosen to support the inviolability of the shelters and the resistance for the dignity of animal life non-human, they have been monitored for days, controlled, followed, marked on loose sheets of paper and filmed by fake runners - plainclothes authorities - who film faces and count those present.It's there, it's not there, it's missing.They are many, they are few.They are a danger, they are harmless.Evaluations that can decide the life and future of many of the people who came.

The activists are taken out one by one, dragged, held badly, beaten and insulted after being repeatedly beaten.Meanwhile, Ats enters, parading with rifles and nose clips.They laugh.
Fears become certainties.The mourning space dies, the pigs are killed and dumped in containers.Inert bodies where there used to be strength.Hard thuds.Of those who were sick, but also of those who were healthy.Of those who until a few hours before were walking, grunting and eating.Who hid to escape the vets.Outside, desperation spreads.Cuori Liberi is not having the space to grieve. The shelter is torn down, the disturbed earth, the raised nets, the terrified animals.

Ats Lombardy it opted for containment and not prevention, because the only method to stem the spread of a pathogen like this involves the permanent closure of the livestock industry.Instead of eradicating the problem at its root, the region has opted for a botched patch that threatens animals, be they human or non-human.And it did so in a historical era in which public awareness of the environmental dangers of these environments is growing, because in addition to generating 14.5 of Ghg emissions, it absorbs ten percent of global waters and occupies eighty percent of agricultural land.Only in Lombardy there are more pigs than humans.As if that wasn't enough, it isn't even limiting contact between humans and the pathogen, because, according to studies, it not only survives for a long time, but also does so in those slices derived from animal disembowelment that populate supermarkets.The same operators of farms and slaughterhouses are not always in a position to sanitize themselves adequately, contributing to the spread of the disease.

Civil disobedience was the only barrier between the active recognition of the dignity of animal life and its absolute, ordinary violation.For two weeks he kept the Free Hearts pigs alive. The truncheons broke this border line, between security and violence.Now the news is getting around, now that people have been beaten, cut and bruised.Now that the human damage is tangible. However, pigs are discussed on the sidelines.As if their lives were incidental.When instead they were the center of everything.And they still will be.Especially because according to the new circular on "surveillance of sanctuaries related to PSA 190PV044 outbreak" no sanctuary is safe.Because it's true that if they touch one, they touch all.And released non-human animals are no exception.