Livestock farmers from Alta Ribagorça view with interest the Regional Council's study of installing a shared workshop, following the conclusions of the feasibility study of the regional administration, which detects a demand mainly to handle fresh beef.
“There is interest, although there are some points that we are not clear about at the moment. At the Regional Council they told us that we had to set up a cooperative between us and that the workshop would go up for auction. They have not specified to us what price it would be,” says a beef cow rancher from the municipality of El Pont de Suert.
“Initially it is interesting but there is still some work to be done to determine its viability, to decide whether to opt for the workshop or continue working with the slaughterhouses,” he explains.
Some ranchers sell their livestock to meat industries and there are many who work in maquila in slaughterhouses and then sell the meat to butcher shops, restaurants or online.
The idea of the Regional Council is to propose to the producers to set up the equipment and have them manage it. “The administration will do everything possible to carry out the assembly and from there the producers themselves will take charge of the management,” says the president of the Regional Council, Albert Palacín.
"We are working on it, the idea is to create a work table with possible users, the Regional Council and the town councils and if it is convenient to go visit other similar facilities to see how they have set it up, if they have established a company or a cooperative or what management do,” he points out. “We will not move forward if we do not have the commitment of the users,” he also states.
Palacín recalls that in the previous mandate the Consell and the sector already talked about being able to value a shared workshop to provide service to producers and the Consell obtained help to carry out the study to really see the needs that existed.
The report detected that the beef sector was the most interested and there was some interest among some producers of sheep and plant products.
According to the study, the shared workshop should have a space for conservation and maturation, cutting, filleting, packaging and conservation. Initially, the main use would be for the production of sausages, although a space attached to the workshop for cooking tasks or common spaces and facilities for vegetable production is also contemplated. The most likely location of the equipment would be in the El Pont de Suert industrial estate.
About 30 people attended the presentation of the study which, in the words of the head of the technical area of the Regional Council, Lluís Flor, has aroused interest on the part of the primary sector of the region to finish closing the cycle in its productions and obtain greater added value. .
In addition to the representatives of the regional council and the regional councils and the company that wrote the study, the person in charge of Climate Action, Food and Rural Agenda of the Upper Pyrenees, Núria Fontanet and the aid technician Teresa Colell will participate.
