The Environment Attorney General's Office has opened proceedings for the complaint against the then Minister of Climate Action, Food and Rural Agenda and now candidate for deputy in Congress, Teresa Jordá, and the director of Forest Ecosystems and Environmental Management of the same department, Anna Sanitjas, for the use of aluminum phosphide on roads to control the rabbit population.
The procedure has been transferred to the General Prosecutor of Catalonia, according to the lawyer of Lex Ánima, Eva Díaz: "The good news is that the procedure has been opened, the Prosecutor's Office transfers it understanding that it only affects Catalonia, we had presented it in the general one because we understood that it could affect other communities,” says Díaz. The complaint had been filed with the Attorney General's Office due to the short distance between Aragon and the LV-7041 road from Soses to Massalcoreig, in Segrià, where the operators applied the biocide and covered 300 burrows in about 10 kilometers in mid-March.
The Ministry then asked the Ministry for an exceptional authorization for the use and commercialization of formulated products based on aluminum phosphide against rabbits in agricultural crops, a request that has been rejected.
The State has communicated its rejection of the Generalitat's request in a letter sent to El Pacma and the animal organizations Lex Ànima and Fundación Altarriba in response to the request of these entities to immediately stop the application of the biocide and to annul the declaration of a hunting emergency against the rabbit population by the Ministry, a matter, the latter, in which the Ministry insists that it is the responsibility of the Generalitat.
In the complaint, the animal organizations maintain that Jordà and Sanitjas have granted and renewed authorizations for farms for the intensive breeding of rabbits for hunting purposes. They argue that between 2021 and 2022, they have authorized the release of more than 15,000 rabbits in Catalonia, 4,230 of them in Lleida and that between 2020 and 2022 they authorized the hunting of 21,881 foxes, a natural predator of rabbits.
They insist that they ordered the dumping of the poison knowing that it is not selective, they point out that the company Miarnau Agritecno is listed with the CNAE as "Wholesale sale of cereals" and they point out that no tender had even been published on the contracting portal of the Generalitat of Catalonia.
The portal did publish in May a tender from the public company Forestal Catalana to protect the infrastructures included in the hunting emergency zone declared in the regions of Lleida through the application of aluminum phosphide with an estimated value of the contract of 30,000 euros that was declared deserted on June 8.
The Generalitat maintains that the use of aluminum phosphide is authorized in infrastructures, places where rabbits burrow and does not represent a risk to the food chain.
