Home Headlines Pig Farms pose significant threat to the environment in Yucatán (VIDEO)

Pig Farms pose significant threat to the environment in Yucatán (VIDEO)

by Yucatan Times
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The animal advocacy group Mercy For Animals resumed allegations made by local Yucatecan Maya community activists against pig farms, and in a drone investigation, it exhibited the tremendous contamination that these facilities are generating in different parts of the state of Yucatan.

The drones of Mercy For Animals also flew over chicken farms, where they documented mistreatment against birds, but what most horrified international activists is the serious pollution and environmental damage tha pig farms provoke.

Mark Devries, certified drone pilot of Mercy For Animals and Director of the documentary, moved to Yucatán to obtain evidence of the damage caused by the farms in the area.

A Mexican undercover investigator led Devries through small towns and narrow roads to be able to document these huge industrial farms that proliferate across the state. Devries said he was horrified by what he saw:

“I have seen dozens and dozens of industrial farms over the years, but I have never seen anything on the scale of what has been built there,” he said.

“Our drone captured images of huge facilities, including a chicken farm with about 100 buildings, each with thousands of confined birds. But, definately the images of pig farms are by far the most impressive”, he continued.

Devries added: “Nothing I saw was more frightening than the facilities where they confine pigs. There are thousands of them in these places and they produce so many wastewater that they fill gigantic ponds that look like black lagoons. ”

The images show a drainage network that throws millions of liters of untreated waste into the ponds adjacent to the farms. Facilities such as these can produce more sewage than a small city, and these wastes can contaminate local air and water supplies, and endanger the lives of people who reside in the surrounding area.

“The president of the “Asociación de Porcicultores de Yucatán” (Association of Pig Producers of Yucatan) said that in 2018 alone, 2.2 million pigs were raised for the production of meat in that state, according to Peruvian news outlet El Comercio,”  Mercy For Animals reports.

Citizens of the municiplities of Homún and San Antonio Chel, along with residents of other rural communities in Yucatan, are fighting these huge industrial farms claiming that the water and air pollution triggered by these pig farms, are causing health problems amont the population.

At the beginning of the year it was evident that a Kekén farm in the municipality of Kinchil was throwing untreated highly contaminated water into the water table, to the extent that it had formed a sewage lagoon that was killing all life around it.

The Yucatan Times Newsroom with information from Mercy For Animals and El Comercio.

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