The coordinator of the area of Agriculture, Livestock, Rural Environment, and Environmental Policy of the PSOE in Castilla y León, Miguel Ángel Blanco, has reproached the Junta of Castilla y León for arriving "absolutely late" when it comes to addressing the problems of the countryside, citing the management of Newcastle disease as an example. He has recalled that the first outbreak was reported on June 15, while the first measures from the regional government were not approved until July 30, "a month and a half after the first declaration," he emphasized.
Blanco has also pointed out that the first meeting of the Minister of Agriculture, Livestock, Rural Environment, and Environmental Policy, Joaquín Antonio Pino, with the laboratories producing vaccines against Newcastle disease did not take place until yesterday, Wednesday, August 5, which, in his view, confirms the late response of the PP and Vox government.
The socialist leader has stressed that vaccination against Newcastle disease is currently only mandatory in Valladolid and Segovia and will not be extended to the rest of the farms in the Community until September 1, despite the fact that the Ministry has already expanded the areas of additional restriction to five provinces.
"It is clear that they are being unable to stop this avian crisis, that they are being unable to provide the necessary means to mitigate the consequences that it will bring to an important sector in Castilla y León such as the poultry sector," Blanco has stated, who has conveyed the same criticism to the management of the consequences of the wildfires, where he only sees "grandiloquent" statements and "indeterminate" measures without data on "how much and how."
"How much money is going to be put on the table and charged to which budget items to help farmers, ranchers, and beekeepers in the areas? We lack the how," he insisted, reproaching the Junta for the absence of precision about who will take on the reconstruction and with what resources for agricultural facilities, roads, ponds, or damaged fences.
The socialist official has recalled the call for a concentration of agricultural professional organizations, in a united action, on August 27 in front of the Presidency headquarters to "say loud and clear" that they require the Junta of Castilla y León to complement the aid from the Government of Spain "with real and verifiable actions."
"The primary sector is a structural sector that does not deserve to be looked at only and remembered when the electoral campaigns arrive and must once and for all, systematically, adopt the necessary measures to guarantee the subsistence of this sector that underpins the community of Castilla and León," concluded Miguel Ángel Blanco.