Breeders left without compensation after the slaughter of sheep: “They shot them as if they were on the front line, they liked to shoot”

Several sheep and goat farmers in Olt are desperate to have their animals killed in the middle of summer, and have recently received notices from DSVSA that they will not be compensated. Hundreds of thousands of lei are at stake.

The farms of the farmers remained deserted PHOTO: Ionelia Nucă

Six animal breeders from the town of Tufeni and another from Crâmpoia, from Olt county, have been waiting for three months to be compensated for their animals that were killed in July-August, as a result of actions in a smallpox outbreak. The farmers accuse that their work has been destroyed for many years, because they have lived for generations from raising animals, only to be told after three months that they cannot be compensated. The Olt Veterinary Health and Animal Safety Directorate cites inconsistencies between the data from the field and the data from the national database (BND) in which farmers are required to declare their animals. The killed animals, however, all had rattlesnakes, except for a few dozen lambs and kids, the farmers say.

“For a month I fought with them, with all kinds of treatments”

The experience of the farmers is mind-blowing. The woman in whose household the first outbreak was confirmed says that for a month she hit the roads in Slatina, asking for an effective treatment to be recommended, because her sheep are dying. But nothing was yielding results. It was happening in June.

A few weeks later, after notifying the prefecture, and after four samples were taken, smallpox was confirmed. “The sheeppox outbreak confirmed on July 21. On the 24th they came and killed 338 of my animals. I was the only one who had them approved. 338 were killed and 23 died before they detected the outbreak. Only purebred sheep, I entered them into the pedigree registry in Alexandria, I only had them with pedigree certificates”the woman declared, for “Adevărul”.

Once the roller started, the other breeders also entered the mixer. Some had also tried to treat their animals, paid large sums for medicine and labor, so that in the end the authorities decided to decimate the herds, as an action in the outbreak.

Farmers lived in those nightmare days. A family was left without more than 500 animals, sheep and goats. The goats had no symptoms, so on the day their sheep were killed they objected to the killing of the goats, demanding that samples be taken to confirm the disease.

“I also received a fine, and on August 5 they came with a court order and the gendarmes to kill them”, the woman reported.

“I objected to the goats, I asked for an analysis, they also fined me on this side, for asking for an analysis. They fined me, I paid the fine, after July 25 until August 5, when they came to take my goats. They sued me, they came with an order to take the animals from my yard, without analysis, and now they tell me that analysis was done on my entire herd. It is not true, nobody has been analyzed in goats. I had 153 goats”, said the woman.

The woman's husband says that he personally called the laboratory in Bucharest and offered to pay for the tests to confirm whether or not they have the disease. He would have been told that it can only be done with the consent of the DSVSA, and the people from the DSV said that they had done it and that it was no longer needed. The day of the killing also came, from that day people still keep several video recordings and photos. “They found all the goats and now they say they found two missing in the BND. Shouldn't they pay me for two missing? They were registered, that's why I paid, both at APIA, and at the City Hall, and vice versa”the woman said.

The animal execution was a horrific time. The farmers say that the authorities came without equipment, putting on the overalls only when it was pointed out to them that if it is a disease, as they claim, their behavior should be different.

“When I told the director from DSV how they came, he said what, at 40 degrees we are sitting in rubber boots? Well, we've been like this for life. We drink boiled water in the summer and cold in the winter, we don't have holidays, we don't have anything”, the farmers also said.

“The DSV is to blame for not taking care to isolate this disease”

The disease would have reached them in the locality in the neighboring county, Teleorman, from over 25 kilometers away. From what they heard, someone there might have bought sick rams from Bulgaria. The fault for the spread of the disease, however, lies with the Veterinary Health Directorate, the farmers accuse.

“It is the DSV's fault, that it did not take care to isolate this disease, to put at the entrance between Teleorman and Olt, between Tecuci and Tufeni, to put delimiters, with disinfectant, etc. They let cars pass. Then they blame us, because we brought it. Well, where did we walk the sheep through Teleorman county? No, the disease also came from them, it's not our fault”, said another farmer.

And as if they didn't live enough, at the beginning of the week they all received notices that they will not receive compensation, because the animals are not eligible. The reason? Differences were found between the number of animals in the BND and what they actually found in the field.

“The fact that they are not registered is their maneuver. We have all the documents, they are tagged. We also have pastures for the number of animals, and at APIA we received checks every year, how can we not have them registered? Why? That they now need our money? Let them go to work, not sit on a chair for nothing, because we worked all our lives to reach that number of animals! We sit and cry, we walk on the road like the dogs, for nothing. What should we do, where should we go?”, the farmers reacted.

A man told how difficult it was for him on the day of the killing of the animals. He could not watch them being killed, he only saw to it that they were weighed correctly.

“93 goats and 98 sheep, he killed them all. We all received a fine, because we had little kids, babies. What are you going to do, because we were also slaughtering them as a family?! I have children, I have everything. I had about 7-8 lambs that were necrotized. For those, he fined us 300 lei and now he says that we won't give you the money because you didn't have them collared. Well, you don't have me fined for them? asked: do you pay these little 13-kilogram kids? They said yes, it's all on the scale. I had 10 sick sheep, whose feet were drying up. The goats, all healthy, beautiful-beautiful. And they killed them for me, because they said they were carriers of the virus. He tricked us into giving us money, that the average is 9.7 lei/kg. There were also representatives from APIA and from Prefecture… They were shooting as if they were on the front. They loved to shoot. When they were shooting I was looking for the stable, but I looked at the scales. He would shoot 30, put them in the bucket, put them in the trailer… He would load the trailer with 50-60 sheep, drive the trailer, 10 kilometers, the blood would flow from it, on the public road. I live at the head of the village. It's 6-7 km. Yes the world was amazed, the whole village was crying. It was as if they loved to kill, they didn't cry like us”, the man added.

There was slaughter in Tufeni, the farmers reported PHOTO: personal archive of the farmers

Some of the breeders, out of necessity, got hired, others don't know what to say to the people they owe in the village. “People are knocking at our door: haven't they given you the money yet? Why lie to them, because now you have to lie to them, right, if they don't give us any more?!“, the animal breeders reported the desperate situation they are in.

People addressed the Olt prefecture with a complaint PHOTO: farmers archive

Each farmer would have significant sums to recover, they calculated, if they were compensated with 9.7 lei/kg. When they found out that “animals are not eligible for payment”, they took the path of Slatina and turned to Olt Prefecture, two days ago. From here they received the answer that a commission will be formed to investigate what happened at DSVSA.

“We didn't make a scandal, we didn't make a fuss, we waited. But now that we have been told that we do not receive…”, people also said.

The spokeswoman of DSVSA Olt, the doctor Venera Popa, stated that the farmers were informed, individually, of their situation. “They were given an official address from every action that took place on their holdings. It says exactly what was identified. They have the answers there.” said Popa.