Fifty-year-old Sylvie remembers almost vomiting on her first day working in a slaughterhouse. She had to cut the pigs' tongues and hearts with a knife in a room so cold her hands nearly froze. They were enormous pigs, weighing between 80 and 100 kilos, unlike anything she'd ever seen. "In my country, pigs are small. Here, they're as big as cows." And endlessly, one pig after another. Like on an assembly line.

Fifty-year-old Sylvie remembers almost vomiting on her first day working in a slaughterhouse. She had to cut the pigs' tongues and hearts with a knife in a room so cold her hands nearly froze. They were enormous pigs, weighing between 80 and 100 kilos, unlike anything she'd ever seen. "In my country, pigs are small. Here, they're as big as cows." And endlessly, one pig after another. Like on an assembly line.

"Do you agree that the Moià Town Council should promote the urban planning modification of the land in the Castellnou plan for the expansion of the slaughterhouse and the construction of the biogas plant?" This was the question that residents over the age of 16 in this municipality in the Moianès region were asked to answer this Sunday in a non-binding public consultation. With a 30% turnout, 1,487 residents voted against the projects, 151 in favor, 14 abstained, and 11 cast invalid ballots. The platform "Por un Moià Viu" (For a Living Moià), which called for a "no" vote, believes that "the will of the people is clear" in rejecting the expansion of the slaughterhouse and the biogas plant, and points out that they surpassed the 1,451 votes cast for Ara Moià. The party linked to ERC, which governs with a majority, has not taken all the necessary steps. It is the only way to regularize the industrial park and, therefore, save the companies currently located there, but environmentalists and the opposition disagree and believe there are other options.

Two years ago, the Catalan government tightened inspections of slaughterhouses in accordance with a new European regulation, which expands the number of animal species for human consumption that must be inspected. In order to ensure maximum hygiene from the beginning of the process, these facilities must check for the presence of bacteria such as Salmonella and Campylobacter at the time of slaughter, and in addition, the Department of Health also carries out controls to verify compliance with the new regulations. However, in a document to which ARA has had access, Health states that "the operators' self-controls do not reflect the real prevalence" of these bacteria and recognizes that there is a widespread lack of detection that, in some cases, is even "notable."