The Supreme Court has confirmed the sentence to five months in prison for a farmer who infected his cows with brucellosis in Lugo to collect compensation for their slaughter.
The Criminal Chamber has issued a sentence, to which Efe has had access, which rejects the farmer's appeal against the resolution of the Lugo Court that convicted him of an attempted crime of fraud.
The sentence declares that the outbreak of the disease was caused by the farmer, who inoculated live strains of brucellosis in two vaccines (S19 and Rev1), the use of which has been prohibited since 1988, so that the inspection services of the Xunta de Galicia could detect the infection. bacteria in his cattle farm in Castro de Rei (Lugo).
And so it was that during the sanitation campaign of October 2012, the inspection services detected the disease, which was the target of the farmer, in order to access compensation as a consequence of the compulsory slaughter of cattle in execution of the control, control programs and disease eradication.
The first tests detected that the infection affected 70 cattle but, following the animal health protocols, it was agreed to slaughter the 144 cows on the farm, and start the compensation process that ranged between 132,000 and 150,000 euros.
Meanwhile, the Ministry began a series of actions to control the supposed outbreak of brucellosis since it was a massive infection, when in the last two years no animal had been identified with this disease in the region.
The first investigations already set off alarm bells because the results of the analyzes "leads one to think that it is not a natural infection", so the sera were sent to two other laboratories, including the Central Animal Health Laboratory of Santa Fe (Granada) which is the national reference center for bovine brucellosis in Spain.
Their reports concluded that the strains of brucellosis found in the cows corresponded to the two vaccines, which are banned in Spain.
In addition to the prison sentence, the Chamber imposes compensation of 22,475 on the Xunta de Galicia, which was the cost of the investigation carried out, and a fine of 900 euros.
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