- Farmers whose cows die in the Austrian Alps are resorting
to dynamite to destroy the carcasses rather than pay the army £200
to remove the bodies by helicopter.
-
- Under Austrian law, farmers are obliged to dispose of
the bodies of dead cattle to prevent them polluting streams and to avoid
upsetting tourists. The army used to move carcasses by helicopter from
the mountains for free. Tough budget cuts now mean, however, that they
are asking farmers to make a £200 contribution for each animal taken
away.
-
- Farmers who use dynamite to dispose of their dead cows
claim that they clear away the larger pieces of carcass after the explosion,
leaving the rest to be devoured by birds and other animals. The practice
of blowing up dead animals was little known outside the farming world,
until Fritz Amann, the vice-president of Vorarlberg province, discovered
the remains of an exploded cow while walking in meadows around his home
village.
-
- He said: "It was disgusting. There were body parts
everywhere. Visitors like to think the Austrian hills are alive with the
sound of music, not exploding cows. It must be stopped."
-
- He took photographs that he presented to the regional
parliament. There were angry exchanges but MPs were divided over whether
farmers were guilty of breaking the law. Gebhart Halber, a conservative
People's Party MP and an Alpine farmer, explained that blowing up dead
cows was commonplace in the mountains, with demolition experts regularly
hired to detonate the carcasses.
-
- At £250 each, however, explosives experts were
costing more than the army, so many farmers were blowing up their animals
themselves. Explosives are easy to come by in Austria and are often used
in the mountains for controlled avalanches.
-
- Mr Halber defended the practice, saying that explosives
were only used in extreme cases. He said: "Rather than leaving the
cow to rot for days, an explosion can speed up the process, making it easier
for birds of prey or other animals such as foxes to drag bits of the carcass
away.
-
- "Many animals die every winter in the mountains
and it's impossible to bury them in frozen ground. Cutting up a cow so
that the bits can be carted away is a long and difficult process."
-
- Mr Amann, however, condemned the practice as dangerous
and alarmingly widespread. "In one incident I heard of," he said,
"a pregnant cow died and was blown up rather than being transported
by helicopter. But it was not a clean job and huge pieces, some weighing
100 kilos [15 stone] were scattered everywhere - one chunk even landed
in a pool often used for bathing by youngsters."
-
- Mr Amann wants farmers caught blowing up dead cows to
be fined at least £250 so that the alternative to helicopter disposal
no longer saves them money. In his home town of Fraxern, where Mr Amann
first discovered the practice, he has little support, however.
-
- The local mayor, Josef Summer, backed the farmers. Explosives,
he said, were practical and cheap. "If farmers can explode the cadaver
themselves it really is less expensive and in my opinion totally safe and
practical when properly controlled."
-
- Mr Summer said he had sanctioned an explosion himself
after a cow was killed in a storm. He said that when three farm workers
were unable to remove the body from the mountainside local vets advised
the farmer to hire an explosives expert. Dynamite was placed inside the
dead beast and the subsequent detonation posed no danger to either people
or the local water source.
-
- "This really was an emergency situation - and was
totally legal. It was impossible to pull the dead cow down the mountain
because it was stuck on a narrow path, which was even inaccessible to helicopters.
The cow exploded into tiny pieces and birds of prey and animals cleared
the debris within a day."
-
.
-
- MainPage
http://www.rense.com
-
-
-
- This
Site Served by TheHostPros
|