The numbers are in: 29 active outbreaks concentrated in the Nuoro area, with 184 infected animals, 31 deaths from the disease, and 447 already culled. A total of over 1,800 affected animals are at risk of being culled on the affected farms. Reassurances are coming: "We are supporting the farmers with transparent strategies," said President Alessandra Todde. Then there are them. Those who make a living from cattle, support the market, and keep the economy humming. And they risk being wiped out by the lumpy skin disease that is plaguing Sardinia's cattle farms.

One is Francesco Zoroddu, who works in the countryside between Nuoro and Orotelli. Just ten days ago, Videolina cameras entered his farm: there wasn't a single positive case. Now this model farm is completely devastated by dermatitis. "What's the situation? Serious," the farmer explains angrily. He points to a cow loaded onto the back of a van: "We tried to rescue this one, but there's no hope of treating it or getting it up." And others are in the mountains, in the same condition: "We don't have helicopters, we can't load it up for certification or disposal." The animals "are stuck in the mountains, not drinking, not eating, and they're dead from the fever. We can't give them antibiotics to treat them, we can't do anything."

"They're telling us," Zoroddu continues, "that they're going to shut down our entire farm. We'll close the company, we'll close the VAT number, we'll close everything. I want to see where they'll take us. Like this one, on our cow farms, hundreds of them have died in a week."

"Flies, worms, and wild boars reduce them to this," echoes Martino Zoroddu, picking up a hide and some bones, the remains of an animal that died of dermatitis. "And they want to pay for the disposals by weight. The European Community wants to pay us by weight for our cows, our entire life's capital. Now this one weighs 5-10 kg maximum. Then they tell us what to do. We just don't know what to do, we don't know what to do anymore, we're on the verge of collapse."

The Zoroddu see "our capital demolished, lost." They demand "certainly not total and indiscriminate culling. I'm asking to cull a cow like that," he says, pointing to a dying animal, "but let's try to save that healthy cow somehow."

Report by Gianfranco Locci

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