Greenpeace action in front of the Ministry of Agriculture, November 20, 2023 in Paris (AFP/Miguel MEDINA)
Fake battery chickens, real green algae and manure: activists from the environmental NGO Greenpeace spread thousands of liters of slurry in front of the Ministry of Agriculture on Monday, demanding “a moratorium on factory farms” in the name of good -being animal and protecting the planet.
Arriving around 9:00 a.m. in front of the ministry, a livestock truck containing a giant inflatable pig and a mesh truck carrying activists disguised as chickens blocked rue de Varenne, AFP journalists noted.
Quickly, activists dressed in white overalls and T-shirts emblazoned with the slogan “Stop factory farms” began dumping slurry, a liquid mixture of animal excrement used as fertilizer, to a soundtrack of (real ) pig cries.
“We dumped two tonnes of slurry to denounce the industrial farming model which, in the face of the environmental and climate crisis, must undergo a profound transformation. We are calling for a moratorium on all new construction or construction projects. “expansion of factory farms in France”, declared Sandy Olivar Calvo, Agriculture campaigner at Greenpeace France.
The operation ended around 11:00 a.m. “Eleven activists” were arrested and placed in police custody according to the NGO.
At the same time, Greenpeace organized rallies “against factory farms” in around twenty cities: small groups of activists gathered, with banners and smoke bombs, in front of the prefectures of Marseille, Lyon, Nantes, Quimper, Dijon, Strasbourg or Bordeaux, according to a press release from the NGO.
Greenpeace action in front of the Ministry of Agriculture, November 20, 2023 in Paris (AFP/Miguel MEDINA)
Greenpeace classifies under the name “factory farm” farms requiring authorization from State services due to their potential environmental impact or for local residents: these farms can accommodate up to 750 sows or more than 40,000 poultry.
On the basis of data from the Ministry of Ecological Transition on farms classified as ICPE (Installations classified for environmental protection), Greenpeace lists some 3,000 “factory farms” in France (out of 145,000 farms specializing in livestock farming), mainly poultry and pigs. Two thirds are concentrated in the west of the country.
“These factory farms represent 3% of livestock farming, which accounts for 60% of livestock. In Brittany, this concentration contributes to polluting groundwater and the proliferation of green algae,” said an activist, pointing to barrels of “green algae” marked with a skull at the foot of the truck.
The NGO is also concerned about the future agricultural orientation law, postponed several times and now announced for early 2024. “This text, which will be the only agricultural law of the five-year term, must be an opportunity to rethink livestock farming. in France”, argued Sandy Olivar Calvo, deploring “a cruel lack of ambition on the part of the government”.
For their part, the main agricultural organizations (FNSEA farmers’ union, chambers of agriculture, federation of agricultural cooperatives) regularly emphasize that farms will be fewer and larger in the future: there are fewer and fewer farmers and those who stay or settle down seek to work in groups, in particular to be able to take days off.
“When we refuse to increase the size of farms, we increase the difficulty in renewing” the profession, said recently during a press conference the president of the chambers of agriculture, Sébastien Windsor.
© 2023 AFP
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