Nearly 1,400 tonnes of wheat were rendered unusable after the action on Saturday of activists from the Collective “Brittany against factory farms”. An operation that sparked outrage in a context of global shortages.
The Lorient public prosecutor’s office announced on Monday that it had opened an investigation, in particular for damage to private property, after an action by demonstrators on Saturday who dumped nearly 1,400 tonnes of wheat for damage of around two million euros.
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Around 9:30 a.m. near Saint-Gérand (Morbihan), a freight train of 22 wagons transporting soft wheat, which came from Beauce and intended for the manufacture of animal feed, “was deliberately blocked, near a level crossing serving an agri-food factory“, indicates the prosecutor of the Republic of Lorient Stéphane Kellenberger in a press release.
“About 50 demonstrators, dressed in overalls, including several masked, climbed a wall of cinder blocks across the railway track, before trying to enter the locomotive. They then opened the valves of the container wagons and thus poured tons of wheat onto the tracks, while the perpetrators fled.“, Continues the prosecution.
Offense of obstructing the movement of a train and damage to private property
In total, 1390 tons of wheat were made unsuitable for any destination, “unacceptable situation at a time of major international tensions, when shortages are increasing around the world“, according to the same source. The investigation was entrusted by the Lorient public prosecutor’s office to the Research Brigade (BR) of the departmental gendarmerie of Pontivy, under the criminal qualifications of obstruction to the starting or circulation of a train, damage to private property , entering the enclosure of a railway or by an exit not assigned to this use.
About fifty activists, gathered at the call of the Collective “Brittany against factory farms“, had blocked this train, thinking of intercepting a cargo of soybeans, they explained. “The above-ground system is going straight into the wall, we have to put agribusiness down“, they say in a press release. This action aroused numerous condemnations including those of the Minister of Agriculture Julien Denormandie, of the FRSEA or of the environmentalist presidential candidate Yannick Jadot.