Each time a video of the L214 association is broadcast, denouncing unworthy animal living conditions in a farm, Julien Denormandie is the first to be arrested.
The images showing this summer of ducks circulating in the middle of the corpses of their congeners in decomposition on a farm in Lichos (Pyrénées-Atlantiques) forced the new Minister of Agriculture, as soon as possible, to pronounce the immediate ban on operate this building.
Between a petition calling for a referendum on animal welfare and a bill demanding heavier penalties for perpetrators of acts of cruelty, Julien Denormandie knows it: the animal condition has become a major social issue.
In recent weeks, it is the increase in horse attacks that worries him the most.
In an interview with Le Parisien, he announces that “justice will be done” against the perpetrators of these crimes and mutilations and that there will be more controls in farms and slaughterhouses.
The welfare of our animal friends seems more and more important in the eyes of society.
Is it complicated for you to manage, Minister of Agriculture?
JULIEN DENORMANDIE.
It is an eminently important question and it is necessary to take into account the evolutions of the company on this subject.
This government is fully mobilized.
But there are also many amalgams
.
For example, there is a tendency to caricature breeders, who are supposed to be against animal welfare.
This is all ridiculous!
Absurd!
Breeders love their animals.
Welfare is also too often confused with animal abuse, which creates confusion.
It is first necessary to fight with total firmness against mistreatment, that is to say the will to harm because it is totally intolerable and moreover severely punished.
In France, more than 100,000 cats and dogs are abandoned each year.
It's a European record!
The recovery plan presented on Thursday plans to help slaughterhouses and farms.
How? 'Or' What ?
I decided to take advantage of the recovery plan to invest 250 million euros: half to modernize farms, the other for slaughterhouses.
In particular, we will support the modernization of territorial slaughterhouses,
extremely important.
Take the Quercy lambs, they only get the protected geographical indication (PGI) because the entire production chain is in the territory, slaughter included.
Newsletter - Most of the news
Every morning, the news seen by Le Parisien
I'm registering
Your email address is collected by Le Parisien to enable you to receive our news and commercial offers.
Learn more
Can we really talk about animal welfare in slaughterhouses?
There is a paradoxical injunction in our country.
In France, we love animals, we love to eat steaks, but we don't like what happens in the meantime.
In return for this financial aid to slaughterhouses, are you asking for more transparency, cameras for example?
Cameras in slaughterhouses have already been tested.
We are going to rely on feedback.
But we have to take the subject from the right end.
The important thing is first to give these slaughterhouses the means to invest.
This is what will lead to better working conditions, more modern facilities and improved animal welfare.
However, today, we ask for more animal welfare, but we do not agree to pay more for our meat.
This inconsistency cannot then rest solely on the breeder who is already sometimes struggling to pay himself a salary.
Everyone has to realize it.
This is why the stimulus plan comes in support.
Can killing directly on the farm be a solution?
Yes, in some cases.
The recovery plan provides for financing very close slaughterhouses.
And in breeding?
We have already made commitments on stopping live castration of piglets and grinding of male chicks before the end of 2021. On this subject, we have created a Franco-German consortium to find alternative solutions.
We continue to move forward.
We see it regularly with the videos of L214, health problems or mistreatment are recurrent in some farms, as recently in a duck farm in Lichos (Pyrénées-Atlantiques) ...
Behavior that does not respect the rules must be condemned.
Besides, my hand did not shake this summer when it was necessary to close this breeding as well as two other farms of the same owner.
But a few specific, unacceptable cases should not cast shame on a profession that does its job well, that I support and that I trust.
My ministry carried out nearly 23,000 checks on farms this year and the vast majority are working perfectly well.
VIDEO. L214: the new shocking images in a duck farm
The farmers denounce the “agri-bashing” of which they are victims and the increasingly numerous intrusions into the heart of their farms.
There are totally unacceptable acts perpetrated by a fringe of people who have become radicalized.
Lately, in Brittany, people returned to a farm and tagged slogans there that I dare not repeat as they are extremely violent (
Editor's note: on the buildings, we could read the inscription "Elevage = nazisme" and “Auschwitz never closed”
).
It is absolutely unbearable and it must be strongly condemned.
We have created a unit called Demeter, at the Ministry of the Interior, which makes it possible in particular to centralize information and coordinate the follow-up to be given to these intrusions.
Do you see the NGO L214 as a useful whistleblower?
By definition, I respect whistleblowers but I would like to point out that we do not enter private property and that within my ministry there are agents authorized to carry out checks.
This debate about the animal condition cannot be based solely on videos, however harsh they are and the emotion they generate.
But obviously, the controls are not sufficient since cases of mistreatment are filmed regularly.
We are working on strengthening inspections on farms.
The meaning of the story is that the State assures this control mission even more strongly.
Numerous cases of mutilated and killed horses have been reported in recent weeks.
What's going on ?
It is an unimaginable situation which goes beyond mistreatment to fall into a form of cruelty, of absolute ignominy.
Today we are talking about more than thirty cases with, sometimes, similarities: an ear cut off, eyes gouged out, genitals cut off… And all this with a certain professionalism, if I dare say so.
It has indeed happened to find a pony empty of blood without there being any drop of blood in the field.
The investigation is taken very seriously and there is a very strong mobilization of the gendarmerie and the police who do not rule out any leads.
Justice will be done.
The report by LREM deputy Loïc Dombreval on cruelty to domestic animals calls for more exemplary sanctions.
It is a very good report.
Every year, we actually see various unnamed facts.
Again this summer, people threw their animals out of their car windows onto the highway.
The law already provides for heavy penalties: up to two years' imprisonment and a fine of 30,000 euros.
That said, it is true that there are sometimes legal loopholes to be filled.
But there is another subject that I consider important to avoid these acts of violence: it is necessary to limit impulse purchases which sometimes lead to abandonment because you did not realize at the time of purchase what it entails. take care of an animal.
But how do you limit these impulse purchases?
We must ban sales methods which obviously only respond to impulse buying.
Is it normal to be able to buy a puppy or a kitten so easily on the Internet?
That a truck stops in a market and sells you a caged pet?
In a pet store, it's very different because you have professionals who advise and enlighten you.
As a result of these animal abandonments, some shelters say they are overwhelmed.
I would like to salute the important work done by these structures.
The French know the SPA very well but they are less familiar with the independent facilities which constitute the vast majority of refuges in France.
Their action is sometimes very complicated: they work 7 days a week, with very little financial means, and do so with great passion and in the service of the population.
If they did not exist, 100,000 stray animals would be on our streets.
This is why, as part of the recovery plan, we have provided for aid of around twenty million euros so that they can invest.
