"Mr. President ..." fifteen renowned scientists and academics, ecologists, public health specialists, economists take up the pen to challenge Emmanuel Macron this Friday.
Their request?
"Develop an exit plan from intensive breeding".
While the world has been shaken for more than a year by Covid-19, a disease that is still unknown in origin, the signatories denounce: "75% of new pathogens come from animals or animal products (such as milk) .
Breeding conditions and deforestation, itself strongly linked to meat production, are today two perfectly identified causes.
"
For their part, the activists of the L214 association, accustomed to shocking images in slaughterhouses and on farms, join this forum with a petition.
They will coordinate demonstrations in the coming days including one in Paris this Saturday and publish a video campaign called "We suffer the consequences but who acts on the causes?
".
Brigitte Gothière, co-founder of this animal rights association, explains: “We want to serve as a megaphone for scientists.
They have the knowledge, but for researchers, specialists in ecosystems, animal or human health, intervening in public space in this way amounts to taking responsibility, but also taking risks in relation to their institutions.
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Solutions on the table
The authors of the letter to Emmanuel Macron are not satisfied with just one observation, they also offer solutions.
For consumers, the basic thing is “eat less meat”.
“I am not vegan and I do not encourage anyone to become one, but the biomass of humans and their domestic mammals represents more than 90% of the biomass of mammals is too much!
»Specifies Serge Morand, ecologist at the CNRS and one of the initiators of the forum.
With their animals in great numbers, with low genetic diversity, factory farms make a fertile ground where viruses can flourish among concentrated animals, very numerous and quite similar genetically.
There are also leads at the level of decision-makers.
“Let's de-globalize our agriculture, it's urgent!
insists Serge Morand.
By taking it out of free trade treaties that circulate animals and diseases.
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A proposal not really to the taste of the FNSEA, the majority agricultural union in France.
"The health issue is too serious for us to turn an agricultural model into a scapegoat," defends Joël Limouzin, elected national and himself a breeder in Vendée.
At the moment, France is struck by a very severe avian flu (H5N8).
The more the virus circulates, the more there is a risk of cocktail with other viral strains and, theoretically, a risk for humans.
In the meantime, the poultry are confined, contact limited.
“I'm not only going to make friends, but sometimes closed breeding also allows better disease control,” adds Joël Limouzin.
In the case of the coronavirus, it is above all "the circulation of humans that has spread the disease across the world", insists the breeder.
Virological cauldron
On the other hand, scientists are wondering about the role of farms, fur animals for example, in the transmission of this disease from bats to humans in China.
What is certain is that in November, the giant mink farms formed a virological cauldron in which a mutant coronavirus developed that had infected employees.
Sixteen million of these carnivores had been slaughtered preventively.
“In Europe, regulations and sentinel systems are increasingly effective,” insists Jean-Luc Angot, president of the French Veterinary Academy.
These issues must be addressed at the international level to avoid global pandemics.
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In addition, all agree to fight against deforestation which brings farms closer to wild species.
Without this, the latest report from IPBES, an intergovernmental scientific and political platform on biodiversity and ecosystem services, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), warned: “There will be more pandemics, more frequent and more deadly.
"The FNSEA calls for" a plant protein plan "able to encourage the cultivation of field beans in France to feed livestock and thus replace Brazilian soybeans from deforested soil.