"
Several complaints
" were filed after the blocking on Saturday March 19 of a train carrying cereals intended for the manufacture of animal feed and the dumping on the tracks of part of the cargo, near Pontivy, by about fifty demonstrators opposed to industrial agriculture, the prefecture of Morbihan said on Sunday.
"It will be up to the judicial authorities to provide the appropriate responses and to characterize the criminal offense of these acts
," the prefecture said in a statement.
This act of food waste is scandalous at a time when France must consolidate its food production capacity in a difficult international context.
»
"
The attack on this train generated the loss of a significant tonnage of wheat and heavy financial damage
", specifies the prefecture, which "
condemns this act in the strongest terms
".
Fifty activists
About fifty activists, gathered at the call of the Collective "
Brittany against factory farms
", blocked Saturday morning, in Noyal-Pontivy (Morbihan), a freight train intended for a nearby cattle feed factory, belonging to Sanders, a subsidiary of the Avril group.
The activists thought they were intercepting a shipment of soybeans, they explained, when it was wheat.
These activists built a cinder block wall across the railroad tracks to symbolize “
a wall across the tracks of agribusiness.
The above-ground farming system is going straight into the wall, we have to put agribusiness down
,” they said in a statement.
“Inadmissible”, “irresponsible”
This action elicited many reactions.
Late Saturday evening, the Minister of Agriculture, Julien Denormandie, tweeted: “
Simply inadmissible!
But also totally irresponsible: destroying cereal production when many countries are short of it at the moment… It's distressing.
Justice must pass
”.
A little earlier in the evening, the Regional Federation of Farmers' Unions (FRSEA), the Regional Chamber of Agriculture as well as Crédit Agricole and Groupama in particular, had denounced "
a scandalous action on the part of activists disconnected from reality and acting against the general interest
", by calling for "
a reaction from the State to put an end to acts of all forms calling into question our agriculture
".
