“I once cried in my stable.
» Pascal Maris, 34 years old, breeder based in Ladignac-le-Long, in Haute-Vienne, has been through all the states.
The shock when he learned that his herd was affected by bovine tuberculosis.
Anger when he was told that his 300 animals had to be slaughtered.
And a joy tinged with bitterness when the prefect himself announced to him that the Périgueux laboratory which carried out the analyzes… had finally made a mistake.
Today, the breeder is struggling to recover from this story, which began with a blood test on his cattle in mid-December.
“During testing, seven animals were suspected of having tuberculosis and were put down.
Analyzes were subsequently carried out in the laboratory on the lymph nodes taken from the carcasses.
They came out positive for two animals.
Everything then came together.
»
“The image damage, the moral damage, the expenses incurred, it’s heavy…”
The farmer is forced to throw away 80,000 liters of milk.
He invested 25,000 euros to acquire a pasteurizer and a tank allowing him to collect milk from another farm.
“I was told that the whole herd had to be culled.
No one was there to support me.
The veterinary services just advised me to go see a bank,” laments the breeder.
But on January 17, the prefect himself called him.
“For a month, I had been under stress, I was constantly thinking about my fifteen employees.
And there, he told me that there was an error, a cross-contamination in the Périgueux laboratory.
The next day, the prefect was at my house early in the morning
.
» The state representative apologized in person and raised the possibility of amicable compensation.
But if it is unsuccessful, legal action is not ruled out by the breeder, stunned by this banal laboratory error.
“The image damage, the moral damage, the expenses incurred, it's heavy... We get up every morning at 5:30 a.m. for trafficking.
So, when you have to open a tap to let thousands of liters of milk flow onto the floor, imagine what it feels like..."