La Teste-de-Buch (France) (AFP)

"Good tide!" Exclaims the pilot of a flat boat, overtaking Anne Marquet's at the exit of the oyster port of La Teste-de-Buch (Gironde).

The young woman goes to sea to take care of her oysters, the only ones in the Arcachon basin to be certified "organic".

Usually, the work in the parks is more the business of his companion and partner Nicolas Goderel (the "Go" of Oysters MarGo) but that day he remained ashore, busy at the cabin.

During low water, on a vast sandbank where a forest of long wooden stakes separates the plots, the energetic thirty-something will return, move, unload and load dozens of tight-meshed bags filled with ripening oysters.

"It is not by + bobo attitude +" that MarGo has become organic, assures Anne, hat with pompom on her head and yellow waxed pants.

The culmination of three years of effort, their "organic farming" certification fell in October, in time for the holidays.

It is a label which "speaks to the general public", she acknowledges, but it is also the symbol of a certain "ethics", of a traditional way of doing things that respects the product and the environment which drives the couple. oyster farmers.

The starting point for an organic oyster is first and foremost the quality of the water, explains Anne Marquet.

Then, this oyster cannot be a "triploid", with chromosomes modified in the laboratory to make it sterile, therefore never milky, and which represents 70% of French production according to it.

In addition, with organic, "we have an obligation to follow our product from A to Z, to guarantee traceability to the consumer," she said.

"Our oysters, we all know them a little by their little name, we have seen them born and grow, from the + baby + to the + merchant + ..."

- "Do not eat into the consumer" -

But where the organic allows "to provide spat (baby oyster, note) organic in hatcheries", MarGo goes further with its oysters "100% born at sea" (brand "Ostréiculteurs naturales") and of origin " 100% Bassin d'Arcachon "(" Tradition "label from the Arcachon-Aquitaine Regional Shellfish Committee, CRCAA).

In short, oysters which have never seen a laboratory or other waters than those of the Basin and which do not come from another oyster-growing region or from another Arcachon producer.

"We produced like that before going organic and we did not increase our prices afterwards", assures Anne Marquet, according to whom about fifteen producers in France are organic.

She herself caught the oyster virus while serving in a tasting hut one summer in Cap Ferret and dropped out of art history studies to embark on the oyster farming adventure.

She wants to believe that "the fact of not chomping the consumer, that will end up paying one day", without going into detail "of the practices" of certain colleagues.

"Rare are those who congratulated us", she observes, as if the approach inspired mistrust or the marketing coup.

"But I wish we weren't the only ones."

According to her, the steps are a bit heavy but nothing infeasible.

At the port, the neighboring oyster farmer, Jérôme Laboual, takes a benevolent look at the organic MarGo: "It's in tune with the times", he says.

"Me, what turns me off is the paperwork! But it highlights everyone's work and the quality of our water."

The president of the Regional Committee Thierry Lafon salutes him, "the stubbornness" of Anne Marquet, whom he credits with having demonstrated, by analyzing in detail the maritime charts, that the waters of the Basin were indeed eligible for the label.

If he admits that "culturally, oyster farmers do not have a great appetite for restrictive procedures", the manager hopes that MarGo will "emulate" locally: "The organic certification is tangible proof that goes beyond speech. It is a vector of valorization ".

© 2020 AFP