This farmer was not fined for lack of certification

Bernay's gendarmerie brigade mobilized during confinement in spring 2020. -

• A photograph posted on Facebook suggests that a farmer was checked and fined for lack of a travel certificate while exercising his professional activity on his tractor. 

• This snapshot actually dates from April 2014 and was published in

  Le Journal d'Abbeville,

  a Picardy weekly. 

• It illustrates a vast control and prevention operation initiated by the motorized brigade of the Abbeville gendarmerie.

A farmer

was he fined in full confinement for lack of derogatory travel certificate, as suggested by several viral publications on social networks?

One image, shared at least 5,000 times on Facebook, shows a farmer being checked by a gendarme on a country road.

The control was then quickly attributed to a verification of travel attestation.

On these Facebook posts, Internet users are protesting at the idea that farmers can be fined while they work.

- Tom Hollmann

Even as France is confining itself to limit the spread of Covid-19, many Internet users have thus protested, like the author of one of the publications, of a "disrespectful

for those who work to feed the population ”.

In reality, it is not.

FAKE OFF

A first clue allows us to doubt this photograph: the gendarme, in exercise, does not wear a mask to carry out the control.

However, let us recall that from last August 24, the wearing of the mask became obligatory for all the corps of the gendarmerie, "civil or military, in the offices or on the ground", as recalled the specialized newspaper 

.

A reverse image search then makes it possible to find the origin of the photograph.

The latter actually dates from April 9, 2014 and was published by 

a weekly newspaper published in the Somme.

That day, “on the initiative of the motorized brigade of the Abbeville gendarmerie, a vast control and prevention operation was carried out […] on the scale of the Abbeville district, involving motorcyclists and territorial gendarmes ”, details the article.

73 agricultural machines were then checked "in order to verify that the safety instructions were respected and to proceed with cautionary reminders", writes

, which specifies that nine violations were noted during the control operation .

"The vast majority of people checked have been receptive to advice," concludes the journalist.

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