Illustration of a pig farm in Brittany.

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S. Salom Gomis / Sipa

  • Breeders from Saint-Gildas-des-Bois are planning to expand their operation to accommodate double the number of pigs they currently have.

  • A demonstration is planned this Saturday after a petition collected more than 2,500 signatures.

In their words, it will be a “factory farm” close to these “concentration camps, which have already caused many pandemics in recent years”.

This Saturday morning, opponents of the project to extend a pig farm in Saint-Gildas-des-Bois (Loire-Atlantique) have planned to demonstrate in front of the town hall of the town of 3,700 inhabitants.

In their sights, the five breeders of Gaec du Pas de la Roche, supported by the important Breton agricultural cooperative Cooperl, who wish to expand their installation.

According to the file presented to the prefecture, the number of these animals, in addition to the 135 dairy cows present, would drop from 1,504 currently to 2,993.

“Quite the opposite of what to do”, for the opponents, supported by France Insoumise, who plead for the return

"Farms on a human scale".

These residents fear “spraying”, “odors”, “truck traffic”, “pollution of Brivet and wetlands”, but also “living conditions and unbearable suffering for animals and for slave farmers. agribusiness, ”they write in a petition signed by more than 2,500 people to date.

Keep animals on site

As for the promoters of the project, which will require the destruction of dilapidated buildings to build a much larger one, the reading is obviously different.

Recalling that “male pigs have not been castrated since 2013 and pregnant sows have been raised in freedom, on straw since 1995”, the breeders assure that this extension will above all improve their well-being: unlike today, they will no longer be sent to other sites to be fattened, "which will limit transfers by truck (environmental, economic and health gains)".

"The number of sows is and will remain at 250 sows, that is to say a herd in the average for French farms", specifies the Cooperl, which also wants to reassure on the environmental aspect.

For example, it is already planned that part of the excreta will feed the cooperative's methanization unit in Lamballe, for the equivalent of the annual heating of around twenty homes.

Blame it on the "dominant agricultural model"

So many questions that will still be widely discussed in Saint-Gildas-des-Bois, since the public consultation on the project will be relaunched from mid-March, after a lack of display in town hall.

In the meantime, in a press release entitled “Understanding before opposing”, the Peasant Confederation comes to the aid of the incriminated breeders.

"Beware of too hasty judgments," writes the union.

The size of the workshop may indeed appear substantial and does not correspond to the agricultural model promoted by the Confédération Paysanne.

However, farmers are not responsible for the dominant agricultural model into which public policies have led them.

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  • Breeding

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  • Nantes

  • Pork

  • Agriculture

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