Lille (AFP)
A few hundred people demonstrated on Saturday in Lille to demand a moratorium on intensive farming, whether of pigs, poultry, cattle or salmon, denouncing their multiplication in the Hauts-de-France region.
Organized by the association for the defense of animals L214 and local associations engaged against projects to create or extend industrial farms, this citizens' march brought together a little less than 300 people depending on the prefecture, without incident.
The Confédération paysanne, the animalist party and even rebellious France were also represented.
The head of the list of the union of the left in the regional elections in Hauts-de-France, the ecologist Karima Delli, participated, accompanied by the MEP Yannick Jadot, in the middle of the signs "let's end the cage farming "," you eat, you endorse "or even" life does not belong to anyone ".
The participants intended to denounce the development of intensive breeding deemed "particularly alarming" in Hauts-de-France.
Among the main projects targeted are a large salmon farm to be set up near Boulogne-sur-Mer and the expansion of a farm near Saint-Omer, the objective of which is to produce more than 800,000 broilers. per year.
"We are asking for a moratorium on intensive breeding so that there is a real reflection on it", explained Sébastien Faureau, president of the Flaner association, engaged against a project of chicken breeding in Steenwerck (North), authorized by the prefecture despite an unfavorable opinion from the investigating commissioner.
"The west of France is saturated with intensive breeding, suddenly there is a form of transfer to Hauts-de-France," said Sébastien Arsac, spokesperson for L214.
In addition to animal abuse and nuisance for local residents, he denounces the "bacteriological or viral bombs that these farms represent" and the "race forward" imposed on breeders by the agrifood industry.
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