French farmers block motorways and burn tyres to protest the culling of entire herds over a single case of lumpy skin disease.
MONT-DE-MARSAN: Farmers in southwest France blocked roads and set fire to hay bales on Saturday to protest the government’s culling of cattle over a skin disease outbreak.
The protests target the official response to an outbreak of lumpy skin disease, a non-transmissible but potentially fatal cattle illness.
On Friday, veterinarians culled a herd of over 200 cows in Les Bordes-sur-Arize after finding a single case, requiring police to escort the team past angry farmers.
Several unions have called the approach ineffective, demanding “blockades across France to put an end to this madness”.
Dozens of tractors blocked traffic and public buildings, with farmers burning straw bales and tyres.
Nearly 150 kilometres of the A64 motorway between Bayonne and Tarbes were closed due to blockades that began late Friday.
“It’s the extermination of cows and farmers,” said Leon Thierry of the hard-line farmers’ union Coordination Rurale, protesting in Briscous.
“It is out of the question that in the Pyrenees we should slaughter animals that are not sick, that are healthy,” he added.
Around 70 farmers sounded horns and set off firecrackers in front of the agriculture minister’s former office in Pontarlier.
They hung a dead calf from a tree with a sign reading “Our Animals, Our Life”.
Lumpy skin disease first appeared in France in June, prompting a strategy to cull all animals in affected herds.
The policy also includes the “emergency vaccination” of all cattle within a 50-kilometre radius of an outbreak.
Agriculture Minister Annie Genevard said Saturday the government planned to vaccinate one million head of cattle in the Nouvelle-Aquitaine and Occitanie regions.
“In the coming weeks, we will vaccinate nearly one million animals, thereby protecting farmers,” she told Ici Occitanie radio.
Those vaccinations would be in addition to the million head of cattle already vaccinated since July, the ministry said.
The culls have divided agricultural unions, with Coordination Rurale and Confederation Paysanne opposing them and calling for widespread vaccination.
The leading FNSEA farming union supports the total culling of affected herds. – AFP
