Farmers in France have taken to the streets to protest a ‘total slaughter’ cull of cows.
The slaughter of entire herds of cattle to combat a disease outbreak has sparked widespread protests and a farmers’ revolt amid comparisons to draconian Covid measures.
The Telegraph reports: After two nights of clashes, taunts and tear gas, a group of veterinarians finally step off an armoured police vehicle in Ariège, walking the last few metres on foot, past burning tyres and mobile phones filming their every move.
Their task is to euthanise cattle, hundreds at a time, to stop a contagious disease engulfing southern France.
Yet, for many farmers the vets are the sharp end of an overzealous tool of “total slaughter” reminiscent of Covid-era regulatory overkill, and they are prepared to take extreme action to stop it.
“We have experienced health crises before, but such an outburst of hatred is unprecedented,” says Matthieu Mourou, Vice-President of France’s national veterinary order. “Intervening under police escort, with hundreds of angry people waiting, is something we have never experienced at this level.”
Online abuse has escalated. Some vets are being told: “Keep going like this and we’ll put your heads on pikes.”
The stand-off has left Emmanuel Macron, France’s already embattled President, and Sébastien Lecornu, his ‘soldier monk’ Prime Minister, scrambling to avert a Christmas of discontent.
The protests have grown increasingly radical.
Near the A63 motorway in Ariège, farmers dismantled a speed camera that they said was “blocking tractors” and dumped it onto a bonfire, footage shared widely online showed.
Elsewhere, manure has been hurled at prefectures, slurry sprayed on state buildings and tyres set alight beneath motorway bridges, as tractors tore up barriers and turned infrastructure itself into a weapon of protest.
At the heart of the unrest is lumpy skin disease (LSD), a highly infectious viral disease affecting cattle. It is harmless to humans, but devastating for herds.
Since June, 113 outbreaks have been recorded nationwide, spreading from east to south-west France.
In response, the authorities have imposed a strict eradication strategy: the systematic culling of infected herds, bans on livestock movements and emergency vaccination within a 50km (30-mile) radius.
Veterinary experts insist the disease is too virulent to rely solely on vaccination. But for many farmers, the policy of wiping out entire herds for a single confirmed case has become unbearable.
After two nights of clashes, taunts and tear gas, a group of veterinarians finally step off an armoured police vehicle in Ariège, walking the last few metres on foot, past burning tyres and mobile phones filming their every move.
Their task is to euthanise cattle, hundreds at a time, to stop a contagious disease engulfing southern France.
Yet, for many farmers the vets are the sharp end of an overzealous tool of “total slaughter” reminiscent of Covid-era regulatory overkill, and they are prepared to take extreme action to stop it.
“We have experienced health crises before, but such an outburst of hatred is unprecedented,” says Matthieu Mourou, vice-president of France’s national veterinary order. “Intervening under police escort, with hundreds of angry people waiting, is something we have never experienced at this level.”
Online abuse has escalated. Some vets are being told: “Keep going like this and we’ll put your heads on pikes.”
The stand-off has left Emmanuel Macron, France’s already embattled president, and Sébastien Lecornu, his “soldier monk” prime minister, scrambling to avert a Christmas of discontent.
The protests have grown increasingly radical.
Near the A63 motorway in Ariège, farmers dismantled a speed camera that they said was “blocking tractors” and dumped it onto a bonfire, footage shared widely online showed.
Elsewhere, manure has been hurled at prefectures, slurry sprayed on state buildings and tyres set alight beneath motorway bridges, as tractors tore up barriers and turned infrastructure itself into a weapon of protest.
At the heart of the unrest is lumpy skin disease (LSD), a highly infectious viral disease affecting cattle. It is harmless to humans, but devastating for herds.
Since June, 113 outbreaks have been recorded nationwide, spreading from east to south-west France.
In response, the authorities have imposed a strict eradication strategy: the systematic culling of infected herds, bans on livestock movements and emergency vaccination within a 50km (30-mile) radius.
Veterinary experts insist the disease is too virulent to rely solely on vaccination. But for many farmers, the policy of wiping out entire herds for a single confirmed case has become unbearable.
For many, the fury is deeply personal. “The cows have names, they have their character, their history,” said Sarah Dumigron, a breeder in Gironde.
“I’ve cared for them at night, I work seven days a week with them. I’ll fight to the end for my cows.”
In Ariège, Florian Sabria said he had stopped sleeping. “If they slaughter our herd, we won’t start again. It’s the work of a lifetime – the genetics, the work of our parents and grandparents.”
Confédération paysanne, the Left-wing union, has branded the eradication policy “more frightening than the illness itself”, urging an end to the culls and calling for blockades “to put an end to this madness”.
On Monday, the revolt spread beyond farmers themselves.
More than 200 mayors and local elected officials gathered outside the prefecture in Foix, in the Ariège, calling on the state to “urgently listen” and reopen dialogue with farmers, and demanding a rethink of the total culling protocol in favour of more targeted slaughter of infected animals.
Last week, Annie Genevard, the French agriculture minister, insisted she had no alternative.
“To save the entire industry, slaughter is the only solution,” she told Le Parisien.
She has repeatedly framed the strategy around three non-negotiable pillars – “depopulation, vaccination and movement restrictions” – arguing that this is what “science and veterinarians” recommend, and what “foreign countries have applied”.