Greenpeace sounds the alarm on the “mega-farms” in France. Non-governmental organization Greenpeace releases this Wednesday June 24 a new report on factory farming. Therefore, the association demands the Ministry of the Ecologic Transition to update its data they are based on.
In concrete words, factory farms are characterized the same way for the NGO: they are farming exploitations subject to authorization for installation classified for the protection of the environment (ICPE). It is an administrative regime applied to all exploitations presenting over 750 places for sows, 40,000 for poultries, and over 400 for milk cows.
According to Greenpeace, as of today, there are 3,300 exploitations of this kind in France. Last year, the NGO reported 4,400 similar farms. It says in its reports that “Brittany gathers about half of these classified installations”, or that the Pays de la Loire includes 20% of the ICEP. And it is the poultry sector that is the most represented.
Furthermore, the NGO thinks the data do not represent the reality and the real number of factory farms is much bigger. At the origin of this report: softening of the rules as for these famous “mega-farms”, with threshold subject to reviewed authorizations, moving from 450 to 2,000 places, especially for pork farming. Then, these measures enabled 10,000 exploitations have been brough under the recording jurisdiction, Greenpeace says.
By the way, Greenpeace demands public authorities to “reinforce human and financial means for inspections services”, and to impose a moratorium on the licensing policies. This is a prerequisite in order to “think over our mays of production” the organization says.
