Free-range poultry farmers must shelter their poultry to protect their breeding from avian influenza. This is a government decree applied since November 2021. Today, the small breeders of Nîmes organized a symbolic operation to denounce the decree.
For this new wave of bird flu, the first French outbreak was detected on November 26, 2021 in a farm in northern France.
Since that date, a government decree recommends the confinement of poultry farms in France.
The purpose of the protective measure is to protect poultry from potential contamination with avian influenza. However, breeders point to a bad measurement for their animals, which have a vital need for fresh air.
Christine Rivière has been settled since 2018 with her hens in the Nîmes countryside, in Cardet. As a certified organic breeder, she decided not to respect the government’s preventive measures… by leaving her hens in the open air.
For her, putting hens in a cage is not adapting to peasant agriculture: “Last year I locked them up and I had a lot of problems: a lot of mortality, loss of eggs. I have a very small breeding, if I lose hens it’s dramatic.“
Like Christine Rivière, many free-range poultry farmers have decided not to apply the government decree. With an omelette in the middle of the street, they want to raise public awareness. For them, it is impossible to meet the requirements of the labels “raised in the open air” with confinement. They refuse to lie to consumers.
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We think that the problem is structural in France, with a lot of transport, segmentation and too high a density of factory farming in the West, for example.
Paul Ferté, spokesperson for the Confédération Paysanne
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Free-range poultry farmers who do not respect confinement risk administrative closure and the slaughter of their breeding. France now has 1,244 outbreaks of avian influenza, for the moment none in the Gard.
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