Livestock: Fesneau pays the Court of Auditors after his proposal to reduce the cattle herd

By recommending, in a report published Monday, "a significant reduction in the herd" of cattle for ecological reasons, the Court of Auditors angered breeders. But also from the Minister of Agriculture himself, who flew to the aid of these professionals. In a long tweet published Tuesday evening, Marc Fesneau sharply criticized the conclusions of the Elders, without ever explicitly mentioning the institution. “We can never move forward by stigmatizing and giving the only perspective to an entire profession, popular condemnation and disappearance. And no one can accept that,” writes Minister MoDem.

He also castigates the supposed “discourse on forced degrowth, carried as public policy”. This one “is curious, not to say out of reality, when we know that France is not self-sufficient for any animal sector, he points out. Does this mean that some would assume to see our imports increased, our food sovereignty reduced in favor of forms of agriculture that we do not want? Does that mean we leave it up to others to feed us?”

And the Minister to defend the efforts made by breeders in terms of environmental protection. "Have we in the same movement forgotten the environmental services provided by livestock farming?", He asks, listing several arguments. "That for one hectare of permanent grassland, 110 kilos of CO2 are absorbed each year, that livestock production produces the organic fertilizers necessary for organic farming, and that many livestock farms have renewable energy production" , he insists.

A way also to respond to right-wing and far-right opposition, many elected officials have attacked the report of the Court of Auditors. Like the deputy LR Xavier Breton, who questioned Elisabeth Borne in the Assembly during questions to the government on Tuesday. “Why so much relentlessness against the livestock sector?, Lamented the elected official of Ain. But what is the Court of Auditors involved in? Their role is not to dictate to the French their mode of feeding or to prescribe the size of our farms.

Xavier Breton had also criticized the alleged lack of executive support for animal husbandry, in particular Bruno Le Maire during his recent inauguration of a plant-based meat factory in Loiret. “On this occasion, he openly promoted vegetable proteins while seeking to disqualify animal proteins,” he pointed out. In his viewfinder in particular, a tweet from the Minister of the Economy: "Did you know? 100g of vegetable protein generates 60 to 90% less greenhouse gas than 100g of animal protein, “wrote the boss of Bercy the day of his visit to the new site of the Happyvore group.

In the absence of Marc Fesneau and Bruno Le Maire, the Minister of Industry, Roland Lescure, spoke on Tuesday in the hemicycle to affirm that the two ministers supported "the livestock sector and agriculture French as a whole. “This government supports French breeding. This majority passed two laws to support French agriculture: Egalim 1 and Egalim 2,” he said. In his tweet published on Tuesday evening, Marc Fesneau also tried to defuse Bruno Le Maire's comments on vegetable proteins. "We are not obliged to choose by injunction between plant and animal", he underlined.