Are there really 20 million animals raised in France each year for hunting? This is the estimate put forward by Yannick Jadot, environmental candidate for the presidential election, during a live broadcast on the Instagram pages of 20 minutes and TF1 on Friday. “You know that in France every year 20 million animals are raised to shoot them as soon as they come out of the cages?, he launched. It’s the pheasants that you see in the wild, they almost eat out of your hand because they were raised by the hand of man. We cannot organize this suffering. »
MEP EELV also spoke out for a reduction in shooting, wanting to ban it on weekends and during school holidays. The ecologist is also campaigning to ban hunting with hounds and the hunting of protected species.
Where does this estimate of 20 million he gave on Wednesday come from? Yannick Jadot’s team specifies to 20 minutes that the candidate relied on a figure which “comes from the national union of producers of hunting game which is taken up by
the media and associations working on animal welfare (ASPAS, L214, etc.).
An estimate dating from at least 2013, currently being updated
This estimate was indeed given by the National Union of Game Producers (SNPGC), but it goes back at least 2013. This figure of 20 million then included several species according to the union: 14 million pheasants, 5 million gray and red partridges, one million mallard ducks, 40,000 hares from France, 100,000 wild rabbits, 10,000 deer and 7,000 fallow deer. These animals were intended to be released into the wild in France.
Eight years after their publication, Jean-Christophe Chastang, the president of the syndicate, himself a breeder and also president of Interprochasse, an interprofession bringing together professionals to “ensure the promotion of hunting game to the general public”, is gaining away from these numbers. He explains to 20 minutes that an investigation is underway to update them. According to the first results, it would now be “10 to 15 million birds”, which would be bred in France, he says.
Animals not all intended to be immediately hunted, defends Jean-Christophe Chastang
Jean-Christophe Chastang also disagrees with the fact that animals released into the wild would come out of “cages”, as Yannick Jadot explained. “The game is not raised in cages at all, quite the contrary,” he says. These are animals that are intended to be returned to nature. For this, we need to have animals that are extremely capable of adapting to territories. These are animals that live most of their production cycle in large areas, with large aviaries, with rich and varied biotopes. »
Pheasants a few weeks old are well placed in aviaries “of variable surface area”, noted in 2018 the association for the protection of wild animals (ASPAS), which campaigns for the prohibition of game farms for hunting. The SNGPC
request thus 3m² per animal. On the other hand, some birds are placed in outdoor cages, called laying pens, for the breeding process, ASPAS also noted. However, “the vast majority of breeders do not practice breeding and buy day-old chicks from large farms”, specified this association.
Once bred, are these animals released to be immediately hunted, as the environmentalist presidential candidate explained? Again, Jean-Christophe Chastang denies it, recalling that animals are put in the wild at different times of the year, in spring for reproduction, in summer for repopulation and finally during the hunting season to be hunted. “The game is not at all entirely taken [le prélèvement est l’acte de chasse], he adds. There is no precise, exact figure, but the levies fluctuate between 40 and 60% [des animaux mis dans la nature], which means that we have between 60 and 40% of animals that remain on the territory. »
A survey carried out in 2013-2014 by the National Office for Hunting and Wildlife, which has since been incorporated into the French Office for Biodiversity – which did not respond to our requests for this article –, estimated to about three million the number of common pheasants hunted. The Office then noted that “most of this sampling is carried out on farmed birds”.
What happens to the other animals that are not hunted? According to Aspas, many “do not survive in the wild, at least until they can reproduce there in the spring following their release. Blame it on the predators?