“I’m not talking to you about the noise and the smell…” Could Jacques Chirac’s controversial outing have a second life, in the mouths of local residents whose senses are indisposed by the scents of the countryside? In Saint-Aubin-en-Bray, in the Oise, we hold our breath: not only because of the smell of cow farts, but also because a legal battle for ten years has pitted Vincent Verschuere, cattle breeder from 33 years old, to the other inhabitants. At the heart of the conflict, a shed that the farmer had built in 2010 on his farm, in the center of the village.
The breeder invested 600,000 euros to build this 2,800m² shed, which notably houses a stall. For this, he obtained a prefectural derogation, the first inhabitants being within 100 m. But residents complaining of olfactory and noise pollution took the case to court and obtained the cancellation of his building permit in 2013, then in 2018 his conviction for “abnormal neighborhood disturbances”. In March, the Court of Appeal of Amiens upheld the judgment pronounced by the court of Beauvais, recognizing the olfactory and sound nuisances of the building.
The cow fart and the daffodil
“This decision did not take into account the new law aimed at defining and protecting the sensory heritage of the French countryside, promulgated on January 29, 2021”, pleads the breeder’s lawyer, Timothée Dufour, who intends to rely on this law in cassation. A bit like city dwellers who come to complain about the bells of their holiday village, wanting to prevent cows from farting would not make much sense in the countryside. The lawyer also believes that “there has not been enough contradictory expertise, because the difficulty of this file is its subjective aspect: when can we say that a smell is harmful or not? “.
The question is difficult to decide, especially since the limit of what is bearable varies from one individual to another. And from one era to another, as shown the historian Alain Corbin in Miasma and Daffodil. The procedure is therefore scrutinized by the agricultural world, which fears that the decisions will set a milestone and case law in conflicts between local residents and farmers. “We must do everything so that there is no Verschuere case law, that’s why I want to fight until the end”, explains the breeder. “In the Oise, one in two farms has obtained a distance exemption to build near homes, they are all potentially threatened by lawsuits from local residents who do not like the smell or noise of our animals, often neo-rurals “, he adds.
Vincent Verschuere assures that the damages have been paid to the complaining residents, “106,000 euros in total”. For this, he took out a seven-year bank loan and benefited from aid of 40,000 euros from the Hauts-de-France region, without which he would have had to “go out of business”. The breeder has until November 30 to propose technical solutions for the insulation of his shed to the Beauvais court. His lawyer will request the suspension of this work obligation. Even with a favorable decision, Vincent Verschuere may not have finished farting from his cows. Because in New Zealand, the latter are taxed, and the idea could make its way to Europe…