“They openly make fun of us”. Laurent Le Berre, president of the Association for the protection of the coast of legends (APPCL), is angry. It must be said that in Landunvez, in Brittany, the local residents are losing their showdown against the breeding called Avel Vor (“wind from the sea” in Breton). The prefect of Finistère announced on Wednesday that he had signed the decree regularizing the extension of a pigsty for 12,000 pigs, yet twice challenged by administrative justice.
“I signed the decree for the extension of this breeding”, declared the prefect Philippe Mahé, confirming information from the daily The Telegram. “This breeding meets the legal conditions for extension”, he underlined.
A local water quality monitoring body
Last Friday, the departmental council for the environment and health and technological risks (Coderst) had given a favorable opinion on the new file submitted by this farm. To respond to the concerns of the inhabitants, the prefect has however announced the establishment of a “local monitoring body” for the quality of water in this territory. “We will put water quality monitoring on the table in complete transparency. If there is pollution, we will look for its origin,” he said. “It is not satisfactory to know that beaches are polluted but no one has been able to say precisely the origin of the pollution”.
Closed beaches, degraded water, air pollution… Opponents denounce the multiple nuisances linked to this breeding, which are added, according to them, to those of neighboring farms, degrading the environment of the municipality. The public inquiry conducted in 2015 had also issued an unfavorable opinion on this extension. But the prefect at the time had nevertheless authorized it in April 2016.
Seized by the opponents, the administrative justice canceled the extension decree in first instance and on appeal, in 2019 and 2021. But the pigsty was then already enlarged, producing 27,000 meat pigs per year in a municipality of barely 1,500 inhabitants, by virtue of a provisional prefectural authorization.
“It’s not normal to regularize from behind”
According to Laurent Le Berre, the associations will now boycott the water quality monitoring body proposed by the prefect, which he described as a “vast joke”. “We are going to ask for the repeal of this new decree which is obviously perfectly illegal,” he added. “Court decisions have fallen, it is not normal to regularize from behind. The associations also intend to file a criminal complaint for “endangering the lives of others”.
In the Pays du Léon, the production of pigs in places exceeds 3,000 pigs per km2. Brittany ranks sixth in Europe for the size of its pig herd.