The desire to expand the pork industry in Estrie, Mauritius, Témiscamingue and elsewhere in Quebec raises important ethical questions. On the one hand, the Legault government calls for support for our local agriculture and, through its Plan for Sustainable Agriculture 2020-2030, wants to promote agriculture that cares about the environment and people, which would contribute to food security and sovereignty. Quebecers. At the same time, new construction sites for mega pig farms are being set up despite the significant ecological, social and health impacts of such industrial installations, as has been demonstrated by research and experience, and as has been denounced by citizen mobilizations.
The situation has not really changed since the publication in 2007 of the collective work Pigsties! Untimely pig farming in Quebec (Éditions Écosociété), where we reported the results of our investigation into the issue and gathered the voices of various specialists and protagonists. Fifteen years ago, the book sought to feed the reflection on the future of an agriculture concerned with the interests of all, and not only of a handful of agricultural producers engaged in intensive breeding – or caught in the gears of such a mode of production.
We would like to emphasize here an important aspect of the ongoing debate: that of the conditions of cohabitation and social acceptability — the absence of which is unduly interpreted as selfish intolerance on the part of non-agricultural citizens living in rural areas.
Find a better life
In the wake of containment measures, many Quebecers have chosen to leave their urban environment and migrate to agricultural regions to find better living there. They thus join the cohorts of neo-rural populations that have contributed to revitalizing village environments in Quebec. Increasingly, these citizens are aware of environmental issues. If they value the agricultural activity near which they choose to live, they are also aware of the impacts of an agriculture that does not respect global health, that of soils, animals, plants and humans.
It is no longer possible to go back. Agricultural producers must take into account the diversification of the rural population and a now irreversible cultural shift towards agroecology.
In 2007, the book Pigsties! approached this cultural dimension of the problem. We observed that the economic interests of agricultural promoters minimized the social and environmental realities of the territories. Legislative provisions guaranteeing farmers the right to produce were the pretext for ignoring community expectations. We have documented the dynamics of the conflicts.
After many prevarications and other strategies of denial of the facts, the pork industry finally adopted a Social Responsibility Approach in 2014. Despite certain advances, this does not really take into account the question of cohabitation social.
Citizens — old and newcomers to rural areas — are increasingly aware of the need to promote an ethic of living together. They rightly denounce the bullshit of the piggery projects which are announced at 3,996 or 3,999 pigs per building of a livestock park to avoid public hearings on the environment, held for one of the purposes of reassuring that the expanding farms will not be to the detriment of the majority of residents of the territory.
Unethical
How can we explain that large agricultural companies, considered as our flagships, have such a lack of ethical business sense and divert the meaning of “sustainable agriculture” to their profits?
How is it that fifteen years after the conflicts that upset many lives of rural people and farmers, the Government of Quebec and elected officials, both provincial and municipal, continue to consider that agriculture must develop according to a model industrial business, which is disconnected from ecological and social realities. Without social acceptability, linked to a rigorous consideration of the socio-environmental impacts of its farming method, the pork industry discredits the efforts of other sectors that are attempting to shift towards a socially responsible and environmentally friendly agriculture.
How can our ministers responsible for thinking about the future of Quebec stick to rules and standards that make no sense in the face of the challenges that Quebec society is already facing and will have to meet in the next decade—including those related to climate, biodiversity, water, food sovereignty?
Just as the pork industry must demonstrate that it has a real desire to assume its social responsibilities, our elected officials must demonstrate a sense of ethics superior to that which underlies the current shenanigans against the common good. .