This is a social subject that is increasingly present among consumers. Animal welfare is even for more than two thirds of French people an electoral campaign theme, according to a recent Ifop poll. In the countryside, awareness is old. As in the farm of Arnaud Leclercq in Dolignon, in the north of Aisne, not very far from the Ardennes. The breeder operates 200 hectares in polyculture and he has 80 Charolais cows, bred for the quality of their meat. “We are down to 80 mothersexplains the breeder. We ‘de-intensified’ to do it better and not to run after the volume. OWe even live better because we have a lot less overhead and we have better control of our product.”
Less but better, it goes through comfortable facilities. A large barn (we say a free stall) of 2,400 m². For 80 animals, there is room and there is even music. “It’s very common in ‘Happy’ farms to have the radio set working all the timeindicates Arnaud Leclercq. There are studies that have proven the interest in the welfare of cattle.”
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This so-called “Happy” approach aims to improve animal welfare. More than 200 control points are examined by veterinarian Pierre Kirsch, starting with the way the cattle feed: “The number of drinking troughs available, the flow rate of the drinking troughs, the cleanliness. We go so far as to ask the breeder if he agrees to drink the water from one of his animals’ drinking troughs.”
And that’s not all, the living environment counts for a lot. “Obviously you need a very good clean, dry, supple and soft beddingdetails thee veterinarian. We see that in this farm, we are on a very thick bed of straw. There is the knee test to assess it where one has to drop down three or four times and feel no pain. Knowing that a cow will do this movement 10 to 15 times a day.”
A well-being which must concern everyone, animal as breeder, estimates the owner of the places. “The cows, they have to be ‘bénaise’, that is to say very comfortable or very happyexplains Arnaud Leclercq. We need to have healthy and happy animals for us to do well in our profession. The peasant who no longer feels useful to his neighbour, I don’t know how he manages to go to sleep at night.”
A happy breeder is what the “Happy” approach advocates. The problem, so to speak, is that only 300 farms are now labeled out of 50,000 in France. There is still a long way to go. The meat interprofessional, Interbev, is well aware of this. Three years ago, it launched its own animal welfare approach called Boviwell, which is less selective since there are only around fifty criteria to be met. About 1,500 farms have entered the process so far and the objective of the label is to reach 50,000 farms by 2025. But it is not the only one, explains Bruno Dufayet, the president of the commission. societal issues at Interbev: “At the agricultural show, a butcher-breeder commitment will be presented because the butcher must account to his customer when he comes to buy his steak, in a certain way. It’s not just the quality of the product, it is also the breeding conditions.”
The approach is actually more comprehensive. Everyone must get involved, at all levels and we are far from it today. For example, there is animal welfare labelling. But it is a private initiative, launched in 2019 by major supermarket chains and poultry farms. This is a label on chicken trays that rates animal welfare from A to E. The approach is gaining ground today, pork and eggs will join it in 2022.
The other types of breeding should follow but this initiative remains voluntary. As always, only the good students are therefore in, regrets Louis Schweitzer, the president of the association Etiquette bien-être animal: “Some are reserved about anything that can establish a distinction between breeders, but it’s true that in all areas, there is a first-price product where the conditions are less satisfactory and there are products that better respect the well-being to be animal.”
“The breeder has to accept that there is a classification like in other fields and that not everyone can have the highest mark.”
Louis Schweitzer, President of the Animal Welfare Label Associationat franceinfo
Only the Ministry of Agriculture could therefore make this classification compulsory, but animal welfare is not on the agenda. There is indeed a law on animal abuse, adopted in November 2021. Today, the subject, it is said in the minister’s entourage, is the move upmarket. “A transition cannot be decreed, it is accompanied” and this is accompanied financially of course.