a law to limit conflicts relating to noise or odor from farms in the countryside

The bill proposed by Renaissance MP for Morbihan Nicole Le Peih must be definitively voted on in the National Assembly on Monday April 8, 2024.

Protecting farmers and their activities from complaints from local residents: this is the objective of the proposed law aimed at adapting civil liability law to current issues, the final vote of which is on the agenda of the National Assembly on Monday April 8, 2024, after adoption by the Senate on April 3.

By defining the notion of “abnormal neighborhood disturbance”, the text hopes to limit the conflicts which can oppose farmers and their neighbors, such as the case of this chicken breeder in Savoie, served with formal notice at the end of 2023 by a neighbor bothered by the noise of gallinaceous breeding.

In 2022, the case of a cattle breeder from Oise, ordered to pay 100,000 euros to local residents inconvenienced by the noise and odor of the animals, caused many farmers to react, who denounced a phenomenon of agribashing revealing the fantasies of urban dwellers recently settled in the countryside.

The Minister of Justice himself, at the Agricultural Show in 2023, had promised a law to avoid these conflicts for farmers, declaring that “if you don’t like the countryside, you stay in town and if you go to the countryside, you adapt to the countryside that pre-exists”.

A phenomenon difficult to quantify

The bill defines, in fact, what is not an abnormal neighborhood disturbance, on the basis of three cumulative criteria: the activity must predate the arrival of the complainants, continue under the same conditions and comply to the legislation.

If disputes between farmers and local residents ruffle the feathers of the profession and often cause a lot of ink to be spilled, they remain difficult to count. A report published within the framework of the so-called “Mauritius” law, named after this rooster on the island of Oléron considered too noisy, counts between 400 and 500 disputed cases, while admitting that not all of them are linked to rurality. .

Is the text tackling a false problem? This is what certain deputies, unions and researchers argue, who fear that this definition of abnormal neighborhood disturbance will allow intensive agriculture to continue to expand and, with it, its pollution.