A-Infos (en) France, OCL CA #360 - Dermatosis is the pustule that hides a deep crisis in the agricultural world. (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

Yannick Ogor is a livestock farmer and market gardener in Brittany. He 
was a member of the Confédération Paysanne (Peasant Confederation) and 
later left the organization. He has been involved in groups that fought 
against the microchipping of animals and against the administrative 
regulations that stifle farmers. He is the author of the book "Le paysan 
impossible" (The Impossible Farmer), in which he recounts the struggles 
of the agricultural world in France over the past sixty years, their 
attempts, and their dead ends. In a new publication, Yannick Ogor 
revisits the death of Jérôme Laronze, a livestock farmer in 
Saône-et-Loire, crushed by the agricultural administration and shot dead 
by police officers. Here is a transcript of some questions asked of 
Yannick [1].

In these times of pandemics in intensive livestock farming, how can we 
confront a system that claims to "protect populations" by eliminating 
farmers?

Non-cow disease (NCD) is a disease that affects only cows, characterized 
by nodules and fever. It is considered relatively mild and not 
transmissible to humans. What is surprising is the reaction of 
governments to a disease that is quite benign. We must examine the 
origins of these directives to manage this disease with such radical 
measures: the systematic culling of the entire herd.

This is not the first time this type of management has been applied; it 
has been used with sheep, chickens, ducks, and other livestock.

One can only be surprised by the scale of this agricultural movement, 
given that these practices are quite common. For the past ten years or 
so, the management of avian influenza in France has resulted in 
systematic culling as soon as an animal is diagnosed; this is not the 
case for all diseases, since, for example, bluetongue has not led to 
this type of culling. However, it is the case for tuberculosis and 
amyloidosis. This is why it is difficult to understand the rationale 
behind these culling measures, as they do not seem to be the obvious 
solution for containing all diseases. For example, with necrotizing 
fasciitis (NF), it is not contagious but vector-borne, as the disease is 
transmitted by biting insects. There is no systematic transmission 
pattern. Therefore, there would be a possibility of managing this 
disease completely differently by monitoring the animals and isolating 
them rather than culling them. And so, I feel compelled to join the 
farmers' mobilization, to express my outrage at such practices, which 
are completely unjustified. Especially since this disease, for the 
moment, has only minor effects.

Is the movement demanding vaccination?

When vaccines exist, the government tries to impose vaccination. For 
example, in 2000, bluetongue was mandatory, a requirement that 
agricultural protests at the time successfully challenged. Since then, 
this disease, which has resurfaced in France for the past two or three 
years, has led to mass vaccination campaigns. There is no longer a legal 
obligation, yet farmers vaccinate themselves, despite the known 
significant side effects. Similarly, when avian flu appeared in 2024, 
the government once again resorted to vaccination. All ducks were 
vaccinated, and the result today is that avian flu is spreading as if 
nothing had happened. Therefore, these issues of vaccination in 
livestock farming are, to say the least, questionable. What is 
surprising is that the agricultural sector as a whole, through its union 
representatives, is calling for vaccination. Yet, the herd that was 
slaughtered in the Doubs region was vaccinated. The unions found it 
absurd to slaughter a vaccinated herd (the animals should have been able 
to fight off the disease), but I haven't heard anyone question the 
vaccine. About fifteen years ago, a large minority of farmers doubted 
vaccination and the pharmaceutical interests behind it. Today, a few 
years after the COVID crisis, we see that the ideological groundwork has 
been laid and no one dares criticize vaccination anymore. It's 
deplorable! We must always consider the interests at stake in defending 
either systematic slaughter or vaccination.

What's at stake here is primarily the economic management of a health 
crisis; export licenses for affected countries are on the line! France 
decided on culling because-at the international level, where export 
licenses are managed based on health criteria-bluetongue disease (BT) is 
subject to an injunction from states to immediately eradicate the 
disease in order to maintain their trading permits. This isn't the case 
for all diseases; for bluetongue, one can lose their export license when 
the country is affected, but there is no systematic culling. In the case 
of BT, in order for agribusinesses to continue exporting to Italy, 
Spain, and North Africa, culling is imposed to avoid losing these markets.

Why are the Rural Coordination and Peasant Confederation unions calling 
for widespread vaccination of the herd?

As soon as a country vaccinates, it loses its accreditation because it's 
difficult to distinguish a vaccinated animal from a sick one. Except 
that we now know that with PCR tests, it's possible to make this 
distinction! Under these circumstances, what the CR (Coordination 
Rurale) and the Confédération Paysanne (Confédération des Amis du 
Producteurs) are asking for is that vaccination be implemented and that 
accreditations be reinstated on a country-by-country basis, which Italy 
and Switzerland have agreed to, and which still needs to be obtained 
from Spain. These unions are speaking with a forked tongue: on the one 
hand, they say that the responsibility for these diseases lies with 
international trade, which moves animals over thousands of kilometers 
and, in doing so, spreads diseases-so logically, this type of trade must 
stop; on the other hand, they are demanding sanitary measures that would 
allow this trade to continue. The political absurdity of this approach 
is clear. All these unions, along with the FNSEA, are in a real-politics 
mindset, and are not at all questioning the root causes of the 
development of these diseases.

What other solutions are there to combat diseases?

Here, I want to draw on the work of veterinarians who are part of the 
GIE Zone Verte (Groupement d'Interventions et d'Entraide), a cooperative 
of veterinarians who work with livestock to help farmers find treatment 
solutions that aren't entirely dependent on the pharmaceutical industry, 
particularly plant-based ones. There isn't that much long-term data on 
CND (Cowherb Disease), it only arrived in Europe a few years ago; it's 
better known in Africa. What they've observed by reading international 
studies on the subject is that immunity can be acquired quite easily 
because this virus doesn't mutate. What we know is that an animal that 
has been infected once will not be reinfected. So, it's possible for 
herds to acquire immunity. However, all the measures currently in place 
(slaughter or systematic vaccination) prevent this natural immunity 
process from occurring. We are constantly creating extremely costly 
situations: the slaughter requires hundreds of millions of euros to be 
paid out in compensation; the same applies to vaccination.

And yet, there are inexpensive solutions that don't rely on the 
industrial system. We've seen this with other diseases. Xavier 
Nouliane-a fellow farmer who wrote a book called "Ménage des champs" 
(Field Cleaning)-recounts his experience dealing with paratuberculosis, 
a disease that the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) considers 
an immediate eradication target. Normally, France mandates the total 
slaughter of infected herds. Nouliane, along with the GIE-Zone Verte 
(Green Zone Economic Interest Group), successfully lobbied the 
prefecture to prevent the slaughter and implement a treatment program, 
notably using plant-based remedies to boost the animals' immunity. He 
managed to eradicate the disease this way. So, there are alternative 
solutions, but unfortunately, they are rarely used and little known. 
It's a struggle! This group of farmers, along with the GIE-Zone Verte, 
are systematically denounced by the government as charlatans. That's 
false because real, in-depth work is being done. For example, with 
bluetongue, strengthening the natural immunity of ewes is far more 
effective than vaccination. Farmers know this; the number of vaccinated 
animals that end up getting sick demonstrates the ineffectiveness of 
these vaccines every day. Not to mention the side effects! 
Unfortunately, the unions prefer to promote this kind of simplistic 
solution and lull farmers into a false sense of security.

I find the recent agricultural movement very weak because it doesn't 
analyze these political choices. In particular, I haven't heard anyone 
denounce the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE), formerly known 
as the OIE - the International Livestock Organisation. Their central 
role is to regulate global trade through health standards. It's there 
that decisions are made regarding which contagious diseases will be 
designated as notifiable diseases, obliging states to declare their 
presence, which then becomes a matter of immediate eradication. I find 
it incredible that the unions haven't denounced the interests at stake, 
namely the pharmaceutical companies and agribusinesses that export 
worldwide. They are the ones who create these standards to serve their 
own interests. The organization's headquarters is easily accessible; 
it's in Paris. No one has called for demonstrations in front of it, even 
though that's where all the decisions are made.

We are forced to join the agricultural anger being expressed against 
MERCOSUR and the liberalization of international trade. It promises a 
massive influx of beef from countries where production costs are lower, 
and it eliminates or drastically reduces customs duties that help to 
rebalance prices in the face of unfair competition. The stakes are 
enormous, but the unions are missing the point by not highlighting the 
new rules regulating international trade. Indeed, customs duties are 
being reduced almost everywhere, meaning that food can come from Ukraine 
and Brazil cheaply. But at the same time, other regulations are being 
reinstated, notably sanitary standards, which are these new customs 
barriers, often referred to as non-tariff barriers. It is this type of 
sanitary management that allows the global market to be regulated. The 
very least that the protesting unions could do is highlight and 
criticize this WHO Food Safety Act. This is where the types of health 
management are decided today around the world, and where opportunistic 
markets are created. When a disease strikes a country, like the swine 
fever outbreak in China a few years ago, the Chinese government was 
forced to cull more than half of its pig population. Consequently, this 
created a new market, which Breton agribusinesses greatly benefited from 
by massively exporting their pigs to China. Afterward, it was primarily 
the small farms that never recovered. In China, more than half of the 
farms were subsistence farms, and industrial pig farming was still in 
its infancy. Five years after the crisis, there are no more subsistence 
farms-they have been banned-and only mega-factories with hundreds of 
thousands of pigs remain. These are the ones that now capture the market 
share. Health management only benefits the industrial players who manage 
to create monopolies. During the pork crisis in China, large Breton 
farmers amassed extraordinary dividends. As long as the unions fail to 
denounce this type of management, which creates extraordinary rents and 
intensifies the development of the industrial model, they will only 
pretend to challenge the way the world is.

The FNSEA was not part of the latest agricultural movement at the 
beginning of 2026. Yet today, it is trying to capitalize on the anger by 
demanding a relaxation of pesticide standards.

This is the crux of the debate surrounding "mirror standards": either we 
require countries exporting their products to us to comply with our 
standards, to prevent unfair competition; or we lower our standards here 
to be competitive on the international market and allow for exports. It 
is this second option that the FNSEA and the Rural Coordination advocate.

What about small farmers in all of this?

There is no union, not even the Confédération Paysanne, that represents 
their voice, and very few independent movements are emerging in the 
agricultural world. A few years ago, we tried to create a movement we 
called "hors norme" (outside the norm), which specifically aimed to 
denounce the sham of management by standards that protect neither the 
consumer, nor the animals, nor the farmers. We didn't get any support. 
At the time, we mobilized to defend and show solidarity with farmers who 
had experienced slaughter on their farms for non-compliance with this or 
that standard, but we received no support. I'm thinking, of course, of 
Jérôme Laronze, an organic cattle farmer in Saône-et-Loire, who was 
killed by the police in 2017. This farmer was threatened with the 
slaughter of his herd for failing to comply with absurd traceability 
standards. He denounced the situation, wrote about it, tried to resist, 
and received no support from any union. Yet, Jérôme was the 
Confédération Paysanne's spokesperson at the time, and his union 
abandoned him. The day before the slaughter, Jérôme went into hiding to 
give the media time to denounce his situation. During those few days on 
the run, the Confédération Paysanne's co-spokesperson could think of 
nothing better to say to the press than that Jérôme's situation wasn't a 
political problem but a mental health issue. This shows just how little 
this union understood, or pretended not to understand, Jérôme Laronze's 
political denunciation of the French livestock health management practices.

The mobilization in January was very intense, with life-or-death stakes 
for a number of farmers involved. Along with the Confédération Paysanne 
(Farmers' Confederation), the Coordination Rurale (CR), generally 
considered far-right on the political spectrum, was very active. Banners 
were seen demanding "tanks in the housing projects, not against the 
farmers." What are your thoughts on the encounter between such different 
groups?

They share the common trait of being excluded from all the mechanisms of 
the FNSEA/State agricultural co-management that has persisted for 
decades. This gives them a kind of militant purity and prevents them 
from having been corrupted by dubious alliances with government 
agencies. The CR (Coordination Rurale) is made up of fairly prominent 
farmers seeking industrial development. It has won control of a few 
Chambers of Agriculture, and now we can see what it does with the money. 
We've witnessed rather mafia-like practices, particularly in the 
Southwest and Lot-et-Garonne. It's worth noting that CR employees have 
taken their board of directors to the labor court, demonstrating that 
the organization doesn't care about its employees. It's quite 
determined, as we saw during the mobilizations. I think its growth, in 
terms of membership, is based on a feeling of denigration and 
marginalization, which is real in the agricultural world because it is 
subjected to systematic criticism. I understand this resentment, because 
environmental criticisms aren't directed the same way at construction 
workers who use harmful products as they are at smartphone vendors, all 
of whom contribute to destroying this planet. From the "hicks" of the 
mid-20th century to the "bumpkins" of the 20th century, there's a 
denigration of the farmer that persists today. The CR (Coordination 
Rurale) feeds on this resentment without promising to free farmers from 
the oppression of large agribusinesses and the state, since these same 
people, by denouncing the regulations that prevent the use of 
pesticides, are essentially saying: "Let's be even more dependent on the 
large industrial groups that sell these pesticides." Nor does the CR say 
"Stop, let's stop being dependent on what's beyond our control." They 
continue to invest, pushing farmers into debt so they earn practically 
nothing in terms of income, but siphon off millions in revenue and 
investment without ever recouping the dividends. They don't question the 
absurdity of this ongoing investment. As long as there isn't a 
clear-eyed assessment of it, we're headed for disaster.
It's interesting to look at where this union comes from, how it has 
evolved, and why it has moved closer to the far right. In 1991, it was 
created around a protest against the CAP (Common Agricultural Policy), 
not so far removed from the positions of the rural left, but with a more 
radical approach. These are truly disillusioned members of the FNSEA 
(National Federation of Farmers' Unions), entrenched in the capitalist 
agricultural economy, threatened with extinction by the changes brought 
about by the CAP. They rejected all forms of co-management, with a 
highly critical yet productivist discourse.

While the Confédération Paysanne (CFA) was trying to forge its own path 
by appropriating a more urban-oriented environmental critique, the CR 
(Coordination Rurale) did much to fuel resentment towards farmers who 
already feel marginalized and who, consequently, haven't embraced the 
rural left. As long as we don't critically examine environmentalism and 
the resentment it generates, those most directly affected will be more 
easily drawn to the CR and the far right. Yet, the absurdity of this 
union is evident at every level. In the Southwest, it's asking the 
Prefecture to regularize undocumented immigrants to compensate for a 
French workforce that, according to them, is useless. This is utterly 
cynical and, of course, doesn't preclude racism. We see here that the 
far right denounces immigration and, at the same time, as soon as it 
comes to power, as in Italy, regularizes en masse to provide cheap 
workers to industrial farms, factories... Behind this racism, there is 
realpolitik.

It would be foolish not to join the farmers' mobilizations because there 
are some crackpots in the CR (Coordination Rurale) who spout racist 
rhetoric. In Brittany, it was impossible to forge alliances with the CR 
because of the fierce clashes over water management. As a result, we 
weren't numerous enough. We have good reasons to be in the streets, and 
we'll work with the forces at hand. Let's see how far we can go in 
engaging with members of this union, trying to bring a class-based 
perspective to these mobilizations in order to honestly and truly 
dissect the bonds of dependence and entrapment in which we are currently 
trapped. This isn't about denouncing them as obstacles to free 
enterprise, nor is it about demanding more regulations supposedly to 
protect consumers and farmers. Rather, it's about examining precisely 
who decides on the application of these regulations, what their effects 
are, and recognizing that it's always the little guys who suffer. Many 
feel that we are witnessing the final days of a certain type of 
agriculture in France. The threat comes from the Chinese, Brazilian, or 
Canadian models, with their even more gigantic farms. The decline in the 
number of farmers is far from over. There are still 400,000 farmers 
left-which is already ridiculously low-and at the current rate, there 
will barely be 100,000 farmers in ten years.

Nadia M

Collective of Free Peasants
The farmers gathered within the "Free Farmers Collective" are demanding 
to be consulted, included, and have their expertise taken into account. 
They are tired of being manipulated by technocrats who impose their 
industrial or health-related vision on them through repressive measures. 
It is essential to listen to them and consider their questions and 
proposals. A large-scale study conducted by the Shift Project shows that 
more than 80% of farmers would like to adopt more sustainable 
agricultural practices and would be ready to embrace the ecological 
transition, provided they receive support. Here is a press release from 
the collective dated February 14, 2026.

Lump-stain disease in cows is a benign disease, with a mortality rate of 
2%, and is not transmissible to humans. Until 2018, classified as 
category C, the management of this disease involved quarantining the 
animal for 28 days. Around fifty farmers chose to resist mandatory 
vaccination. They did so because they love and trust their animals and 
their natural immunity. They simply want to produce healthy food for 
consumers. The reclassification of lump-stain disease to category A has 
led to systematic and unjustified culling (more than 4,000 animals so 
far) and mandatory vaccination. The side effects of this vaccination are 
so severe (fever, loss of appetite, decreased milk production, necrosis 
at the injection site, symptoms identical to the disease, abortions, 
sudden deaths, etc.) that the government has established a public fund 
to compensate them. If the vaccine (attenuated virus) induces the 
disease, the herds must be slaughtered according to the protocol. Thus, 
despite their fear of the consequences, farmers are breaking their 
silence and gradually joining the collective, beginning to speak out. 
They are protesting against the new mandatory revaccination campaign.

The right to a fair trial is being trampled by the prefects who are 
ordering us to have the vaccination administered within 5 to 7 days, 
stating that if we contest the decision through legal action before the 
administrative court, it will have no suspensive effect on the 
vaccination. This is unprecedented and a serious violation of 
fundamental rights. We call on our elected officials, consumers, and the 
general public to support the farmers who are rejecting these arbitrary 
decisions and defending their right to choose in order to protect their 
animals, their expertise, and food sovereignty. Why are we prepared to 
lose everything? Because we feel responsible for what we feed our consumers.

Press release from the Free Farmers Collective of Burgundy, Savoie, and 
Franche-Comté in favor of freedom of vaccination of livestock

Notes
[1] This interview was conducted by l'actualité des luttes.info on FPP . 
You can find it under the date of January 8, 2026, and also listen to 
the interview with the "paysans libres" collective from March 23, 2026.

http://oclibertaire.lautre.net/spip.php?article4703
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