Cows "porthole": L214 publishes a new shock video, the government defends these experiments "shocking" but "useful"
ANIMAL WELL-BEING – The association of animal protection, which has become a specialty of the revelation of shock images, reveals this Thursday the living conditions of animals in the experimental farm of Sourches, Saint-Symphorien. We discover cows with perforated stomach or chickens too big.
– The drafting of LCI
Before looking at these pictures, it is better to have a good stomach. The L214 animal welfare association is putting online this Thursday, June 20 a video to denounce the living conditions of animals on the experimental farm of Sourches, Saint-Symphorien, in Sarthe. This breeding belongs to the company Sanders, the French leader in animal nutrition and subsidiary of the agro-industrial group Avril which produces 25% of the eggs consumed in France, one pig out of eight and one out of four rabbits that end up on the plates, according to the report of L214. It is on this site, built in 1958, that she tests her products.
The survey, conducted between February and May, pinned the use of "portholes" implanted in the belly of cows to allow direct access to their stomachs. The "fistulation", the name of this process invented in the nineteenth century, allows through openings of 15 to 20 centimeters in diameter to access the rumen, one of the four stomachs of the animal, to study its digestion. The goal of this approach is simple: "optimize the performance and productivity" of animals.
"Considered painless for the animal"
On the icing images filmed in a hidden camera, and commented by the animator Nagui, vegetarian assumed, we see operators in blouses introduce their hands inside the stomach of several "guinea pigs". "During the experimentation period, you can open and close your porthole six times in 48 hours to take samples, not to mention the installation of the porthole itself, an invasive operation that generates postoperative pain and requires drugs for several days – antibiotics for two weeks according to a center operator, "writes the NGO.
In The Parisian, the spokesperson of the group Avril assures that this technique "is accompanied by a rigorous veterinary follow-up and is considered painless for the animal" and specifies that the farm of Sourches counts only six cows "fistulated". The industry argues that this has already "reduced the use of antibiotics in livestock and reduce emissions of nitrates and methane (greenhouse gas) related to livestock." A defense that does not convince Sébastien Arsac, co-founder of L214: "The argument is comical (…) This research also has consequences for all farm animals that will be applied the same diet, to the origin of many health problems, what is the meaning of this race? "
A complaint filed and an open petition
The animal welfare association also points to the living conditions of these cows in the experimental farm. "They live on a concrete floor without straw, in the humidity, the wet soil is slippery, their fur frequently soiled with their excrement," L214 protests. "Sometimes the contents of the stomachs of cows overflow the portholes." The images also highlight the experiments conducted on pigs and rabbits. For chickens, "fed with a diet too rich, their weight is pushed to the extreme.They do not hold on their paws because of the ever faster growth."
"Deeply shocked", Nagui calls to "put an end to this race to the performance which is done with the detriment of the health of the animals and our health. "For Sanders and for intensive breeding (…) today animals are only machines to produce, a simple raw material at our disposal", denounces the facilitator who, to support his point, explains that on average a dairy cow produces five times more than the natural needs of a calf.
At the same time, the NGO decided to lodge a complaint with the prosecutor of the Republic of Le Mans against the Sourches center for "experimentations outside the objectives defined by the law and serious abuses on the animals". L214 also posted a petition "for the prohibition of these zootechnical experiments". More than 100,000 people had already signed Thursday at 15h.
"Shocking" but "useful" for Brune Poirson
At the highest state summit, this video made government ministers react. "It's shocking", but "these are scientific practices that do not hurt the animal, we are sure because we know how to measure stress in animals," said Ms. Poirson, invited on the Public Senate channel . "It's useful, because we need science," she insisted, adding that "there should be better supervision of these practices" and developing alternatives.
"INRA (the National Institute of Agricultural Research, Editor's note) is already working on it (…) and I hope that it will be able to reach conclusions before 2025," she added. "But it's always a balance that's complicated, difficult, because we need science on a lot of things, sometimes paradoxically to develop drugs that can be beneficial to animals," says Poirson.
ليست هناك تعليقات