Waterfowl illegally bred for hunting : One Voice takes up the cause
In Ponthoile, in the Somme region, an illegal waterfowl farm operated for over ten years. The owner of the establishment, who sold these animals to hunters, flouted regulations and multiplied mistreatment the whole time. On December 5, we will be at the Amiens magistrates’ court as part of a civil case to defend the victims.
The list of facts uncovered by the French National Forest Office (OFB) investigators is as long as your arm. Since at least 2011, the farmer – a chemical products operator by profession – has not only trampled over the regulatory procedures to run his parallel business : he has also inflicted the worst forms of cruelty on the birds he has kept, amputating several phalanges of their wings to prevent them from flying, even though wing clipping is forbidden. Stuck on the ground, some of the geese and ducks mutilated by him (and intended to serve as decoy-birds to attract wild waterfowl for the benefit of hunters) sometimes died, overcome by suffering, abandoned on the ground. It didn’t matter : their torturer disposed of the bodies by throwing them straight into the household garbage can… or into a park to hide them from inspections.
Animals mistreated and regulations flouted
In fact, the man didn’t give a damn about them. His operation, which he ran for a long time without the slightest authorization, never ceased to be illegal, even after a supposed “regularization” in 2014. He kept 3,011 birds locked up, instead of the 1,300 authorized. Some of them belonged to species he shouldn’t have even kept. Some others had been captured in their natural environment with a view to being sold to clandestine structures, resulting in under-the-counter transactions. Finally, all of them were exposed to the risk of disease, as their jailer, who had no training in biosecurity, had obviously not implemented any preventive measures or serological monitoring. Failure to keep breeding registers, falsification of animal traceability documents, water pollution… complete this charming picture.
On Thursday December 5, at 2pm, we’ll be the voice of the waterfowl victims of this unscrupulous operator in the Amiens magistrates’ court.
Illustration photo from a One Voice investigation in a decoy-ducks farm.
Amiens magistrates’ court postpones the hearing to January 16, 2025 !