tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6084273967488814558.post8729581336686573483..comments2023-06-11T11:29:40.315+02:00Comments on Zut alors!: Cattle prattleTommohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08719434939540551535noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6084273967488814558.post-16091279097900143362011-02-17T15:52:15.988+01:002011-02-17T15:52:15.988+01:00Dunno how I missed this post until now. Interesti...Dunno how I missed this post until now. Interesting.<br /><br />It's wrong to blame the public. Near to us we have acquired a new Tesco and I give the small shops a few months or a year before most of them are closed down. They probably only have to use 10% of their business before they are no longer viable.<br />If there wasn't a Tesco, people would happily continue shopping at their local little shops but Tesco come along, undercut everyone, monopolise the car parking situation and the rest soon becomes history.<br /><br />We lost our milk delivery a few years ago and had no option but to shop at the supermarket but now the small farm down the road has set up a delivery service and a hut at the end of his lane selling milk, cream, eggs and bread. That's where I now shop. The eggs are much cheaper and fresher than in the supermarket but I'd still buy them if they were slightly dearer. But I don't think it's reasonable to expect people to go too far out of their way to support small producers. Fuel is too expensive for a start. It's the power of the supermarkets that is to blame.Jeanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09726164724131916224noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6084273967488814558.post-59800819134606451822011-02-16T11:50:49.587+01:002011-02-16T11:50:49.587+01:00Farmers (and anybody else with a suitable amount o...Farmers (and anybody else with a suitable amount of land and borders) can get subsidies to replant hedgerows. You may know that Defra and its previous incarnations did the same thing in the UK, paying farmers to rip hedges out and latterly paying them to put them back (ah, don't you just love forward planning?). <br />I also understand, from farming neighbours, that farmers HAVE to have a certain percentage of hedges for the amount of land they own, so it's not all bad.<br />We own woodland and through the CRPF, have learnt that the amount of wooded land in France has increased over the last few decades.<br />And finally, I hesitate to blame farmers, it's the customers, the public, who are now obsessed with food being cheap and not, as you so rightly say, seeing the proportionality with fuel price rises, which they're happy to pay. We should all shop ethically, and that includes making sure our clothes aren't made in sweatshops, our trainers by Asian schoolkids as well as paying farmers a working wage to produce our food.Stuart and Gabriellehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07886622731103783384noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6084273967488814558.post-59735525604982174822011-02-14T18:12:06.766+01:002011-02-14T18:12:06.766+01:00I work in Animal Health and, even in these huge fa...I work in Animal Health and, even in these huge factory farms, if they ever get built, welfare conditions are still far better than in many French farms and checks and balances are far more stringent too.<br /><br />Not long ago a report was published about the ingredients that make their way into animal feed at some of France's leading manufacturers, investigators found they include slurry from animal sewage treatment plants; liquid waste including dirty water, blood and other body fluids from animals' cadavers; and solid waste trapped in filters through which pass all the factories' waste water--from cleaning, treating skins andhides, and from septic tanks. <br /><br />A report prepared for the French Agriculture Ministry shows that in France animal feed is laced with antibiotics for 98% ofpiglets, 96% of young turkeys and 68% of chickens and you have to wonder how Brittany manages to produce 55% of France's pork and 40% or its chicken and eggs when it only occupies 6% of France's agricultural land. The answer is factory farming which is alive and well in France. For veal calves, there is no legal requirement to provide any bedding after 2 weeks and they are kept in multi-storey pens with slatted floors and barely enough room to life down. Oooh, I could go on for hours about how adulterated French food really is. The situation with the dairy farmers is just the same in France whichled to the milk riots a few years back. They have to sell it for less than the cost of producing it.<br /><br />It's a shame that the French government is suppporting deforestation in this way. The same thing happened where I used to live except that it was for crops not cattle. The end result will be flooding. Increased cattle numbers and deforestation are a recipe for disaster. The cattle compact the land making it more difficult to absorb groundwater and with no trees to provide a natural barrier the land will flood.<br /><br />But on the positive side, we have the cheapest petrol in the South West of England in our town and despite the recent price hikes I'm still paying less for a gallon that I did when we left France.Wylye Girlhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03513714783299643621noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6084273967488814558.post-86598910977327256012011-02-08T15:25:05.217+01:002011-02-08T15:25:05.217+01:00Great photos and comments. I can hardly afford to ...Great photos and comments. I can hardly afford to drive down the road now the cost of fuel is ridiculous but it is still too cold here to use my bike:( I am looking forward to my return to France next month. DianeDianehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14782670749466305626noreply@blogger.com