Name: French farmers continue blockades over cattle cull, Mercosur deal
Uploaded: 2025-12-17T17:48:21.985Z
Duration: 1 min 44 s
Description: Protesting French farmers blocked roads across France Tuesday over a mass cull to prevent the spread of a bovine disease. Anger over the sanitary measure combined with farmers’ concerns about a planned Mercosur trade deal has forced France to seek a delay in the EU vote, which officials say is now likely to occur.

Protesting French farmers blocked roads across France Tuesday over a mass cull to prevent the spread of a bovine disease. Anger over the sanitary measure combined with farmers’ concerns about a planned Mercosur trade deal has forced France to seek a delay in the EU vote, which officials say is now likely to occur.

Paris

French farmers have sustained highway blockades for over a week, using tractors and barricades to protest the mass culling of cattle exposed to lumpy skin disease. The protests, concentrated in the southwest, have disrupted both road and train traffic, with farmers demanding changes to France's sanitation protocols or an end to nationwide culling measures.

The government has responded by increasing vaccination efforts, aiming to inoculate up to one million animals, and has urged agricultural unions to support eradication protocols. Farmers' grievances also include fears that the Mercosur trade deal will introduce cheaper beef imports and ongoing economic difficulties in the agricultural sector.

French farmers continue blockades over cattle cull, Mercosur deal

Daily and for over a week now, French farmers have been rolling out their tractors onto highways, placing piles of manure and hay bales on throughfares to block traffic, all in protest of the culling of entire herds that may have been exposed to a bovine illness, lumpy skin disease. These farmers blocking the A63 south of Bordeaux say they won't let up until their demands are met, or until there's a change in France's sanitation protocols in combating outbreaks of the disease. They can no longer be culling nationwide. We set up to last with a rotating system among farmers so they can go home, feed the animals, get some rest and come back. We're in it for the long haul. Further south, another highway but the same grievances. On the A9 near Narbonne, tyres burned as farmers repaired their blockades at strategic points to disrupt road and train traffic. It's in the southwest of France in ten departments where the most recent outbreaks of lumpy skin disease have occurred, leading to the culling of over 3,000 animals and mass vaccinations. The government has vowed to step up inoculation campaigns to 750,000 more animals, with the objective of a million vaccinated. It's pleaded with agricultural unions to have faith in the protocols, that they're working to eradicate the disease. But for farmers, be it in the southwest or across the country, the outbreak and the strict rules, or if one case is found the entire herd is killed, it's the last straw for them and a series of grievances. Be it the Mercosur trade deal, with many farmers fearing it will flood the market with cheap beef and products, to the increasing difficulty to make ends meet as agricultural workers.

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