Factory farm run-off poisoning beaches, killed animals, sickened humans

The Plage de Saint-Maurice could be one of 100 pretty inlets on the north Breton coast except that, on a sunny August day, there was not a soul walking on the sand, not a single sunbather, not a single child with a bucket or spade. This summer, the beach is the symbol of an ecological calamity which has been 40 years in the making.

In the sand and mud of this narrow estuary, 38 wild animal corpses have been discovered since mid-July – a coypu, a badger and 36 wild boar. Killed by polluted seaweed that has been washing ashore along the Breton coast in great, stinking heaps since the 1970s. Only in the last few years has it been officially admitted that the proliferation of this primitive form of weed has been caused by nitrogen pouring into streams and rivers and then the sea, from the scores of intensive pig and cattle and maize farms in the heart of the Breton peninsula. In truth, the role of nitrogen pollution is not yet fully admitted. It is denied, against all the scientific evidence, by the farming industry and by the powerful French agri-pharmaceutical lobby.