Document type: article published on the website of Welfarm
Author: Ian Fafet
Preview: Passed without debate by the French Assemblée Nationale on July 8, 2025, the law to relax constraints on the farming profession, championed by Senate Member Laurent Duplomb, marks a historic step backwards in terms of animal welfare and environmental protection. Over 1.7 million signatures. As of July 23, 2025, this was the number of signatures on a petition first posted on the French National Assembly website on July 10, two days after the "Duplomb Law" had been passed. This figure far exceeds the 500,000-signature threshold required for a petition to be debated in a public session. This unprecedented level of popular outcry can be explained by the numerous fears that have quite rightly been raised by the legal document. The petition opens up the future possibility of a debate that was ruled out by a motion to deny passed in May 2025. The motion authorised a vote to be held without the need for discussion in the public session of the French National Assembly. If the French lower house agrees to organize a debate in response to the petition, this will not, however, allow the Law to be re-examined on its merits. And the President of the National Assembly, Yaël Braun-Pivet, has declared that a debate "can in no way go back on the Law that has been passed". In other words, it would not create a pathway for the Law to be repealed. [...] Although critics of the Duplomb Law often cite its main purpose as being the reintroduction of permission to use the so-called "bee-killer" pesticide acetamiprid, it contains two other measures that establish major retrograde steps for animal welfare and environmental protections. In particular, the new Law facilitates the construction and expansion of intensive livestock farms by raising number of animals for which environmental authorization is required for pig and poultry farms under the ICPE (Installations Classées Pour l'Environnement) framework. Previously, prior authorization was required for pig farms with 2,000 animals or more. Under the Duplomb Law, if implemented, this threshold will be raised to 3,000 animals, and smaller operations will be able to follow a simplified registration procedure. For breeding sows, the threshold will be raised from 750 to 900 animals, for layers, it will rise from 40,000 to 60,000, and for broilers it will rise from 40,000 to 85,000. The text also paves the way for a future increase in the thresholds that apply to cattle farms. These provisions are a response to a request made in February 2025 from the industries involved. [...]
Article on the same topic published on July 13, 2025 in Le Monde (subscribers only): "L’adoption de la loi Duplomb constitue un moment de rupture démocratique inédit ".
