Document type: response to Question No. 13575 published in the Official Journal of the French Republic
Authors: Question: Damien Girard (Morbihan (5th district) – Ecologist and Socialist). Answer: Ministry of Agriculture, Agri-Food, and Food Sovereignty
Question: Mr. Damien Girard has alerted the Minister of Agriculture, Agri-Food, and Food Sovereignty to the risk of closure of the last local slaughterhouse in Morbihan.
The number of slaughterhouses in France has declined sharply over the past few decades, falling from about 400 in 2003 to nearly 220 today. Nearly 30% of these slaughterhouses are publicly owned and provide an essential slaughtering service, particularly for farmers involved in short supply chains. These facilities are facing increasing profitability challenges. While closures affect both public and private slaughterhouses, volumes are tending to concentrate in a limited number of large private slaughterhouses. This is leading to an economic and geographic concentration of this essential link in the supply chain, benefiting large industrial groups. Many local slaughterhouses are struggling due to competition from much larger facilities that process significantly higher volumes. Over the past two years, the pace of closures among these local slaughterhouses has accelerated, with at least one closure per month.
The closure of a local slaughterhouse has direct consequences for livestock farmers. Certain services become unavailable—such as the emergency slaughter of injured animals—and transport distances increase considerably. Farmers must travel dozens of additional kilometers for slaughter and then to retrieve the carcasses, which significantly increases their workload and costs, at a time when working conditions are already grueling and cash flow is strained. Without local slaughterhouses, some farms are thus forced to cease operations.
Local slaughterhouses, however, are an essential link in the food supply chain. They help reduce workloads, promote small-scale farming, and support short supply chains and direct sales—all of which ensure better compensation for farmers. They also allow farmers to oversee the conditions under which their animals are slaughtered. Their disappearance leads to a loss of value for local livestock operations and a shift toward long distribution channels that do not benefit local communities.
In 2023, the Ministry of Agriculture launched an assessment to develop a “slaughterhouse strategy” aimed at addressing the sector’s crisis. However, this initiative did not result in any concrete action and appears to have been abandoned. In Morbihan, the Vannes slaughterhouse—the department’s last multi-species facility—may close soon. Farmers risk being unable to have their animals slaughtered and, as a result, to continue their operations. As a result, the entire livestock industry in the region is under threat.
Faced with this situation, livestock farmers have organized to create a cooperative society of collective interest, the SCIC Abattoir des Éleveurs du Morbihan (SCIC ADEM), with the goal of maintaining a sustainable local slaughterhouse. The prefect of Morbihan had opposed the creation of a new slaughterhouse, fearing it would compete with the existing private slaughterhouse in Vannes. It was then agreed that this slaughterhouse could be taken over by SCIC ADEM, a project financially supported by the Golfe du Morbihan–Vannes Agglomeration local authority. Studies on the buildings, land, and equipment were conducted in 2024.
However, in September 2025, the owners of the Vannes slaughterhouse indicated that they did not wish to sell the facility at the proposed price and announced its closure, despite efforts at dialogue initiated by the prefecture, the local authority, and the SCIC. He therefore asks her what measures she intends to implement to save the last slaughterhouse in Morbihan and, more broadly, to support and ensure the long-term viability of local slaughterhouses throughout the region.
Answer: The decline in France’s livestock population, particularly its cattle herd, has had a significant impact on the operations of slaughterhouses in recent years; some of these facilities are facing the challenge of modernizing to meet animal welfare and environmental standards. At the same time, slaughterhouse activity fluctuates significantly depending on the time of year (religious holidays, seasons, the return from the mountain pastures), requiring economic and technical flexibility in operations. These factors highlight the challenges related to streamlining and logistical efficiency in France’s slaughter sector, requiring adjustments to optimize value chains while ensuring animal welfare the economic viability of livestock production sectors.
Another key challenge is to preserve this production and processing capacity in France, in line with changing consumption patterns and the goal of regaining food sovereignty. The “Slaughterhouses for Meat Animals” strategy, launched on July 6, 2023, by the Ministry of Agriculture, builds on the slaughterhouse plan launched in 2021, and in particular on the slaughterhouse measure included in the Recovery Plan.
This strategy aims to preserve a network of slaughter facilities that meet the needs of the livestock sectors, using a regionalized approach. This strategy, organized into four pillars, constitutes one component of the government’s plan to regain sovereignty over the livestock sector. At the same time, the General Council for Food, Agriculture, and Rural Areas has been tasked with assessing the consequences of the emergence of slaughterhouses managed by livestock producers.
