Livestock

France has the largest cattle herd in europe around 20,5 million head, and is second only to the USA as the world's largest exporter of raw hides.The cattle herd has fallen from more than 23 million head in 1979, to the present day figure, due mainly to falling numbers of dairy cows(-22%) following the introduction of milk quotas set throughout the European Union. At the same time there has been a movement away from traditional pastoral farming(extensive), and some 82,000 small farms carrying less than 20 cows have disappeared.

Over the last 15 years there has been more emphasis placed on efficiency and productivity, and thus the move to more intensive farming methods, often incorporating industrial feedlot systems. This has been good for grain quality improvement where there has been a parallel effort on parasite irradication (warble fly etc).

However it may have had several adverse effects, notably the occurance of BSE (mad cow disease), due to the need for high protein feeds, and the short cuts that led to feeding contaminated animal supplements (meat and bone meal from sheep having the scrabie disease) to cattle throughout Europe.

Did you know?
In the future France may see a return to more extensive farming methods (pastoral grazing) as found in such regions as the Limousin area (central France). This unfortunately may lead to more scratch problems in the future. Currently, the annual kill stands at around 3,900,000 mature cattle, 2,050,000 calves and about 7,000,000 sheep and goats.