In May 2014, 23 students and a teacher from Gironde were poisoned after fungicides were sprayed near their school. A judicial investigation has just been opened.
The more than 67,100 signatories of a petition (on change.org) in favor of organic spreading of agricultural areas located along schools will welcome this. A judicial investigation against X was opened at the end of December for inappropriate use of plant protection products (fungicides) in the case of Villeneuve, near Blaye, in the Gironde. In this town, 23 children and a teacher had been poisoned following spraying of pesticides dating from May 2014. Serial discomforts had alerted the public to this problem which combines public health and economic interests.
A classification without follow-up in April 2015
On May 5, following the various symptoms of the victims (eye irritation, sore throat, headache), a link had been established with fungicide spreading carried out a few hours earlier on vines near the school. An administrative investigation had even established that the use of the fungicide, authorized, had taken place under “inappropriate conditions and without taking all precautions for the neighborhood”.
The direction of the Regional Directorate of Food, Agriculture and Forestry (Draaf) had, however, considered that it was “not possible to formally attest to the materiality of the offense”.
For this reason, the Libourne prosecutor’s office had chosen to dismiss the case last April, a decision challenged with the Attorney General of the Bordeaux Court of Appeal by SEPANSO, a Federation of Societies for the Study. , Protection and Development of Nature in the South-West, which had filed a complaint against X after the initial facts in May 2014.
Winds greater than the authorized limit
But at the end of December therefore, the Libourne prosecutor’s office finally opened a judicial investigation against X for “inappropriate use of plant protection products”, the Libourne prosecutor’s office told Agence France Presse (AFP), and SEPANSO was finally able to constitute itself. civil party in this case.
Thus, the Federation of associations for the protection of nature in the Aquitaine region, through the voice of its lawyer Me François Ruffié, welcomed this decision on Thursday and indicated that it was not aiming, through its constitution as a civil party, for anything other than “An application of the Rural Code whose legislation is very well done” in terms of the use of phytosanitary products, “she told the site. France 3 Aquitaine.
“It is not a problem of phytosanitary products in general, organic, or viticulture. It is a problem of law enforcement targeting “a minority of winegrowers who do not do their job properly,” she added.
Indeed, the solution to this case relates in particular to the winds, which on the day of the spreading, were probably of an intensity greater than 3 Beaufort (12 to 19 km / h), the maximum threshold provided for by law, to allow the spraying or powdering of phytosanitary products, according to a source close to the investigation, explains The Parisian.
.
