“At the end of the morning, we fell the circuit breaker. We didn’t break anything, we just cut because it’s no longer tenable.”. Despite the Council of State’s ban on cutting off the 4G relay antenna the day before, farmer Frédéric Sagères took action on Thursday to deactivate it. He suspects the device of affecting the health of his herd of cows in Haute-Loire.

During the action, the Mazeyrat-d’Allier breeder was accompanied and supported by several dozen people, including the village mayor. The disconnection of the antenna aims to see if the condition of the cows improves when the antenna is deactivated, the operator told AFP.

Frédéric Ségales indeed assures that the health of his cattle has deteriorated and that milk production has dropped since the installation of this 4G antenna in July 2021, about 200 meters from his farm. He also claims to have lost about fifty animals out of 200.

The court of Clermont-Ferrand had ordered on May 23 the deactivation of the antenna for two months, to allow the continuation of the legal expertise. The decision gave three months to the State and the operators (Bouygues Telecom, Free, SFR and Orange) to stop its operation.

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The Council of State canceled this decision on Wednesday, noting a “error of law” and considering that the administrative court had not “not characterized the existence of a serious danger”.

The breeder has no doubts: “If they come to put it back in operation, we will have to stop and there will be sacrificed lives”he said.

During the hearing in Clermont-Ferrand, the legal expert pointed out that “this herd is among the top 10% to 20% in the department” and that he had no “no medical elements to explain the sudden drop in milk production, from 15% to 20%, in the days following the installation of the antenna”.

The lawyers of the operators had for their part put forward the absence of scientific element linking the health of cows to electromagnetic fields.

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For the breeder’s lawyer, Me Romain Gourdou, the decision of the Council of State was “a big disappointment”. “The mere fact of seeking the truth is not permitted to us”he said, indicating that he was studying other remedies.

This decision “should not be overinterpreted: it does not signify either the settlement or the end of the dispute” and he is “essential that the judicial expertise prescribed by the judicial court can be completed” said Jean-Noël Barrot, Minister Delegate for the Digital Transition, in a written statement.

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