Protests flared up in Brittany and around La Rochelle on Monday, with tractorcades blocking motorways and farmers burning tyres on the access roads to several large towns.

On Tuesday, the movement spread to the Massif Central region hit by last year’s bluetongue outbreak. Local farm leader Gilles Cabart told the AFP news agency that beef prices there had fallen by 50c/kg in the past 15 months.

Similar protests last July featured calls for a boycott of imported meat, which caused difficulties for Irish exporters.

Pig farmer Didier Lucas, chair of the majority FDSEA farmers’ union in the Côtes-d’Armor district of Brittany, told the Irish Farmers Journal that more widespread road blockades were planned across western France on Wednesday and Thursday.

He said that although the pig price had dropped from €1.40/kg last summer to €1.08/kg today, consumers were still paying the same €8/kg for sausages. “There is money in store somewhere along the supply chain, and in the meantime farmers are going bankrupt,” Lucas said.

€700m government plan

Agriculture Minister Stéphane Le Foll said last week that 15,000 farmers had already received emergency financial assistance since a government income support scheme opened in September, and 25,000 more applications were being processed. The French rescue package for livestock farming amounts to €700m in payments and tax breaks over the 2015-2017 period and Le Foll said he would review it to address the continuing income crisis.

Lucas said farmers were not interested in “more cashflow assistance that results only in more debt” and want “the state to legislate on how margins are shared across the supply chain instead”.

After similar road blockades by taxi drivers in Paris on Tuesday resulted in a meeting with Prime Minister Manuel Valls, Lucas said farmers would continue protest until they, too, can see Valls.

He added that Breton MEP Alain Cadec offered to help organise a meeting with European Commissioner for Agriculture Phil Hogan.

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Panic on the streets of Europe – farmers protest in force