Senators voted Thursday to approve the law, which passed the House of Representatives last year, according to a statement from Joël Giraud, the Minister of Rural Affairs.
Giraud said he was celebrating the adoption of the law, which aims to “define and protect the sensory heritage of the French countryside.”
Better understanding of the typical ‘sounds and smells’ of rural areas will be useful in ‘preventing differences of opinion between neighbors’, the statement said.
Saint-Pierre-d’Oléron in the west of France was the rural community in the middle of Maurice, the rooster’s trial in 2019.
Hemis / Alamy
The local authorities will have the task of ‘defining rural heritage, including its sensory identity’, Giraud said.
“This is a real victory for rural communities,” he added. “Do your part, let’s preserve the countryside.”
France has seen an increasing number of social conflicts between long-term residents of rural communities and new arrivals.
One of the emblematic cases was a rooster named Maurice, who was executed in July 2019 after neighbors complained about his early morning crow.
However, a court in Rochefort, western France, rejected the neighbors’ complaints about noise pollution and ordered them to pay damages of € 1,000 (approximately $ 1,200).
The case symbolizes increasing division between rural and urban France, as the neighbors were urbanites who visited Saint-Pierre-d’Oléron only a few times a year.
“He’s a rooster. Roosters have the desire to sing,” Corinne Fesseau, who owned Maurice, said during the trial.
“This is the countryside. We need to protect the countryside,” she added.
Christophe Sueur, mayor of Saint-Pierre-d’Oléron, told CNN the verdict was “common sense” and added: “I am all for preserving French traditions. The rooster crow is a French tradition that must be preserved. ‘