The French and their animals

Press, 9 August 1980, Page 15

The French and their animals

From

PAUL WEBSTER

in Paris

As a butcher’s son, Pierre Micaux expected to be able to take in his stride a presidential commission to investigate animal : cruelty in France. Now, the Government deputy has told Valery Giscard d’Estaing that his nine-month inquiry turned into “a nightmare.” Micaux 'is recommending stringent measures to the President — himself a dog-lover — to remove what he considers

France’s record as the cruellest country in Europe towards both domestic and farm animals. The French are among the world’s leading pet owners, with seven million dogs and nine million cats. However, according to Micaux, there is little relation between owning an animal and loving it. Lax animal protection laws make prosecutions for cruelty rare, but the most striking figure is the num- • ber of animals abandoned each year. Nearly a mili lion are turned out, mostly at holiday time — eight times more than in Britain where there are fewer pets. I? The nightmare for Mi--4 caux was, however, more from the effect of visiting battery farms, abattoirs, an*’ vivisection centres, where he had to dig through lies and deception •*= to find the truth of an in- . human trade. ■j “Once, an abattoir tried to hide the fact that it fwas awaiting a shipment :of horses,” he said, “It

was only by chance that I discovered the animals dying of thirst and hunger in a railway wagon where they had been shunted after several weeks’ travelling from Yugoslavia. “Later, the owners of an animal clinic tried to hide a vivisection operation on a cat which was nearer to butchery than surgery.” The shipping of live horses, particularly from Eastern Europe, in cruel conditions has become a

national scandal .since Brigitte Bardot took up their cause. Micaux says their conditions are terrifying, even after they arrive in France.

He has asked for the closure of one Statecontrolled abattoir where “horses are killed on an assembly line, the animals stamping and whinnying as they drag themselves through the blood and remains of the preceding horses.”

“It was abominable,” Micaux said. “Unfortunately, it is only one element of industrial animal slaughter and battery farming. I saw rabbits piled five or six in a tiny case so that they had to climb on each other’s backs as they waited to be fed and killed.

“They were kept in total darkness for a year until they were slaughtered by being cut through their eyes to make them bleed as much as possible.”

There were also cases of maltreatment involved in

the transport of live wild animals. For many purchasers it was better that the animal arrived dead. “The buyer recovers the insurance and still has the pelt,” Micaux said. “Wild animals are being shipped by their sellers who know they are just being sent to die in agony.” His recommendations were complicated by brushes with animal lovers whom, he s.Md, pressed for radical solu« tions such as carrying out

experiments, not on animals, but on jailed prisoners, immigrants, or even aborted foetuses. With the support of President Giscard, who has four labradors and who told Micaux that he considered the matter “a personal affair," he is likely to ask for 300 changes in French law.

Among the solutions would be the compulsory tattooing of all pets io make their owners* identifiable if- they are abandoned, and strict new laws to control • mail order pet buying, which is centred mainly in Britain and Belgium. Apart from heavier fines for all forms of cruelty, he is demanding new controls for battery farming and strict limits on animal experiments. His recommendations also have a kinder side for real animal lovers. Micaux with Giscard’s backing, is to ask for new laws to enforce hospitals and old people’s homes to make it possible for pensioners to bring their pets with them. — Copyright, London Observer Service,