News Archive - Page 61 of 146

Non-protected herds and wolves killed: Ferus, One Voice, and the Pôle Grands Prédateurs in court

Non-protected herds and wolves killed: Ferus, One Voice, and the Pôle Grands Prédateurs are filing two pleas in Doubs
20.12.2022
France
Non-protected herds and wolves killed: Ferus, One Voice, and the Pôle Grands Prédateurs in court
Wildlife

The Jura mountains are a wolf recolonisation front. The species has only reproduced there since 2019 and today there is an inventory of only two packs, including on the Swiss side. The status of this species therefore remains very precarious. However, following several attacks on young calves left in the field without their mother and with no protection, French public authorities prefer to kill wolves because they have decided to consider bovine herds as non-protectable: two animals have already been slaughtered this autumn including the mother of the pack in Risoux. A useless ‘solution’ that does not protect herds and wipes out families of wolves. And an illegal solution. Our associations have therefore filed a plea at the Besançon Administrative Tribunal against two decrees for defence shots signed by the Doubs Prefect on 10 October 2022.

Our legal arguments focus largely on two main areas:

The unenforceable nature and illegality of the technical note

The absolute ‘non-protectability’ of bovine (and equine) herds on principle focuses on a simple technical note from the Prefect coordinating the National Wolf Plan of 28 June 2019. This note has never been published so it is unenforceable and has no legal value.
This note highlights « unsuitable protection methods« , and for good reason! No research or serious testing of passive or active protection measures for bovines has actually been developed in France, while wolves have been back in our country for thirty years now.
As the technical note bluntly admits, it is « the State’s choice “not to make bovine and equine herds eligible for protection”« . In view of its unenforceable nature, this note cannot now base decisions on the authorisation of shooting at wolves under the exonerating framework of non-protectable herds.
The general nature of the ‘non-protectability’ rule for all bovine and equine herds is therefore perfectly legal.

Risk of a local population disappearing

In the « Guidance document on the strict protection of animal species of interest to the community pursuant to the Habitats Directive 92/43/CEE, established by the European Commission for the application of articles 12 and 16 of the Habitats Directive » (guidance document on which the French State must rely to develop its regulations with regard to the protection of wolves), it indicates that ‘ »an appropriate evaluation of the impact of a particular exemption should in most, if not all, cases be at a level below that of the biogeographical region, for the sake of ecological coherence. A level of interest in this regard could be that of the (local) population. »
Which is to say that the authorisation of shooting wolves — even if they respect the shooting caps on a national level — must also be followed on a local level.
Yet the increase of defence shot decrees (more than 25) in the Jura mountains therefore also puts the population of wolves in great danger at a local level.
Finally, the non-publication of all defence shot decrees, if they are not illegal, makes decisions when it comes to shooting non-transparent and does not help in establishing a transparent dialogue between different parties.

Let’s remind ourselves again that the studies carried out (such as the thesis by Oksana Grente, France – 2021) have not approved shooting at wolves as a solution when it comes to preying on herds.
By continuing in this way, our three associations maintain that the State is wasting precious time for farmers and lacks in its advisory role for implementing effective protection measures in order to live alongside this protected species!
The only effective solution that remains is the effective protection of herds, bovines included.

Passerelles Pound: a German Shepherd killed after the death of her human

Passerelles Pound: a German Shepherd killed after the death of her human
20.12.2022
France
Passerelles Pound: a German Shepherd killed after the death of her human
Domestic animals

We crossed paths with Holga. This dog was sent to a pound after the loss of her human companion. She waited there with no care and no attention before being eliminated like a piece of rubbish.

She was called Holga. This German Shepherd had a happy existence for a long time with her human. She watched over him for years, offering him tenderness and loyalty. And she had visibly been very loved in return.

And then everything changed: elderly, the man passed away. As often happens in this situation, the family did not want to take Holga in. The children contacted the Passerelles Pound to get rid of her…

Abandonment added to the pain of grief for the dog. Placed in quarantine on 23 November 2021, Holga found herself in a cold and bare cage.

When our investigators went there for the first time, they saw that she was injured, languishing behind bars. At that time, they did not know why she was there: was she boarding, at the shelter, or impounded? It was only during their second visit a few days later when they discovered her body in a freezer, her notes filed under deceased animals (with no mention of her serious injury) and her — brief — history, that they realised the tragedy that had happened behind closed doors.

The tragic story of Holga is not an isolated case. Thousands of animals perish in the same way in our country when their human dies or falls ill. Whatever their state of health, abandoned by everyone, they are slaughtered without being put up for adoption or if they are not adopted.

Rally with us to get Holga’s story known, just as despicable for her as the memory of her old friend. Everyone must be made aware that sometimes dogs, and often cats, are treated as rubbish by pounds.

Sign for an end to omerta and euthanasia in pounds!

Translated from the French by Joely Justice

Our fight against fur continues!

Our fight against fur continues!
19.12.2022
Europe
Our fight against fur continues!
Fashion

One year after the end of fur production in France, it is time to say farewell to this cruel industry in the whole of Europe! Supported by One Voice, the European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI) for a ban on the production and marketing of fur in all member states has already reached a million signatures! Help us to get even more before 18 May: we are doing everything in our power to put an end to this deadly fad in Europe!

The closure of the most recent French mink fur farm is a true victory for our association and its long-term campaign against these farms, who have revealed their true colours year after year. Cruel, unsanitary, overpopulated and extremely harmful, they revealed themselves to the world as true breeding grounds for infectious diseases at the start of the Covid-19 epidemic, particularly in Denmark and the Netherlands, However, we must not stop here!

Because what is the point of a ban on production for ethical and ecological reasons if selling is still allowed, thus perpetuating the extreme suffering of mink who end up self-mutilating through stress in their cramped cages? To definitively say no to the use of fur in ready-to-wear fashion, still very prevalent in China and in Russia, we must also stop the importation of it.

Since November 2021, we have continued to support our partners from Fur Free Alliance throughout the world and to offer the Free Fur Retailer (FFR) label to brands guaranteed to be fur-free. In September 2022, we also participated in the annual march against fur in Paris. So that our Swedish, Spanish and Polish neighbours can also begin to benefit from these measures, and so that mink, foxes, and raccoon dogs are no longer massacred on the whim of an unethical trend.

Since having published an investigation into luxury leather at the Sobeval veal slaughterhouse in Dordogne in August 2021, we have continued to report on the cruelty of farms that are usually hidden from us. Muriel Arnal, One Voice’s Founding President, has once again spoken on this subject at the Conscious Festival in Paris during the panel discussion on 2 October, set up in connection with the screening of the film Slay by our friend Rebecca Capelli.

Six months after it opening, the European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI), led by Eurogroup for Animals, has reached one million signatures throughout Europe. We still need half a million to validate this number and to force the European Commission to make decisions on these measures. To put an end to fur, a cause that is almost recognised in people’s minds despite some people’s vanity, we need to be successful in rallying much more! In France, only 75,000 of you have signed; this is infinitesimal in relation to the stakes of this campaign and to all of you who follow us and share our battles.

To get fur banned, we have an impressive direct democracy tool, a type of petition on steroids. Let’s not waste this opportunity! Until 18 May 2023, every signature counts. Yours, those of you who support One Voice, but also those from your close friends and family. If you know people with a large community on social media, this is also the time to convince them to talk about it and to invite others to join us. Animals are counting on you!

Translated from the French by Joely Justice

One Voice is defending a caracal, a victim of wild animal trafficking

One Voice is defending a caracal, a victim of wild animal trafficking
15.12.2022
France
One Voice is defending a caracal, a victim of wild animal trafficking
Wildlife

In August 2021, the Athénas Centre welcomed a caracal kept illegally by an individual near Dijon. One Voice is suing for this caracal alongside our partner to fight against wild animal trafficking.

On Friday 16 December 2022, almost a year and a half after the fact, an inhabitant of Côte-d’Or will be tried at the Dijon Legal Tribunal at an appearance on prior admission of guilt for having illegally kept a caracal. He is accused: of having opened an establishment to keep non-domestic animals without authorisation, of having exploited this establishment with no certificate of competency, and of having transferred animals without authorisation.

This illegal trade inflicts great suffering on the individuals concerned, dragged from the freedom of where they were born and brought up in a farm, where they are considered solely as goods, respected only for their market value, and left at the hands of traffickers’ greed. Their intrinsic value, their right to live in peace, and their role in ecosystems — so badly damaged by humans — fall by the wayside.

Entrusted to the Athénas Centre by court order in 2021, the caracal should have been sent back to its original habitat. Everything had been planned by the Association: the travel costs to South Africa to a shelter specialising in big cat rehabilitation… Despite their efforts to offer a dignified life to this caracal, the Regional Directorate for the Environment, Development and Housing (DREAL) and the French Office for Biodiversity (OFB) have decided to have it removed from the Association! We share this lack of understanding and anger with our partner.

With their decision, the authorities have shown that they do not want anything to do with the suffering of wild animals. Their repeated mistrust of animal defenders (we are thinking about Maya, placed into a zoo in Italy) is not encouraging for the future of everyone on the planet, in a context where they should have every interest in worrying about it. We will continue to fight so that more animals can discover the path to a dignified life, much like Patty, Marli, Hannah, and Céleste.

The hearing will therefore be held on Friday 16 December at the Dijon Legal Tribunal.

Translated from the French by Joely Justice

Air France communicates the date on which it will stop transporting primates for animal experimentation

Air France communicates the date on which it will stop transporting primates for animal experimentation
13.12.2022
France
Air France communicates the date on which it will stop transporting primates for animal experimentation
Animal testing

Six months after the announcement from Air France about putting a stop to taking part in transporting primates for laboratories following One Voice and its partners’ campaign, the company has responded to Aymeric Caron. From June 2023, primates will no longer pass through Air France’s baggage hold for animal testing. A wonderful victory for the associations and the REV [ Revolution for the Living] MEP.

Photo: « laboratory investigation », family of monkeys at St Kitts waiting to be exported by Air France ©BUAV

The long-term campaign by One Voice (since 1996) and its partners Action for Primates (UK), Stop Camarles (Spain), and Peta (USA) for Air France to stop taking part in the transportation of primates to laboratories has finally paid off. It was one of the latest ‘national’ companies in Europe to continue to transport primates from countries where they live freely to those where they are experimented on on laboratory benches.

Animal testing is no longer allowed to be carried out on first generation (F1) primates within the European Union since November this year. However, breeding activity continues in Asia and Mauritius leaving the door open to potential illegal capturing.

Last June, in response to this campaign, Air France announced that they would stop transporting monkeys in the baggage hold of aeroplanes, ignoring the cut-off date in question. For months, the airline company refused to respond to animal defence associations.

In October, Aymeric Caron, a long-term activist for animal rights and from now on Paris’ MEP, wrote to the directors of the Air France-KLM group to get the ball rolling and to find out more about the date on which the airline company’s contracts with laboratories will actually come to an end. His approach has been a success.

In response to this letter, the DGA representative from Air France Cargo announced that the airline company’s contracts would end in June 2023 at the latest

From this date, Air France will no longer transport monkeys from anywhere in the world (the island of Mauritius, Canada, Cambodia, Indonesia, etc.) to France and other countries for laboratories.

Aymeric Caron and the One Voice team very warmly thank the company, a jewel in France and worldwide, for its solid and concrete commitment to no longer take part in the trade of primates for laboratories. They are asking them to go further in extending their decision to other animal species, particularly dogs.

Translated from the French by Joely Justice

New investigation! Training for hunting licences infiltrated by One Voice

New investigation! Training for hunting licences infiltrated by One Voice
13.12.2022
France
New investigation! Training for hunting licences infiltrated by One Voice
Wildlife

After preparing for the written questions in the hunting licence exam, future hunters have two half-days of training in practical exercises. Our investigators infiltrated this practical training in Occitania in the summer of 2019. On site, some future hunters handled a gun for the first time. Due to a lack of time, trainers encouraged licence candidates to take a weapon and practice at home to finish preparing for the exam on their own. On D-day, the exam has to take place on the same route as the training. Ideal conditions for inexperienced shooters to obtain their hunting licence and become a danger to their environment.

The footage filmed by our investigators during the practical training for the exam for a hunting licence left little room for doubt: the time to practice before potentially obtaining a licence is far too short for future hunters to learn to handle a weapon safely. Especially since some were handling a gun for the first time. The tension is palpable between a trainer and a hopeful licence holder who struggles to place his finger correctly on his weapon before shooting. After having repeated the set position three times, the trainer eventually advised him to “borrow a gun” and practice the position a hundred times at home at the weekend. Encouragement to train alone before the exam, repeated by other trainers and well incorporated by hopeful licence holders, visibly worried about the speed of the training. “The route, over there, is a bit hard for me”, admitted a young 16-year-old girl at the end of the training. “Especially since it’s the first time… I am going to try to find someone who can lend me a gun so I can practice.” Impossible to know, in these circumstances, if the hopeful licence holders will practice by the rule book. In any case, 70% of them on average will obtain this licence for only €46.

Safety rules abandoned on site

Furthermore, discussions with hunters revealed routine violations of the law. “At the beginning, if we did everything that we learnt here, other hunters would say « what planet is this from? », because older hunters absolutely do not follow safety rules”, says one woman in particular. We therefore learnt that to be accepted by other hunters, new hunting licence holders must forget the safety rules they learnt already too quickly during their training. Another concern, given that 90 hunting accidents were still recorded in the 2021-2022 season.

As a reminder, our September 2022 survey with Ipsos revealed that despite a slight increase in people declaring themselves in favour of hunting, 48% of French people are still opposed to it and that, above all, 87% think that hunting poses safety issues for walkers during their walks in the countryside.

To radically reform hunting, sign our petition and let’s call on the government! Let’s ask them to put an end to this activity’s worst practices!

One Voice’s notes: the images date to the summer of 2019. With two teams having investigated up to the end of 2021, we have delayed the broadcast of certain videos to guarantee their safety. You can find the work already published below:

In France, foxes are killed year round: infiltration into an underground hunting group.
Badger hunting: hell underground
Penned hunting infiltrated by One Voice

Translated from the French by Joely Justice

Defending wolves at administrative tribunals continues for One Voice!

Defending wolves at administrative tribunals continues for One Voice!
12.12.2022
France
Defending wolves at administrative tribunals continues for One Voice!
Wildlife

One Voice is fighting to get two prefectural decrees that we oppose allowing wolves to be killed with reinforced defensive shots suspended and cancelled. One in Var, for which the hearing will take place on Tuesday 13 December at 2:30pm in Toulon, the other in the Alpes-Maritimes for which we will be heard on 14 December at 11am in Nice. This is urgent for these animals from a protected species, hunted relentlessly since they came back to French soil.

A demonised perspective on wolves and dogmatic decisions

Whether it be in Nîmes or Montpellier, where the previous hearings took place, urgent applications judges have not been kind to wolves. One, after having rolled their eyes when our lawyer spoke, ultimately
did not give a reason for his decision to dismiss. As for the other, while there was no report or document from administration, they stated during the hearing that they had no reason to doubt the prefecture’s word. What use is an administrative tribunal in this case if not to settle debates without dogmatism or ideology?

We hope this time that our arguments will be, if not listened to, at least heard, or even considered! Who knows, the judges may finally allow themselves to be convinced…? In fact, to allow wolves to be the target of shooting and as it concerns a species protected on a European level and also under French law, a certain amount of factors must be met.

Prefectures do not even bother to properly justify their decisions

The Var decree of 7 November that we are contesting allows reinforced defence shots on wolves at the Verjon Common Agricultural Operating Group, shots that are an exception to this protection. Yet the Prefecture’s justification is very vague and stereotypical (on protection measures, attacks, execution of simple shots). We are not particularly certain that simple defence shots have really been carried out before going straight to this new, increased stage… Likewise, there is still a grey area on the protection of animals bred by this agricultural group.

In the same way, we attacked the decree from the Alpes-Maritimes Prefect on 2 November authorising reinforced shots on wolves. Prefectural motivations featuring here are just as imprecise.

We therefore have a serious doubt on the legality of the decrees, and the deaths of the wolves concerned is an irreversible and vital urgency for them and for the conservation of their species, which is still very weak. Two key elements to win an emergency interim suspension.

Worthless protection

In France, authorities prefer wolves to be dead. This is why they are not really as protected as they were when they were not in national territory and they species was ‘extinct’ here… In fact, it was not even necessary to take the slightest protection measures, since they were not present! It is a fool’s game that we are playing with the Ministry of the Ecological Transition and the Prefect coordinating the Wolf Plan.

We know that the hunting lobby and farmers are pushing our leaders to declassify wolves to make individuals who are already vulnerable from this species huntable once again. This lobby spends its time demonising and ‘crying wolf’ even when animals from other species are involved. A scandal that moves no one other than us, animal defenders. It would be unacceptable for us to get to this point. Wolves have an essential role in ecosystems and the right to live in peace by and for themselves.

The State authorised 174 wolves to be killed officially each year and each year this number is reviewed as increasing. It was 118 in 2021… Without counting those who will be irreversibly poached. We will never stop fighting for them.

Translated from the French by Joely Justice

Official hunts: One Voice is fighting the decrees from the Moselle and Bouches-du-Rhône Prefects

Official hunts: One Voice is fighting the decrees from the Moselle and Bouches-du-Rhône Prefects
12.12.2022
France
Official hunts: One Voice is fighting the decrees from the Moselle and Bouches-du-Rhône Prefects
Wildlife

Official hunts authorised in Moselle and Bouches-du-Rhône are not justified under the law, and above all pursue the objective of satisfying hunters’ needs. One Voice is fighting two decrees, to remind the prefects that official hunts, different from the hunting regime, must remain exceptional and respond to precise circumstances. The hearing against the prefect’s decree is set for 14 December 2022 in Strasbourg, and the Marseille Administrative Tribunal urgent applications judge will set the date for the hearing against the Bouches-du-Rhône decree at a later date.

Official hunts allow the prefect to arrange, at any time, including during the night and outside of the hunting season, the killing of certain animals. However, this possibility is guided by the law and must respect the conditions set in the Environmental Code. The hunt must in particular be legally justified by proof of ‘significant damage’ caused by animals to crops, or even due to health risks.

Nowadays, official hunts have turned away from their original aim for the sole purpose of responding to hunters’ demands.

The Moselle Prefect’s decree of 9 November that we are fighting authorises an official hunt of more than seven months (up to 30 June 2023) targeting wild boars, wood pigeons, stock doves, rock doves, rooks, and carrion crows. The decree is clear: its objective is “the destruction of all” of the six species of animals concerned. A planned massacre.

In Bouches-du-Rhône, the Prefect authorised an official deer hunt. The hunter who will carry it out will put all those who it comes across in several hectares of land to death, and can hunt them “in all areas where they come from” and “in all areas in which they take refuge”. Everyone and everywhere, in short…

Prefectures could have made an effort to argue to show that they do not blindly obey the hunters’ lobby… But in both cases, no precise figures are provided to support the ‘significant damage’ caused by the animals targeted. Prefects are happy with general statements and reports on damage that they have no proof of. They also do not provide enough guidance on official hunts, either geographically or of their plans. And clearly, these two decrees have not been submitted for public consultation…

Official hunts must remain rare, and cannot establish exemptions in agreement with hunters for them to get out of following hunting regulations.

While hunts have already begun in these two departments, One Voice will be at the Strasbourg and Marseille Administrative Tribunals to get animals’ voices heard and remind the prefects that they cannot avoid the law to satisfy hunters.

One Voice is reiterating its appeal for a radical reform of hunting: to support this appeal, sign our petition!

Translated from the French by Joely Justice

One Voice is requesting a ban on a very painful experiment on more than 27,000 animals

One Voice is requesting a ban on a very painful experiment on more than 27,000 animals
12.12.2022
France
One Voice is requesting a ban on a very painful experiment on more than 27,000 animals
Animal testing

On 14 December, the urgent applications judge from the Paris Administrative Tribunal, referred to by One Voice, ruled on the request to suspend the authorisation of the animal testing project. The targeted project was authorised on 10 July 2022 by the Ministry of Research, and planned to subject more than 27,000 rodents to ‘severe’ experiments which would artificially induce real epileptic seizures through audio shockwaves, injections, or electric shocks in the eyes or brain, several times over for some of them.

When you know how sociable and creative these small mammals are, your heart sinks at the idea of what they endure in laboratories. This is no exception. Researchers will induce epileptic seizures on 8700 mice, 17,730 rats, and 1000 gerbils. How?

After having had holes made in their skulls and their brains filled with electrodes and various objects, each of these individuals will have to endure electric shocks or be exposed to stressful sounds at a very high volume until it causes a loss of consciousness and convulsions. In the United States, in a similar procedure, rodents were enclosed in a box for three whole minutes with a domestic security alarm set at 110-120 dB – which is very loud, especially for a mouse. Methods are as varied as they are horrifying.

One Voice is asking for the project to be cancelled

We discovered this project after its publication on the ALURES database, which lists animal testing project summaries approved within the European Union since 2021.

On 9 September, we asked the Ministry of Research to send us the necessary documents to better understand the project. Two months later, they simply sent us the authorisation report and the sheet containing a ‘favourable’ mention from the ethical committee. The Association has therefore filed an emergency interim suspension proceeding and a cancellation plea at the Paris Administrative Tribunal.

An illegal project…

The regulations are clear on this subject: the reuse of animals who have been subjected to an initial severe procedure is supposed to be forbidden. What’s more, the committee who assessed it came down against ‘replacement’ (one of the ‘three Rs’ in animal testing).

Furthermore, the project summary that we obtained only mentioned, with regard to the efforts made to reduce the suffering of the animals used, administering an anaesthetic gel on rodents’ eyes and post-operative painkillers. This is the bare minimum required by regulations, and this still results in them being classified as ‘severe’ procedures – the highest level of suffering in the European Union regulation framework.

…so it is possible for it to happen!

Still, according to the project summary, the aim of these tests is to verify the toxicity and efficacy of new pharmacological substances. But when we know the mediocre track record of toxicity tests on animals to predict human responses to medications, there is a lot to doubt about the benefits of this new project.

The laboratory definitively maintains that, despite the existence of neuronal cultures or the possibility of working on pieces of brain from deceased epileptic people, the efficacy of substances ‘must’ be shown on animals. No need to argue apparently. But for One Voice, the ‘replacement’ of animals with other methods would be the ideal, an ideal also aimed towards by the European regulation that implemented the 3 Rs.

In addition, the laboratory presents reuse of the same animals for several epileptic seizures as a ‘reduction’ method for the number of animals used. Or how to artificially reduce the figures by inflicting repeated suffering on the same individuals… this is where we go back to where we started: it is banned.

The hearing will be held on 14 December at 3pm at the Paris Administrative Tribunal.

To go further and discover different types of research and levels of animal suffering in French laboratories, you can consult our recently published site dedicated to analysing ministerial data.

Warning: the content of the below images is difficult to look at.

The visual images at the top of the article do not belong to One Voice and come from Stereotaxic implantation of EEG electrodes in the rat.

Translated from the French by Joely Justice

Pound staff get their hands on stray cats…

Pound staff get their hands on stray cats…
08.12.2022
Normandie
Pound staff get their hands on stray cats…
Domestic animals

Here is the second section of our campaign in pounds in France, which highlights the way in which our country treats cats. This investigation near Avranches in Normandy allows us to show, with a specific case, the very real consequences of individuals and public authorities not being responsible when it comes to cats. In other words, the suffering, disease, and ultimately slaughter – who still dares to talk about euthanasia here?! – of those who do not die in the streets in pounds. One Voice is organising action to raise awareness throughout France, and calling for an urgent plan to combat feline straying.

Gateways to employment, an integration project, made up of odds and ends

Should animals who are already homeless have to endure the lack of hygiene, discomfort, and psychological and social fragility of the humans who look after them once they are rescued?

When we received the first report on this pound-rescue, the Bardot Foundation and former volunteers had already called out to the prefecture several times since 2015, without much success. Like for SIVU 47, the first part of our campaign in pounds, the manager of a neighbouring rescue centre herself had tried over and over again to improve the situation. Including with the support of the Confédération nationale de défense de l’animal [National Confederation for Animal Defence], by bringing their attention to hygiene problems, a lack of respect for the regulations, and a lack of training for the staff with disastrous consequences for the animals.

Gateways to employment also offer workshops aimed at reintegration through other activities such as planting vegetables and plants but also through work. This social mission is exemplary… while sentient beings in distress themselves do not come into play.

Our investigation reveals that most cats taken in are killed there!

When our investigators were finally able to visit the site, lockdowns and interdepartmental transport restrictions having prevented our usual responsiveness, there were several improvements in the infrastructures. In the exterior space of the cattery, for example, a concrete slab had been poured in place of the beaten earth that was there before. But it is still impossible to clean it satisfactorily.

Hygiene, lighting, climatic hazards, illnesses and injuries, escapes: basic problems still existed. For months, no cats were put up for adoption because no treatment was planned for them. After a quarantine spent crammed into a shed with no daylight, without insulation and with no veterinary visit, they were placed into a communal cattery. Before this, there were no preliminary FIV or FeLV tests either. A complete lack of care for these cats, the majority of them affected by coryza and intestinal problems…

Are unwell kittens and cats here being exposed to the cold again now? That is the problem with a lack of public money and precarious solutions: we have to choose between two unsuitable solutions and it is the cats who pay the price.

2020 was a terrible year for cats in the pound-rescue in Sud Manche. Real carnage happened there. The knacker who comes along when the pound has filled their 200kg freezer up with bodies, in other words usually approximately every six months to a year, came three times more often. And for good reason! Hundreds of cats died throughout the year, most of them without explanation.

Did they die from illness? If yes, which one? Were they ‘euthanised’? If yes, by whom and for what reason? One day, ten deaths occurred, nine of which were ‘euthanasias’. Kittens were slaughtered for no reason and sometimes without a veterinarian being present. By whom? How? The cats and the few dogs found in the freezer had not all been seen by a veterinarian. Their open for adoption profile was taken off the Facebook page. Incidentally, we are wondering how some kittens were killed because frozen blood was visible in their throats. The DDPP (veterinary services) pinned this disastrous management on the rescue-pound and asked for new procedures.

The dogs, during the same period, had mostly been returned to their families or adopted. It is clear that the treatment by the rescue-pound is not the same towards them at all… And also the treatment that certain individuals subject cats to by neglecting to get them microchipped and neutered.

Resolve the problem by attacking it at its root

We have been asking for a long time, and even more so since 2018, for an urgent plan for stray cats in France. The November 2021 law illustrates its shortcomings, one of which and by no means least is not having enforced neutering on non-LOOF cats throughout the country, with a clear layout of towns and a real commitment from the State and public services.

The Chatipi programme that we are developing cannot fulfil the educational mission for stray cats and resolve the national problem that they are faced with alone. There are currently fifteen million cats in French homes and double the number of dogs. And almost as many are having to get by alone in our streets, endure the harsh elements, hunger, thirst, and sometimes human violence. Because in our country, no less than eleven million cats are stray in towns, villages, and the countryside. This figure, reported a few years ago, is without doubt very underestimated today.

In pounds, if a cat is not microchipped, it will be killed after the eight required days if it is not claimed or transferred into a rescue centre… if it is not overloaded as is unfortunately the case everywhere.

Individuals must shoulder their responsibilities. Living with one or more cats is not inconsequential. They need us, their supposed independence conceals a great vulnerability. They cannot survive on the streets. No litter should be born there, far away from the sight and protection of humans. Each kitten must be microchipped and neutered before six months of age, and public services must invest hugely in neutering stray cats. In each commune. Pounds and rescue centres are structurally lacking in resources; the State must intervene.

On the weekend of 10 and 11 December, our activists will be out on the streets throughout France (in Aix-en-Provence, Amiens, Gap, Golfe Juan, La Rochelle, Lille, Lyon, Nice, Paris, Tours, Troyes, and on 14 December in Bordeaux), to raise awareness of feline straying and of possible and effective solutions: systematic neutering of non-LOOF cats and the fight against compulsive buying on the internet, particularly with the upcoming holidays.

You can sign our petitions for an urgent plan for stray cats, but also for better protection for cats and dogs, our companions.

Translated from the French by Joely Justice