Tiger shot dead in the middle of Paris: One Voice has filed a complaint and has asked for the ban on animals in circuses
The
place for wild animals is not in circuses but in the wild. Circuses
cannot guarantee the safety of people or the well-being and safety of
the animals.
These
companies are obviously not able to meet the safety requirements set
by the 2011 decree, as witnessed by the accidents that occur every
year, escaping animals, and / or attacking humans, which leads to
death of humans and the death of the animals.
Circuses
know that they risk penalties if they report accidents, so we can
question the reliability of their statements. They keep animals that
represent real risks to the public. These same animals which, in
zoos, are the subject of very strict regulations with regard to
security.
One
Voice has been denouncing security problems in circuses for years,
especially since elephant Samba killed a man during his escape in
September 2013 in Lizy-sur-Ourq. Elephants currently in circus
menageries are kept enclosed using electric wires, the same system
as used for cows.
Muriel
Arnal, president of One Voice, says: “In recent months,
elephants have been repeatedly” paraded “freely in the
streets. We wrote to the Prefects of the regions concerned to ask
them to enforce the law. Nothing has been done, the circuses have not
been sanctioned, the ministry has not reacted either. Do we wait for
an elephant to escape and kill again so that the risks are taken
seriously and that legislation is enforced? The
trainer, owner of the tiger shot, sits on the commission of the
Ministry of Ecology who gives the circuses the authorization to hold
wild animals, is this serious? An animal belonging to a protected
species according to Appendix I of CITES, is protected because it is
in great danger of extinction. One such protected species has just
been killed in the city where it should have never been in the first
place. Circuses should no longer be allowed to keep wild animals.”
One
Voice files a complaint for the violation of an animal’s physical
integrity.
Already
22 countries in the world and 68 French municipalities refuse
circuses with wild animals. The National Association of Veterinarians
and the Federation of Veterinary Syndicates of France (FSVF) have
also recognized this, at the request of One Voice, that their
well-being is incompatible with the activity of circuses. Ending the
exploitation of wild animals in circuses is an inescapable evolution
for all modern societies. The culture of the circus must abandon this
practice which subjects’ children to a spectacle of violence and
the non-respect of animals.
It
is time to end wild animals in trucks being transported on the roads
in France. Several decades have passed already for elephants that
were born in the wild of Africa or Asia! All have the right to a
dignified end of life, in appropriate structures, far from being hit
and of boredom.
One
Voice, in a letter co-signed with Jacques-Antoine Granjon, CEO and
founder of the group Private Sales, asked Nicolas Hulot a few days
ago to take a stand against animals in circuses.