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.
