Anne Laurence Petel is LREM member of the 14th district of Bouches-dur-Rhône (mainly Aix-en-Provence).

Member of the study group on the condition and animal welfare, she is one of the 35 parliamentarians who signed the forum calling for the ban on bullfighting published in the

JDD

this Sunday.

Have you ever attended a bullfight, a Camargue race, or a bullfighting event?

When I was little, my father and my grandfather took me to see bullfights.

I must have been 14 or 15 years old.

More recently, ten years ago, I went to see my nephew, who was on Erasmus in Madrid and who took me to the corrida on May 2, an event.

He probably thought to make me happy but I did not watch the killings.

On the other hand, I can understand all the decorum.

The arena, the clothes of light, because that's really it, the bullfighter touched by the rays of the setting sun;

there is something magical.

But I believe that magic is in decorum, it cannot be in progressive torture until killing.

Is it the role of parliamentarians to want to legislate cultural practices?

Animal welfare, animal health, animal welfare are things that have concerned me for a very long time.

This cause cannot be of variable geometry.

We must fight against mistreatment.

In the transport of live animals, livestock ships, for example, it is catastrophic.

Likewise, there are trucks that stay parked for 24 or 48 hours in direct sunlight.

This fight against mistreatment must be in all sectors.

Circuses with animals are now banned, which are almost also a tradition.

Today, the idea is not to undermine a tradition but how to make this tradition evolve towards something which concerns the majority of people and which is: how we no longer mistreat animals?

Isn't it easier to attack bullfighting or the circus than against industry?

I assure you, our action is also against the industry.

Stopping live castrations of piglets from January 2022 seems obvious to us.

Likewise, we will stop crushing the chicks.

Are you comparing 50 million chicks with around 700 fighting bulls performed each year?

People eat animals, so naturally you need slaughterhouses.

There, we are on a form of spectacle.

Is the violence of a show where the animal is mutilated until it is put to death, worthy?

Is it making death a disturbing spectacle?

Hunting with hounds is also cruel?

I am also against hunting with hounds even if I know that the people who fight against say that Emmanuel Macron protects the hunters.

We are the only ones in Europe to allow it.

The English crews come to us… The hunters are a huge lobby, it's obvious, but we have already succeeded in stopping the glue hunt.

Moreover, before the municipal elections, I got caught with hunters who told me "we will not vote for you".

None of the 35 signatory parliamentarians comes from a constituency where the bullfighting culture is prevalent.

Thus, this position can be seen as demagogic and without possible electoral sanction ...

Yes, finally I have hunters in my constituency, and they know my position on the glue hunt, it is a real conviction.

Why does none of your colleagues, elected officials from Camargue, Roussillon or Landes take this position with you?

This forum was made in the summer, following the campaign of the Bardot Foundation and circulated within the study group on the animal condition.

So we didn't ask them too much.

Placing the debate on animal welfare at all levels, isn't it the risk of relaunching the debate on foie gras, for example, a dish that can be part of the composition of the French gastronomic meal, registered in the heritage? Unesco World?

This is one of the things that some associations are asking for.

My maternal family is from the southwest, my grandfather made foie gras - but he didn't raise ducks.

I used to go to the farms to get the livers.

There is a certain practice, artisanal, which has nothing to do with intensive practices and I believe that the debate is rather there.

How do you sort out the bullfighting culture?

The Camargue race yes, the corrida, no?

Which doesn't torture the animal and kill it, why not?

After all, maybe bullfighting can remain a spectacle without a killing?

You have to be persistent.

It's always difficult to tackle cultural things, just as it is complicated to tackle hunting with hounds.

Things can go on in a different way, we can adapt, without killing, without necessarily martyring the animal.

I think we have to reinvent our traditions, and reinvent them in the light of the values ​​that today are shared by many French people, young people, on the environment and animal welfare.

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