The Senate is looking from Thursday on the welfare of animals.

Eight months after its adoption by the deputies, the bill to fight against animal abuse will arrive at the Luxembourg Palace.

The senators, to the chagrin of the associations, are preparing above all to unravel several measures.

The text carried by the presidential majority, adopted almost unanimously in January at first reading by the National Assembly, must in particular help to avoid impulsive purchases of pets, which then lead to too many abandons.

It also intends to tighten the penalties in the event of mistreatment.

More and more dropouts

Nearly 16,900 animals, a record number, were collected by the SPA this summer, including 11,669 cats. Each year some 100,000 animals are abandoned in France. The bill therefore creates a certificate of knowledge and commitment, which will be issued upon the first acquisition of a pet. It will remind you of the care and vaccination obligations and the costs to be expected. The Senate Economic Affairs Committee completed this "advance" by introducing a 7-day reflection period.

However, the senators maintained the possibility of sales of pets in pet shops, whose deputies voted to ban in 2024. "Closing pet shops would inevitably switch to an uncontrollable illicit trade", argued rapporteur LR Anne Chain-Larché.

In return, the senators have planned a regular update of the regulations applying to these animal facilities.

They banned animals in the window or postal shipping, and introduced a partnership between shelters, associations without shelters and animal shops.

Circuses and dolphinariums at the heart of the debates

The senators also returned to another strong provision which aims to gradually prohibit the keeping of wild animals in traveling circuses and in dolphinariums. "The Senate is fully aware that practices must evolve", underlined Anne Chain-Larché, specifying that it concerns "21 dolphins in France, spread over two parks, and 4 orcas". “However, we must also hear the demand of these parks that want to work”. Senators propose that a committee, made up of specialists, work on new regulations. For traveling circuses, the animal species targeted by the bans would be determined by decree, after consulting a specialist council.

For their part, associations for the defense of animals have sounded the hallali.

The SPA thus denounced "a dangerous back-pedaling, which betrays a backward-looking posture in terms of respect for animals".

For Code Animal, which campaigns for the ban of circuses with animals, the passage in committee is "a disaster".

The Animalist Party called for a “peaceful” rally on Thursday afternoon in front of the Senate.

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