La Republique en Marche (LREM) spokeswoman Aurore Bergé on Wednesday urged the ban on bullfights for minors, after the controversy over the presence of ministers at one of them, and announced that the majority MPs were working to a proposal for a law on animal welfare.
A bill by the end of the year
"The question of animal welfare can not be reduced to a few crazy Parisian bobos: I do not belong to a sect, I just consider, like a great majority of French people, that it is a major societal question", she argues on franceinfo.
About 50 LREM deputies intend to submit a bill on this issue by the end of the year, she said in deciding against the presence of wild animals in circuses or the existence of dolphinaria . "We have not gone far enough yet and we must be the majority that brings this issue," she pleads.
According to her, this issue also concerns livestock farming: "We have made commitments on the issue of the prohibition of the grinding of chicks, on the live castration of piglets." The Minister (of Agriculture, Ed) said that he would make announcements, we are waiting for them in September and we want to go further with our bill ", she insisted.
Bullfighting is "not a show"
"I would like at least the ban on bullfighting for minors - is it 12, 14, 16? ... We need to move on that," she said. "A certain number of films are forbidden to minors, but a film is a fiction, but bullfighting is not a fiction" and "I do not consider it a show because in the end, whatever happens you have an animal suffering from suffering and dying, "she said.
These statements come a few days after the controversy triggered by the revelation by the daily newspaper Sud Ouest of the presence in August at a bullfight in Bayonne Minister of Agriculture Didier Guillaume and his colleague in charge of the Cohesion of territories Jacqueline Gourault. Didier Guillaume said Monday "regret (r)" to have "shocked" animal welfare activists opposed to bullfighting. "I am the Prime Minister of Agriculture to have a collaborator, a consultant in the cabinet, in charge of animal welfare, I am the Prime Minister of Agriculture who has perpetuated the Slaughterhouse Supervisory Board", a- he argues.