Document type: Press release from the President of the Société centrale canine
Author: Gérard Thonnat
Preview (translated from French): Following the submission by Député Loïc Dombreval of his Report on the Welfare of Pets and Equidae to the Minister of Agriculture and the Prime Minister on 23 June, we issued a first press release to inform you of the Centrale Canine's contribution to this Report.
Subsequently, on 28 July, the MP officially tabled a bill to combat pet abuse. This bill was co-signed by 155 members of the ruling party.
Meanwhile, a people's referendum campaign (or RIP) for animals was launched on Thursday 2 July, driven by three major figures in the digital economy: Xavier Niel (Free), Marc Simoncini (Meetic) and Jacques-Antoine Granjon (Private sale), with the support of journalist Hugo Clément from France 2. As stipulated in the 2008 constitutional change that created RIPs, the procedure for an RIP involves several stages. The bill must first obtain the support of 185 members of parliament,. It must then be validated by the Constitutional Council, before the public can be directly solicited, over a period lasting 9 months. In this time, 4.7 million signatures must be collected.
The publication of these texts caused a justified stir within formal dog-breeding circles. The Société Centrale Canine sets out its own position here and will closely follow developments on these political and symbolic areas as Emmanuel Macron's five years in office draw to a close.
Animal welfare will be a major topic for debate in the course of the forthcoming presidential campaign. During it, not only will animalist principles be put forward alongside those of the various environmental movements but other political parties, too, will all have to set out their positions on the topic.
It is therefore an issue that ranks high on the agenda for French society, and canine breeders' societies will have to play their part in supporting certain measures, in weighing up others and, last, in in speaking out against those that we feel do not fit with our statutory goals and the values that the Centrale Canine has now been defending for nearly 140 years.
