Cock-fighting debate to the Constitutional Council – TF1

After allowing bullfighting, Constitutional Council leans on Tuesday after the tradition of fighting cocks still alive in some French regions, although the creation of new gallodromes is prohibited by law. The sages of the Rue de Montpensier have before them a priority question of constitutionality (QPC) filed by counsel for both Reunion, prosecuted for opening mid-2012 a new place of cockfighting in their neighborhood, St. -Mary.
Article 521-1 of the Criminal Code punishing abuse and cruelty to animals is an exception for bullfights and cockfights “when an uninterrupted local tradition may be invoked. ” Challenged by anti-bullfighting, this cultural exception has been validated in September 2012 by the constitutional judges have recognized as being consistent with the Basic Law, the “difference in treatment” between regions bullfighting tradition and others, these differences in other areas, such as work on Sundays.
If the issue of cockfighting had not then been raised, it falls under the same logic as the bullfight, with one exception however. For the law of 8 July 1964 condemns “any creation of a new Gallodrome” while it says nothing of the construction of new arenas. A feature in which engulfed the lawyer of the two Reunion to denounce “a violation of the principle of equality before the law guaranteed by the Constitution.”
“The challenge of this hearing, c is the recognition of equality between local traditions. They can be challenged by animal advocates, but from the time the law recognized an exception for bullfights and cockfights, there no reason to establish a difference in treatment between these two traditions, “argued to AFP me Fabienne Lefèvre.
Studs replaced by blades
The practice of cockfighting, which dates back to ancient times spread over the centuries on all continents where it often serves paris support. Selected for their fighting spirit by breeders or coqueleux, animals compete at the center of a circular space in a room called Gallodrome.
But the organization of the fighting has become very controversial with time particularly because of the mutilation or death of animals which the tabs are sometimes planed and replaced by a blade or a metal tip. The majority of Western countries now condemn this practice still popular in some regions including Southeast Asia or South America.
In France, these fights are only allowed in certain localities where tradition is rooted. This is the case of the Nord-Pas-de-Calais, Reunion, Guyana, the Caribbean and Polynesia. Elsewhere, the practice is forbidden and offenders are liable to two years in prison and 30,000 euros fine. But like bullfighting, maintaining the tradition of cockfighting in France raises the fury of animal rights.
In the North where there are more than a thousand and coqueleurs fifty gallodromes, verbal altercations erupted in March activists of the Brigitte Bardot Foundation and the Northern animal Cause association of breeders of fighting cocks. At the meeting, there are five official gallodromes but there are other clandestine places. In 2013, the police intervened in Toulouse to close a sophisticated Gallodrome with fighting and bleachers track, built in the enclosure of a pavilion of settled Travellers, where illegal paris held.