I.   AIMS OF THE FOUNDATION LFDA

The French League for Animal Rights is a place for ethical reflections, multi-discipline information (science, history, philosophy, law and sociology) and judicial propositions aiming at re-establishing well-balanced and less violent relations between human species and the other animal species.
The Foundation leans on " The Universal Declaration of Animal Rights” (proclaimed in 1978 at the UNESCO House of Paris), which emphasizes that “respect from men for animals is intimately related to respect among men themselves"; LFDA Foundation has set itself the following aims:

1- to make acknowledge natural fundamental rights to animals:

• the right for all species worldwide to exist, with respect for their differences among themselves and with consideration for their respective roles in the natural equilibrium;

• the right to well-being for all, and for animals endowed with a nervous system sensitive to pain, the right not to suffer when and where and in anyway men use animals ;

2- to let know, in order to fight them better, all abusive exploitations of animals, to denounce ill-treatments and serious abuse:

• industrial agro-cultural breeding
  
• slaughter without previous stunning
• animal breeding for furs
• mutilation of pets or farm animals or wild animals (ex: fining of sharks) for personal convenience
• abusive painful experimentations on living animals
• cruel entertainment shows (bull-fights, dog-fights, cock-fights)
• leisure hunting and leisure fishing
• keeping in captivity and training wild animals for circus shows and other entertainment shows
• keeping in captivity, all along their life, wild animals in zoos, dolphinariums, aquariums and in private homes
• abandonment, organizing traffics of  pets
       
  

3-  to let know in order to prevent them better all actions that threaten natural spaces and the bio-diversity of their natural fauna :

• pollutions
• deforestations
• intensive industrial over fishing
• mass slaughters of wild vertebrates (cetaceans, elephants, seals, tuna fishes, sharks…)
• hunting for trading feathers, skins, furs, ivories
• trading living wild animals and organizing traffics;
        

4-   to let know the laws and regulations for the protection of animals and demand their strict enforcement;

5- to promote the methods, techniques and labelling which respect animal well-being:

• informing teachers and rising students ' awareness
• biological and open-air breeding instead of industrial animal production of a concentration-type
• eco-tourism with organized observation of animals in their natural milieu, pedagogical farms, exhibitions and digital video programmes to replace zoos, dolphinariums and aquariums
• scientific experimentation modes, internationally validated that would avoid pharmaceutical and toxicological tests on living animals, and would stop law-abiding industrial tests on living animals;
     

6- to extend laws and regulations related to the protection of animals and of the nature and to reform the civil code and the code of the environment by a juridical system adapted to animals as feeling beings.

II. ORGANIZATION OF THE FLFDA

LFDA state-approved since 1985, was prize-winner of l'Institut de France  (Botiaux Award) in 1986.

It has been registered as an organization for the protection of the nature by the Ministry in charge of the Environment since 1993 and has been acknowledged state-approved Foundation since 1999.

The Foundation LFDA is administered and managed by doctors, biologists, veterinaries, philosophers, jurists and historians.

An Administration Council, composed of 12 members, runs the management of the Foundation and orientates its actions in strict conformity with its status (available on request) and its inner rules.

A director', assisted by a team of 20 co-operating helpers, remunerated or voluntary persons, organizes and implements yearly programmes of action on the basis of the following rules :

a) put into practise the philosophical and ethical principles stated in the Universal Declaration of Animal Rights;

b) give a greater place to the large fields involving the collective responsibility of human society: for example, industrial animal-farming, experimentation on living animals, and destruction of wild fauna;

c)  use only rigorous, scientific, juridical, philosophical and economic criteria, and reject demagogy;

d) in case of judicial actions, give a preference to actions with general consequences because they can become case-laws;

e)  select the strategies and means of action the most appropriate to the targets and budgets, and prefer deep reflection rather than agitation turned into media events, used as controversies and short-lived.

The Foundation LFDA is helped by the moral support of an Honour Committee composed of notorious people. In addition, it calls for expertises based on voluntary work done by the members of its Consulting Committee.

The Foundation LFDA is totally independent of any obedience, whether political, religious or other and it does not receive any public or commercial subsidies.

Its resources only come from the generous help of private persons who give their support.

Its yearly financial balance-sheets are communicated to givers on request.

III. FOUNDERS OF LFDA

The French League for Animal Rights was founded in 1977 by :

* Professor Alfred Kastler, doctor in physics, member of the Academy of sciences and winner of the Nobel Prize of Physics

* Professor Rémy Chauvin, holder of the chair of ethology at “La Sorbonne” “university y of Paris

* Professor Jean-Claude Nouët, doctor in Biology, vice-dean of the Faculty of Medicine Pitié-Salle Pétrière (Université ParisVI"Pierre and Marie Curie")

* Philippe Diolé, writer, journalist, diver and author of series of TV films about Commandant Cousteau 's missions

* Georges Brouwers, lawyer

Successively at the presidency of LFDA :

° Professor Chauvin (from 1977 to 1979)

° Professor Kastler (1979-1984)

°Professor Etienne Wolf, of Académie Française and member of Académie des Sciences, biologist  (1984-1986)

°Chief-barrister Albert Brunois, member of Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques (1987-1991)

°Professor Nouët (since 1991)

The founders of LFDA were brought together not by chance but by the actions in favour of the animal cause that each had led from 1973 to 1977, during a phase preliminary to the creation of the association.

Professor Chauvin, helder of the chair of ethology at la Sorbonne, was publishing numerous articles and scientific books about animal behaviours.
Professor Kastler, vice-president of OABA ( association helping animals for slaughter) was already using his notorious competence to serve the animal cause, including their conditions in breeding-farms, from birth to slaughtering.
Philippe Diolé was writing numerous articles and books above all :
- "Animals ill with men" in 1974
- "Letters to the President of the Republic about the death of French people" in 1975 (one of the best ecological manifestos)
- "The animal symphony" in 1977, a collection of which 2 titles were published before Philippe Diolé ' s death in November 1977.
Professor Nouët was denouncing the scandals of illicitely trading and detaining wild animals; his actions, largely relayed in the press.

IV. TYPE OF ACTIONS DIRECTED BYTHE FOUNDATION LFDA

LFDA is mainly devoted to:

• writing out numerous publications: a news- bulletin every 3 month, files on thematic reports, books;
• studying the juridical status of animals in France and in Europe, and proposing new texts, legislative and statutory;
• organizing seminars for the largest public or for research -scientists;
• preparing conferences in secondary schools, universities and high colleges;
• maintaining available its documentation centre to students and trainees for the preparation of their thesis and dissertations or reports;
• attributing the LFDA Alfred Kastler Prize mainly to researchers who finalize experimental methods to replace the use of living animals.
   This same prize can also be attributed to educationalists, film-makers, journalists and writers, authors of works of importance encouraging respect for animals;
• co-operating with the French and European Parliament members, the Ministries in charge of Agriculture, of the Environment, of Justice,    of the National Education and of Scientific Research ; co-operating with the authorities of the European Commission in favour of the  well-being of farm animals and laboratory animals ;

- delivering LFDA's judgments to

• the Consultative Committee of the Animal Health and Protection Organization, of which LFDA is a member;
• the National Commission of Animal Experiment;
• the National Committee of ethical reflection about experiment on animals.
• the National Platform for the development alternatives methods in animal experiment
         

3 administrative members of LFDA are members of these four advisory public organisations.

• engaging judicial procedures;
• co-operating with animal protection associations specialized and with practical experience locally, through information campaigns towards the public and through judicial actions;
• regularly up-dating LFDA's web pages;
• communicating press-reviews about statutory evolutions in France and in Europe;
• daily communicating by telephone, post or e-mail with private people or associations to satisfy enquiries or requests for judicial advice.

 V. IMPORTANT SUCCESSES

Thanks to a long exacting persevering work done by LFDA throughout its 30 years history, among numerous achievements several notable progresses emerge on juridical, educational and scientific grounds.

1) In legislative and statutory fields, LFDA particularly obtained:

  - in 1984, the first European regulation which allowed mentioning hens' farming-mode on egg- boxes in order to favour the farming of hens running free ;
  - in 1999, the modification of the civil code, which distinguished henceforth animals from things;
  - in 2004, the modification of the penal code which assimilated sexual abuse on animals to acts of cruelty and serious maltreatment.

The Foundation LFDA has largely contributed to elaborating other new regulations in the rural code and the environment code in order to:
  - improve the conditions of detained animals in zoos, dolphinariums and circuses;
  - reduce experiment on vertebrate living animals;
  - ban the use of hormones in farming
  - extend the protection of wild species in their natural spaces;
  - reduce the intrusion of hunters on the estates of non-hunters.

Since 1986, the Foundation LFDA has been a member of the Consultative Committee in charge of animal health and animal protection at the Ministry of Agriculture; as such, LFDA gives its judgments and propositions upon projects of statutory texts about the well-being of farm-animals and pets.

2) In the fields of multi-disciplinary education (ethical, scientific and juridical), LFDA has managed to make students and teachers more aware of animal respect. To reach this goal,
   - LFDA has presented twenty different conferences in several high schools, faculties of law, of science, and other high colleges, and it has organized a dozen seminars and symposiums;
   - LFDA has diffused its publications on a dozen subjects towards pedagogical documentation centres, towards the libraries in large cities and libraries of scientific museums,  of universities, of Alliance Française branches, of cultural services in embassies ;
   - LFDA gives free access to its own documentation centre to students in law, in science, in philosophy and in journalism, for the preparation of their thesis, reports and talks.

3) In the field of biological and medical research LFDA has promoted ethics towards animals in the direction of researchers: it has attributed the Alfred Kastler prize of LFDA to 8 research scientists for their works which develop experiment methods avoiding the use of living animals and replacing the painful experiment made on these animals so far.
The scientific administrators of the Foundation LFDA have participated in the works of the National Commission of animal experiment since 1989, in the works of the National Committee of ethical reflection on animal experiment since 2006 and they also have taken part in the Director Committee of the national Platform for development of alternatives method in animal experiments since 2008; all these works recommend to limit the use of laboratory animals, recommend a formation to ethics of research scientists and technicians , and also recommend the promotion of replacement experiment methods.

VI. HELP THE FOUNDATION LDA

LFDA is independent of all political parties, religious obedience, workers' unions, commercial or industrial enterprises or other, and it doesn't receive subsidies from public or private organisms ; its resources come from private people's generosity.
The achievement of LFDA 's aims involve expenses spreading over years.
To carry out its work in total independence, the Foundation must therefore get every year the necessary funds :

• to achieve special thematic actions in favour of the animal well-being ;

• to pay salaries and fees to permanent workers and to providers of services that the Foundation requires for its management, its secretarial work, its book-keeping, its judicial and editorial actions, the printing and dispatching of its numerous publications, ethical, judicial and scientific, the printing and dispatching of its institutional communication documents ;

• to pay the expenses related to the running of its head office.

LFDA, therefore, must have at its disposal steady income supplied by the investment of capital bequeathed by testament, life insurance, donations or by renewal of donations.

HOW TO MAKE A SIMPLE DONATION

Donations in the form of cheques to the order of the Foundation LFDA, the amount being decided by the donor, can be sent to LFDA, or deposited at its office in Paris, preferably enclosed with a filled-in "support-form" ( pdf to be downloaded).
Donations can also be made by automatic bank transfer onto the current account of LFDA.
Those donations to LFDA, acknowledged of public utility, open in France a right for the donor to an income-tax reduction corresponding to 66% of the amount of the donation, within the limits of 20% of the donor's taxable income; for example, a 150 euros donation will cost actually 51 euros to the donor.
In all cases, LFDA sends the donor a statutory receipt to be produced as a justification to the income-tax services.

WHY AND HOW TO MAKE A BEQUEST

Anybody who has been defending the animal cause during their lifetime can, beyond their own life, ensure the pursuit of their fight against animal suffering and against the disappearing of species by making a bequest in favour of the Foundation LFDA.
The bequest is made by testament hand-written on free paper, dated, signed by the testator and, for greater safety, deposited at a notary's office, where its validity will be checked and its conservation ensured. Sending a copy to LFDA is desirable.
A bequest can concern one part of an inheritance or its totality, in which case the foundation is appointed "sole legatee". LFDA, acknowledged of public utility, can then be instructed by the testator with transferring a particular bequest to a person with no direct family connection with her or him. The testator then specifies that the bequest will be "free of rights". The particular legatee is, in that case, exempted from paying death duties (representing 60% of the value of the inheritance) that she or he would have paid if the bequest had been made direct to her or him.
Last point, it is recalled that a testament, even deposited at a notary's office, can still be set aside or modified by the testator.

HOW TO TRANSMIT A LIFE INSURANCE

A donor can plan to transmit to the Foundation a fixed sum under the form of a life-insurance. Bank organisms can establish the most adapted contracts.

HOW TO MAKE A DONATION

"Lifetime" donations established by a deed executed by notary allow donors to transmit the ownership of a personal property or real estate to the Foundation LFDA.

In a succession, part of the property can be donated to the Foundation by the heirs.

The sums of money or value of property donated are, in that case, deducted from the taxable basis of the death duties, on condition that the donation is made permanently, in full ownership and within the 6 months following the decease.

OFFERING TIME

Giving time and offering one's competences is a good help for  the Foundation LFDA.

Modifying the law, changing the mentality of a whole society cannot be reached within a few months: achieving objectives requires a long exacting work.
To carry out its actions the Foundation LFDA needs voluntary helpers subscribing fully to the ethics defended: it needs people to give some of their time, regularly, and to bring their professional competences to accomplish missions or complete expertises in numerous fields:

• secretarial work: dispatching letters, circulating documents;

• public relations: recruiting donors, distributing leaflets, small posters and other communication documents;

• law: analysis of cases of law, judicial advice, watch on the publication of legislative and statutory texts;

• biology and zoology: scientific watch on the publications in matter of ethology, ecology, neurophysiology of pain;

• economics: watch and expertises on eco-tourism involving animals, on the production and distribution of food and on consumers’  behaviours;

• sociology and philosophy: watch on the evolution of man-animal relations;

• animal photography and videography: transferring the rights to reproduce images, shooting video reports;

• data-processing and office automation: presenting and putting on line iconographic documents and information on the web pages  of the Foundation;

• interpretership: writing out in all foreign languages documents issued from the Foundation; translating foreign documents of  interest for the Foundation;

• relations with the press and media: circulating publications made by the Foundation through the press, organizing interviews of members of the Foundation on the radio and television, writing out and circulating press-communiqués and press-reviews;

• pedagogy and relations with teachers: preparing documents for youngsters, organizing conferences and seminars for teachers;

• communication and advertisement graphics: designing and creating posters, leaflets, messages.

Candidates for voluntary work should send to the Director of the Foundation a letter of motivation together with a CV ; they should also announce the sort of service or help they wish to bring to the Foundation and the amount of time per month they can spare to it.

by Pr. Jean-Claude Nouët ¹

In the last 40 years, numerous research studies and publications² in psychology, psychopathology, sociology, ethology and criminology have shown that violent interpersonal behaviour in adults is often rooted in physical or emotional trauma during childhood.
I would merely like to recall here some conclusions and figures in support of these observations:

• Violence or child neglect is prevalent in 80% of homes where animals are subjected to abuse ;
• In two-thirds of families where domestic violence occurs, the pets are also mistreated ;
• Three out of four criminals also inflicted harm on animals ;
• Those guilty of harming animals are 5 times more likely to engage in violent acts towards humans.
• 50% of rapists committed acts of cruelty towards animals when they were young ;
• And 15% of rapists also engaged in bestiality ;

On this last point, may I add that committing sexual acts on animals is increasing with easier access to pornographic images and that this in a way points to a relationship between cruelty towards animals and child abuse.
Portrayals of bestiality on video cassettes are widespread since these account for 10% of pornographic cassettes.
The growth of specialized websites has worsened the situation as these images of perverse and degrading acts are now accessible to audiences all over the world. Since 1996, the Foundation that it is my honour to chair has multiplied its lobbying of French political figures up to the very highest levels of State, denouncing "zoophile" network links with "pedophile" networks. For this reason mainly the Justice Ministry published a bill in 2004 amending the French penal code assimilating bestiality with acts of cruelty.
From all this research work, of which I mentioned the main conclusions and some figures, we can draw the following two findings:

1. Victims of cruelty or who witness violent acts in their childhood show a greater propensity for cruel or violent behaviour later ;
2. A history of animal mistreatment or acts of cruelty perpetrated or witnessed during childhood is frequently seen in individuals who commit violent or cruel acts against humans and/or animals in later life.

(1) President of the Foundation “French League for animal rights”. PhD, physician biologist, professor of medicine, emeritus vice-dean of the Faculty of medicine  Paris VI,  adviser of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics
(2) See especially:
- International conference “Relationship between animal abuse and human violence” of Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics. Oxford. Keble College. 9/18/07
- Bibliography of the link between animal abuse, child abuse and domestic violence, compiled by Phil Arkow. 6/18/07. Latham Foundation.
- Child and animal welfare: the roots of collaborative programs and re-emergence of interagency and interdisciplinary efforts. Recent reviews presented by Frank R. Ascione, Phd, at the 14 ^th National Conference on Child Abuse and Neglect. St. Louis..USA. April 2003.

There are causal links therefore between experiencing or witnessing cruelty and violence as a child, and a pattern of violent and cruel behaviour later on, as if this leaves a kind of scar on the psyche that in many cases remains indelible.
We also know today that education plays a determinant role in a child's psychological and emotional development, either happily in a positive way, or unhappily in a negative way by de-sensitizing the child or encouraging aggressive behaviour, violence and cruelty.
Under our very eyes countless numbers of children are being saturated with examples and images of violence, some even being led to practice it themselves. I will quote three examples of this.
The first is widespread and universal and resides in the increasingly violent - and increasingly successful - computer and video games that are invading the planet. Such games enable the player to spatter blood by cutting off arms or legs with a chainsaw, or crash a car into a herd of animals; adversaries can be suffocated with a plastic bag, be doused with gasoline and set alight; foes can be decapitated and their head kicked around like a football. Players can take on the persona of a drug dealer or trafficker. Promoters of these kinds of game say that they provide children with a release for pent-up aggression, they develop hand-eye coordination or faster reflexes, improve self-confidence and help control combative attitudes. However, it has been found that repeated animated images of violence and cruelty can desensitize and hence increase the propensity for aggressive behaviour. Different studies in the USA have shown that children with aggressive tendencies identify with violent characters and seek out increasingly violent programs and games. The risk of replicating events seen on the screen increases as the images become more realistic, blurring the boundary between virtual and real. The increasing success of such games demands that long-term sociological, pedagogical, neuro psychiatric studies be conducted on the matter.
The second and third examples are two practices that provide an education in violence and cruelty and are organised in France targeted at children, to perpetuate bull-fighting and hunting. Certainly these so-called sports concern animals.
But training in them results in making commonplace and, possibly in some cases, denial of the animals' suffering and justification of the abuse inflicted upon them. As an end result it may encourage generally aggressive behaviour that later might not stop at animal abuse.
Bull-fighting schools exist in several cities in the South of France: Arles, Nimes, Tarascon, Beziers and St Remy de Provence, as well as in the Landes region in South-West France. These schools admit children aged 9 years and up, but sometimes take even younger ones: one was only 7 years old.
The bull-fighting lessons are taught by "toreros", professionals from the arena and enthusiasts of the corrida, or running of the bulls, who travel from one city to another to perform to the crowds. On Wednesdays and Saturday afternoons, the children are taken to private arenas, unless (as in Arles) the city lends its arenas free of charge for the activity, and provides coaches to convey them there. These schools say that they are approved by the Ministry for Youth and Sports and operate with the help of subsidies, principally from public funds, i.e. the taxpayer money. The school in Nimes is funded by City Hall and with money from the county and the region. The Tarascon school receives subsidies from City Hall and the Family Allowances Fund of the Bouches-du-Rhone county. The school in Arles is also funded by the City and receives grants from an industrial company and a vacation centre. The City of Bayonne does not have a bull-fighting school, but widely distributes free passes to young people so that they can attend the arenas and discover the corrida. Each school accepts 10 to 15 children a year.
A total of 60 to 90 children therefore each year receive this education in cruelty. The figures might appear small, but in ethical terms the situation is unacceptable.
For in these schools, they teach adolescents to swirl the muleta or cape, to perform the different choreographed figures of this deathly ballet then plant razor-sharp barbed sticks and stab pretend bulls first of all, then later young calves with swords.
In 2004, the more skilful of these aspiring young "toreadors" performed in a series of shows, during which injured calves could be seen mooing piteously for their mother, in front of an audience half of whom were children applauding each injury in a frenzy of excitement. Parents looked on, admiring the precocious violence of their offspring. Despite being a flagrant contradiction of the law, particularly the one on the protection of minors, these schools receive official support from the public authorities, local and national representatives and enjoy the shameful protection of the legal system.
In addition to those attending these schools, how many other children are influenced by, for instance, the boastful recitals of their peers' exploits? And what kind of adults do these children become, who have been de-sensitized to violence and cruelty in this lamentable manner? We know several famous matadors already who enjoy celebrity status because of their young age. We can be sure that many who live in a family environment that favours bullfighting, which is frequently the case in these regions, have themselves become fervent aficionados.
We have enough hindsight today to conduct a survey to find out the psychological impact on these pupils, on their daily behaviour, on their school results. But it is doubtful the French Ministry for Health and Sports would take the initiative. Indeed, she defends "this tradition", and attends to many corrida.
One organization that might perhaps conduct an investigation into the future lives of these aspiring torreros could be an international organisation for the protection of children, for instance the United Nation's Children's Fund. This organization however, though devoted to the health and education of children, had the singular lack of insight to award the city of Arles the title of « Child-Friendly City » in 2006, despite letters of protest to which Jacques Hintzy, the chairman of its French branch UNICEF has not deigned to reply.
Bull-fighting schools have been in existence for over twenty years. For what reasons were they opened, who supports them, and why? The official explanation is the need to maintain a "local sporting tradition" specific to these southern regions.
And yet we know that this is solely a Spanish custom, imported from Spain something under a century ago: the very terms used in this blood sport, which are strictly and exclusively Spanish, prove the fact.
The other reason, that no one admits, is two-pronged : first, to provide future performers and spectators for the corrida to ensure the continuance of this extremely lucrative "show biz" event with its financial spin-offs; second, for local representatives not to displease their electors and lose votes in local or national elections. As for calling this blood sport an "art", what a mockery: painting, sculpture, music, dance, theatre, poetry are noble activities that have no common measure with planting javelins and sticks in a poor animal's flanks then finishing him off by stabbing with a sword. The term "matador" translates not as "artist" but as "killer".
These schools are not the only places where children are taught to maim and kill animals solely for entertainment and at the price of its suffering and death.
Hunting and hunters do the same. France is the leading proponent of hunting in Europe, and has the most hunters (one million three hundred thousand) and the largest number of animals killed annually: 12 million mammals, which includes 400,000 deer, 345,000 wild boar, 6 million rabbits and 26 million birds, including 6 million pigeons and turtle doves, and 13 million thrushes.
This leisure activity of the wealthy and powerful has the support of public authorities and elected representatives.
The evolution in the sensitivity of French society and the dramatic reduction in the number of wild animals results in a constantly diminishing number of hunters, a situation that their federation and miscellaneous associations try to halt by all means possible: demonstrations, propaganda, electoral blackmail and political action.
While on this subject, we recall that while hunters represent a mere 2% of French citizens overall, 210 out of the country's 577 deputies, i.e. 37% are members of a hunting group set up within the National Assembly. This definitely gives considerable power to hunting in terms of policy and decision making.
For some twenty years, hunters and their official representatives from the National Office of Hunting and Wild Animals have been authorised by the French Minister for Education to enter government-run schools under the pretext of educating children about nature. In reality they go there to justify hunting, unfortunately officially recognized by our Minister for the Environment as an activity that protects nature. They talk about animals, referring to them "game" and discussing their species, their habitats and way of life. They take pupils on trips to rural locations, teach them to recognize and follow animal tracks. This they refer to as "learning about nature from those who live it". Under this pretext, which is an imposture, they explain how to organize a "beating", raise game for release to serve as a target, practise traditional hunting techniques such as setting traps, snares, nets and other cruel practices still tolerated today.
Depending on the regions, they take them to visit observation towers for shooting wood pigeons and turtle doves in the South-West, or duck hunting cabins in the Northern regions.
Trapping lessons are organised for children aged 8 to 16 years, claiming (and I quote) that « trapper training is an excellent way to help young people discover wildlife and the outdoors ».
They use the opportunity to demonstrate the harm done by so-called animal "pests": foxes, skunks, martens, weasels, crows, etcetera, which hunters consider harmful because these natural predators are competitors that also destroy coveys of partridges or pheasants and eat rabbits. Here, we organize deer-hunting lessons with bow and arrow, there we bring live rabbits and kill them in front of the children to show them that it is merely meat. Funding is also poured into cynegetic propaganda on the Internet: a CD-Rom published in Brittany presenting the diverse natural habitats and fauna includes a link to local hunting federations to seek further information. The CD-Rom was remitted free of charge to 3011 schools in Brittany.
A specialty newspaper « Nature Junior » was published that boasts at length in its articles that « hunters take great pains to ensure better living conditions for the animals and to increase their numbers ». In short, they show children how much they love the animals.
The goals of this indoctrination, abusively termed "education" are basically the same as for bull fighting. Hunting survives principally off the fees hunters pay. The aim is therefore first and foremost to protect the financial future of hunting and supply an upcoming generation of hunters. The official line is that « this training will develop these young people into hunters who respect the game and the environment because they will have contributed to its preservation and growth ». Also, politicians count on hunters' votes to ensure their re-election.
Hence the powers-that-be give hunters everything they ask for to the extent that in France, disparaging nature and nature conservation, within the Ministry for Ecology and Sustainable Development, the department responsible for wild life conservation is the « Sub-directorate of Hunting, Wild Fauna and Flora », and, scorning the psychological and emotional sensitivities of children, allow teenagers aged 14 years and 6 months to obtain a hunting permit.
Making commonplace  the killing of animals and ignoring its suffering in this way can only produce or promote behaviours at best of indifference to animals, but probably leads to an increased propensity for generally more aggressive behaviour.
Innocent school children sometimes hit the nail on the head. In one class, a young boy asked the hunters outright « If you love animals so much, why do you kill them? ». They were left speechless.

In my opinion it would be of great benefit to our discussions if we pondered the influence of violence or cruelty suffered by children in species other than human. Can trauma, aggression, abuse inflicted on young animals perturb them sufficiently to cause deviant behaviour later, meaning that those who suffer violence in early childhood may replicate that violence as adults? In species at least that we know to have a high level of psychic and social development, the answer is yes.
We recall the very interesting article by Bradshaw et al published in the review "Nature" in February 2005, which starts as follows: « The air explodes with the sound of high-powered rifles and the startled infant watches his family fall to the ground. He and other orphans are then transported to distant locales to start new lives. Ten years later, the teenaged orphans begin a killing rampage, leaving more than a hundred victims. A scene describing post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in Kosovo, Rwanda or Darfur? The similarities are striking but here, the teenagers are young elephants, and the victims, rhinoceroses ».
In the past, animal studies have been used to make inferences about post-traumatic stress disorder and the resulting behaviour in humans. Now, studies of human PTSD can be instructive in understanding the sequels of psychological trauma in animals.
Elephant society in Africa has been decimated by mass deaths. From an estimated 10 million elephants in the early1900s, there are only 350,000 left today following widespread poaching by ivory traffickers. The elephant community is dislocated and seriously perturbed. Elephant society is highly structured. Young elephants are reared in a matriarchal group with the mother and other female relatives. But in adolescence, males leave the natal family to join loose bachelor groups and become socialized through example and contact with older male elephants.
Calves witnessing culls amid bursts of automatic gunfire and seeing the blood and the cadavers of family members sustain considerable emotional and psychological trauma, amplified by premature weaning. If they survive that, and are then deprived of the support of experienced females in their early years they become high risk candidates for later behaviour disorders. If those orphaned elephants are then also deprived of the social education provided within a group of males, they begin to display symptoms associated with human PTSD: abnormal startle response, unpredictable asocial behaviour, hyper aggression.
This is what happened to the adolescent elephants in the study mentioned above. Their meeting with a herd of rhinoceros set off a murderous rampage involving the entire group, and resulted in the slaughter of a massive number of rhinoceroses, a particularly unusual and pathological phenomenon, never seen in normal conditions of peaceful cohabitation in the natural environment. Hence, social trauma, early disruption of emotional attachment can have a lasting psychological and physiological impact on the brain and behaviour of animals and humans alike. These problems can transmit to descendants since behaviour and culture depend first and foremost in acquired habits, early training and education.

To conclude, we must assert firstly the harmfulness of an education or at least a habituation to violence and worse to cruelty and secondly, on the contrary, the need for an education that is aimed at teaching children how to control their impulses.
A good example is that of the Second Step program implemented in the United States and Canada which consists of showing primary school children in 10,000 schools slideshows depicting situations of aggressivity and asking them to think about the problem posed.

A study conducted on 790 children in 12 schools in Washington State who had followed this education showed that they committed far fewer aggressive acts such as kicking, punching, slapping or pushing others, and engaged in many more positive or neutral acts than those who had not followed the program.
This shows that school has a major role to play in preventing and forestalling violence in our societies which have become overly permissive and are becoming increasingly aggressive. Better knowledge of animals and a perception of animals as sensitive creatures would indeed be a useful way to achieve this. Computer video games, school programs should initiate young children to the relations between species, to evolution and biodiversity and to similarities in the genetic and physiological programming of all forms of animal life (and particularly their sensitivity to pain), to the diversity of behavioural expressions…
Indeed, we well know that knowledge and learning instil respect. Cities, monuments, territories listed as "assets of humanity" are for this very reason respected and protected against degradation and destruction.
Similarly, knowing animals, knowing about their lives, their diversity necessarily leads to respecting their sensitivity to pain, their physiological needs, the place of their species in the ecosystems. And since it is generally accepted that mistreatment of animals is tied to violence against humans, it is logical to affirm the accuracy of the contrary position: that man's respect for animals is indissociable from man's respect for his fellow men.

JCN

In 2000, the French animal protection organisation the Foundation Ligue française des droits de l'animal published a report entitled “the condition of circus animals”.
This study discusses the various problems related to the training, captivity and transport of these animals and analyses the legal situation in France as well as in the other European countries.
This important report, which includes photographs taken by The Captive Animals' Protection Society investigators in animal circuses across Europe, is available free from our Foundation by
e-mailing: contact@fondation-droits-animal.org

This booklet was published in July 2006 by our Foundation. It serves for a better understanding of the truth behind the production of fatted duck and goose-liver pâté (foie gras).

Each year in France, 36 million ducks and geese are stuffed through force-feeding to turn their liver into foie gras by the accumulation of fat. During the same period, the State of Israel forbade the production of foie gras on its territory as of 2005, the State of California as of 2012, while the city of Chicago forbade the sale of foie gras in its food shops and restaurants as of 2006.

The booklet answers ten essential questions with accuracy. It will enable everyone who reads it to reconsider his moral convictions, and to adjust his behaviour as consumer or even as producer, as well as voter, to continue or to stop buying, offering, eating and commercializing foie gras, and to support or oppose through his vote political programmes in favour of the development of this industry.
The complete english version ( Pdf) of this booklet can be downloaded here.

Our Foundation decided it was urgent to print a document giving information, never released by the media, about bullfighting. We took advice from advertising professionals. We chose to print a short, thorough, clear and unquestionable leaflet. Its aim is to reveal the cruelty of bullfighting to those who are unaware or not conscious of it.

At first sight the leaflet “Discover bullfighting” ( Pdf) appears to be quite neutral with photos traditionally linked to bullfighting. It is only when you open it and take a look at its four pages that you discover a succession of cruelties that are inflicted upon the bull. The leaflet “Discover bullfighting” is a truly informative document that obliges the reader to reflect upon the realities of this violent and cruel “show” through its shorts texts, drawings showing the point of impact of the weapons in the order they are used during the three “tercios”, pictures of wounds, of haemorrhaging and suffering never revealed by the media.

Because of its design the leaflet must not be distributed at random, it will be necessary to target people or organisations who have either influence or authority: joint production committees, tourism organisations, radios, local television stations, cultural organisations, clubs, doctors’ consulting rooms, veterinarian practices (in order to target pet owners), youth centres, public libraries, organic stores, etc...

This leaflet aims at informing tourists before they enter the arenas in the south of France, Spain or Portugal.
The same folder is also available in French, Spanish, Italian, German and Dutch versions. Associations can order from our Foundation here. The bill order ( Pdf) can be downloaded here.