I have no time to "cook up" a few bills and to share our practice and our plans ... But very soon, I promise, I will give you some news from our Project Mongolia!

Meanwhile, a little philosophy ... I let you discover a fascinating interview of Jean-Baptiste JEANGÈNE Vilmer made ​​by the newspaper Le Monde 2 last September following the publication of his book Animal Ethics. I will also strongly recommend reading!

THE WORLD 2, September 5, 2008, interview with Jean-Baptiste Jeangène Vilmer, philosopher, author of "Animal Ethics", PUF, interviewed by Martine Valo. "France is the laggard of animal welfare"

Country of frog-eating, game, foie gras, France is often frowned on by the animal rights movement, even by his neighbors of the European Union. Not just because of greedy habits, but also because living conditions in his barns and pigsties industrial giants, his taste for hunting, bullfighting. However, because the animal arouses, as elsewhere, more and more questions, as evidenced by the number of writings published in recent months on the subject. Associations who petition, conduct trials, an animal husbandry laboratory recently destroyed by arson, a poultry trashed ... This folder becomes so insignificant that little Nicolas Sarkozy asked at the end of the Grenelle Environment that public consultation be devoted to him. Meetings »Animals and society" took place before the summer, under the aegis of the government. They gathered 150 people repeatedly for four months, on issues such as the suffering of animals at slaughter or the plight of wild animals collected.

At the close, July 8, the Agriculture Minister Michel Barnier has found "a consensus on the importance of animals in our society and the respect we owe him as a sentient being," and announced the establishment of a national charter by the end of 2008.

To better understand the challenges of this emerging public debate, we met Jean-Baptiste Jeangène Vilmer, author of Animal Ethics, published by Presses Universitaires de France. His book is sweeping the broad scope of issues raised by human behavior vis-à-vis wildlife - not only consumption, fur, experimentation, but also fighting, racing, circuses, zoos ... -, that is to say, "the study of the moral status of animals" and therefore "male responsibility towards them."

This philosopher of 28 years has designed his book, clear and very readable, as a teaching tool after class he taught veterinary students at the University of Montreal. Of animal slaughterhouses, circus animals in laboratory mice, Plutarch the Vegetarian radical activists of today, the philosopher tells us that man has not finished with the animal.

How do you explain the delay of the French thought - that you report - compared to English-speaking countries in the field of animal ethics?

First there is the influence of humanism that structure our society since Descartes, and which introduces a strict hierarchy: the man is at the center and the rest around. It leads to persuade himself that if ever we gave too much moral consideration to animals, giving them rights or increasing our duties vis-à-vis them, we would debase, we would fall off our pedestal according to a principle of vases communicating. In fact, we respond to Christian injunctions as to master and owner of nature, exploit animals for our service. We have long thought to have divine permission for this.

The second reason is our ethnocentrism, makes us insensitive to foreign influences, including Anglo-Saxon and Oriental. For a Buddhist, better treat correctly the cow or the bird in whose body it may be reborn one day ... Third, often confused in France philosophy and history.

When you ask about the report to the animal or someone like Luc Ferry even Elisabeth de Fontenay, you get big speeches on Aristotle, Descartes, Hegel, existentialism, the Bible ... It is a French tendency to answer an ethical issue that is part of everyday life by a catalog of authors. French intellectuals are always in praise of abstraction and contempt of the concrete. But animal ethics is not a metaphysical high-flying, but asked specifically about how we treat animals: is it fair or not? And what should we change?

You advance also cultural and political reasons ...

Need we recall the importance of gastronomy? The French maintained a relationship of identity to the kitchen. The non-English. Moreover, it becomes easier vegetarian in Britain.

Ask the French to question the sausage, sauerkraut, all the dishes associated with the tradition of the land ... In addition, we value our cultural exceptions such as foie gras and bullfighting.

As for politics, it is sensitive to pressure groups: farmers, representatives of the food industry or pharmaceutical ... France is the only country in Europe where the number of hunters over the million mark, even if n 'is not proportionally greater. Their federations are strong, well represented in the National Assembly.

In terms of animal welfare, France is the laggard of the European Union. When, in Brussels, the Commission concludes that such force-feeding geese at the cost of a pathological suffering, so abuse of the government order immediately to INRA reports and other so-called independent institutions to conclude that foie gras is no problem of animal welfare.

How we are different does the Anglo-Saxons?

In the U.S., public opinion is ready, highly advanced academic research.

For over thirty years she has produced thousands of theses, books, conferences. But progress is slow in practice, because the lack of political independence from the food industry lobbies and groups which use animal testing.

In their philosophy course, the Anglo-Saxons are more pragmatic, allowing them to touch people. Peter Singer's book, The Animal Liberation, translated from English in 1993 and published by Grasset, has been printed in 500,000 copies. It can be read by all monde.Actuellement professor of bioethics at Princeton, and Melbourne, Peter Singer is one of the founders of modern thought on the animal condition. This Australian-born philosopher was educated at Oxford, where he wrote Animal Liberation in 1975. I asked him to preface my book, because I share most of his convictions. It is a utilitarian.

What are the principles of utilitarianism this?

This current, in Britain in the eighteenth century, says that behavior is morally acceptable if and only if it leads to good consequences, has no relevance. According to this principle, as some British philosophers Jeremy Bentham managed to get out of the prejudice that the case is immeasurably man's incomparable, and have thus asked how the fact that the animal is less intelligent makes acceptable the cause suffering.

Peter Singer is in this vein. For him, one must apply an equal consideration of interest to both men and animals. Now what is our common interest? Do not suffer. Singer believes that human life is worth more than that of the animal since the former is able to make plans. So if you kill a man, you delete the same time the designs he will never achieve. Monkeys, although they are very intelligent, do not pursue political agendas. Some activists believe the opposite that man is worth less because the animal's capacity to harm is greater.

The French government recently organized a wide consultation entitled "Animals and Society", open to associations. Is it not a sign that demand for public opinion is emerging?

Yes, there is a thrill. The almost simultaneous publication of several books on these issues is a sign. The natural evolution of the encourages companies to worry about the lowest, upon completion of a number of problems. This is what we call progress.

Quant to meetings "Animal and society", they are an excellent initiative. They indicate that France has perhaps the will to move forward. But the 34 measures announced in conclusion is much too vague. For example, they do not define anything about the rules of detention and use of animals in circuses.

The development of a national charter of relations with the animal is announced by the end of 2008, it can be added but not a substitute for law reform: a review of the legal status of the animal is necessary. If this charter gives rise to debates, discussions, and to draw the attention of school children, the better. It would be very important, because I do not think it possible to convince the current generation of the importance of animal ethics. It's not that I write for her, but for following.

The recommendation of the bullfight is unsurprisingly one of the most disappointing. He's just proposed the "development of a guide to good practice", as if this made the problem public torture of a bull was the lack of instructions ...

Do not you have been surprised however by the lack of media interest aroused in these meetings that affect a subject yet public?

I feel that in France people like to watch on TV documentaries on pet shops that sell nail polish for poodles and some beautiful pictures of the Savannah ... The legal status of the animal is another case. Soon as they appear technical and institutional issues related to animal conditions less interested opinion.

The general public does not in pig or poultry in the industry. Does he continue to eat the same way, if he knew what was going on? By not giving access to the animal world in its frame - behind the closed doors of laboratories, factory farms - it is excluded from human sympathy. We should be able to determine knowingly. We also vote with our wallets. We demonstrate schizophrenia, we are intellectually capable of recognizing many things and be compassionate, but not to translate our findings into action.

During the consultation "Animal and society," Jerome Bignon, UMP deputy and chairman of Hunting in the National Assembly, headed one of three working groups. The choice you surprised?

No. In France, especially in rural areas, we see really the hunter as a tool of wildlife management, not as a villain who will kill rabbits nice - except the animal rights lobby. Hunters and ranchers embody the archetypal good guy who has a healthy, natural wildlife. If the hunter meets its quotas, prevents the boar to ravage the crops of corn, he really has an ecological role.

There is no longer in the ethics of the individual animal, but in approaching the issue of environmental and biodiversity.

You seem very willing to stand out from all sentimentality, why is it so important?

Because in France, the only way to defend the animal condition is sentimental and compassionate. The animal rights movement is often caricatured, likened only to activists who distributed leaflets with pictures shocks and Brigitte Bardot weeps over the fate of baby seals. In Canada, I watched consistently the same reaction against this display of sentimentality, irrationality, we can not discuss. I told myself then that I would try to go about it in rationality. Ideally, the two approaches in both countries.

In general, what is the panorama of defensive moves of wildlife?

There are more and more organizations, but they are very divided. Between the two main currents activists - the "welfarist", ie the reformists who want to improve animal welfare, and the abolitionists who want to abolish all exploitation - it is a little war.

The latter see in the first leaders of the perpetuation of the situation, as they allow operating softened, hence acceptable. Abolitionists emphasize the parallel between the current situation and the slave trade.

The analogy with slavery you seem wise?

It is a historical fact, which does not make the relevant argument, however. At the time of the slave trade, arguing operators using the same rhetoric that the livestock industry today: "It's better for them, because in nature, in the African jungle, their situation would be worse. "
Check the records, in-depth analysis of major topics.

The same tools are used: slaves and cattle herded with the same rationale, the same strings, the same marking process. But what of this undeniable historical parallel? At the philosophical level, we must move from fact to value, which is what needs to be. Those who think getting the end of animal exploitation because slavery was abolished it wrong.

Blacks were treated in this way precisely because whites viewed them as animals. But we are never going to establish that animals are not ... It is better to show the continuity between the living and the responsibilities it entails.

In an ideal world, what might be our relationship?

Can they be limited to that of cohabitation? Side of the extremists, it is to abolish all exploitation, to end the experiment with breeding, hunting, entertainment, all forms of addiction. Nobody should be "owner" of his cat. In this model of segregation, we meet from time to time in nature, that's all. I think it is neither possible nor desirable. Our interactions with wildlife are not limited to torture!

For me, if not great victories radical, it is important to join together to get four or five important steps as the end of the bullfight, the confinement of wild animals in circuses and zoos, animal abuse company ... We should also inculcate respect for children, avoid representations of cattle and pigs smiling, happy to be transformed into cornedbeef and sausages! This should tend towards what an ideal world.

Why do not you take a position on genetically modified animals?

I am neither a believer nor a deontologist in the eyes of the animal which is a work of God untouchable. If the consumption of ham must continue, I wonder if it is not advisable to castrate pigs genetically, rather than mechanically without any form of anesthesia. It's a real dilemma.

You consider yourself an activist?

I'm very careful not belong to any organization, even if I share the goals and I am asked. I am not of those who are putting up posters, but writing a book is a militant act. I want to get things done.

I am a "welfarist". I propose to restore man to his place. Not give the rights to the animal, nor claim that there is no difference between us. There is a balance to find.

For more information:

Animal ethics, John the Baptist Jeangène Vilmer, PUF, 314 p., 26 €.

Animal Liberation, Peter Singer, Grasset, 380 p., € 22.10.

No offense to the human race, Elisabeth de Fontenay, Albin Michel, 213 p., 18 €.

Animal rights: a theory of movement, Enrique Utria, ed. Animal Rights, 180 p., € 13 on www.droitsdes animaux.net.

An eternal Treblinka by Charles Patterson, translated from the U.S. Dominique Letellier, Calmann-Levy, 336 p., € 20.50.

Sandie

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