Five years after its founding, the animalist party launches into the presidential battle to “raise the animal cause to the rank of major subjects which society must seize,” said Thursday its candidate Hélène Thouy. “I am sure that we will be able to influence (on) the course of this campaign,” she said at a press conference, presenting her candidacy as “a response to the irresponsibility of those who lead us” .
Created in November 2016, the animalist party now claims 4,000 members, according to its co-founder Douchka Markovic, who clarified that it was “neither left nor right”. “Whenever we talk about the animalist party, we talk about animals, there is no ambiguity” and “in this sense it is a useful vote and a useful sponsorship”, added Ms. Markovic in a commentary. appeal to elected officials, while the party will have to collect 500 signatures to be able to stand.
A ministry of animal health?
According to Hélène Thouy, the score of 2.17% obtained by the party in the Europeans in 2019 “was a turning point” which made politicians aware that “the animal question was a political question that they could no longer ignore. “. If the party will present its program “in a few weeks”, Ms. Thouy has already launched several proposals: creation of a “ministry of animal health, completely independent from the ministry of agriculture”, ” dish of the agricultural and food model ”to“ reassess our irrational attachment to products of animal origin and enhance plant proteins ”, or even“ the pure and simple end of industrial and intensive breeding ”.
“What we have experienced with the Covid should alert us to what is likely to happen if we continue stubbornly with this breeding model,” she warned. Indignant at the “disastrous policy for animals” of the government, from the “pro-hunting policy shamelessly carried out since 2017” to “complacency towards supporters of animal exploitation”, Hélène Thouy deplored the “ broken promises ”from the executive, whether on“ compulsory video surveillance in slaughterhouses ”or the“ ban on crushing chicks ”.
It’s “unforgivable”
“How can we consider France as a developed, civilized nation, while tolerating that on our territory millions of animals are horribly mutilated, castrated, that they are prevented from turning over in their cages? What we do to these beings is unforgivable, ”she said.
Hélène Thouy, born in 1983, is a lawyer. She lives in Gironde.