Domestic animals in France are no longer viewed as “furniture” but as “living beings capable of sensitivity”, after parliament voted in favour of changes to the country’s two century-old Napoleonic civil code.
Up until now, cats and dogs, along with other pets and farm animals, had the same status in the code as an armchair.
The definition was deemed an outrage by a group of French intellectuals and the animal welfare group, Fondation 30 Million d’Amis, which launched a two-year battle to upgrade their status.
“When it was drawn up in 1804, the civil code was the reflection of a society where animals didn’t benefit from the same attention as we afford them today,” said Reha Hutin, head of 30 Million d’Amis.
“At the time in an essentially rural France, animals were considered from a utilitarian perspective, as an agricultural force,” she added, citing René Descartes’ definition of the “animal-machine”.
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Big switch from an armchair to beings capable of sensitivity. Only took 200 years to revoke it.
