Animal welfare: what is this new amendment that wants to silence associations?

Animal welfare associations soon caught by the throat? An amendment has just been passed that intends to prevent them from continuing their actions, particularly when they warn about the practices of certain farms or slaughterhouses.

An amendment voted this week in the Finance Committee under the finance bill aims to make donations received by an association non-tax deductible if one of its members illegally entered a farm or slaughterhouse.

It was a deputy LR Marc Le Fur who presented the measure and his intentions are very clear:

“So far, L214-type anti-species associations that encourage extremist activists to violate all property laws by dismantling farm entrances, could benefit from a tax deduction for their donors. Specifically, the state has fiscally encouraged these associations and therefore the radical activists who claim to be part of them “

The world notes that this is not the first attempt to approve such an amendment.

For its supporters it is also a way to combat agribashing, or the denigration of the professions of farmer and breeder, a term which is also controversial. Environmental defense associations see it more as an attempt by the powerful FNSEA to oppose any form of criticism of the current agricultural model, a criticism that does not deny the serious difficulties that the profession is going through.

L214 and other animal protection associations affected by the portfolio

Losing the tax exemption for the donations they receive, the associations for the defense of animal welfare risk be deprived of a source of funding. Besides, they will be too prevented from expressing themselves and to have an informant role, particularly when they publish videos showing the living conditions of animals on certain farms.

Animal welfare: what is this new amendment that wants to silence associations?

Therefore, directly subject of the amendment, L214 couldn’t help but joke on the scope of the text:

L214 amendment marc le fur — L214 (Twitter)

Hide these animal abuses which I cannot see, so the parliamentarians seem to say.

About forty NGOs immediately denounced this attack on their operation and saw in it an attempt to ” muzzle civil society “, Supported by several parliamentarians La France Insoumise and EELV. “In democracy there is debate, associations are not gagged! “ recalled LFI MEP Manon Aubry. Ditto for the ecologist Alma Dufour, who faces the right-wing alliance against animal rights associations.