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, reports The Telegraph.
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”.
That view was now “obsolete”, she argued.
In recent months, farming unions had expressed concern that any change – in particular one that afforded animals a special status between “goods” and “humans” – could “threaten livestock farming”.
The new legislation does not go this far, nor does it mention whether animal’s “sensitive” nature means they suffer from battery farming, as Green MPs had hoped.
But Jean Glavany, who drew up the proposed legislation, said it was an important “symbolic” step.
The law does not extend to "wild" animals, from wolves or earthworms.