Ruff justice! French dogs voted 'living beings' after centuries of slumming it as 'personal property' (...and it means wealthy Parisiennes can leave their fortunes to them)

Nearly 700,000 signed a petition against the archaic 1804 law

The law that states that animals are just ‘movable goods’

It gives France’s 63 million pets more protection against cruelty

Proposals to ban cockfights and bullfighting were rejected



Animals will finally be classed as living beings after a bill which has been approved by French MPs

For hundreds of years they have been given the same legal status as a table or a chair, but now animals will finally be classed as living beings after a contentious bill has been approved by French MPs.



Nearly 700,000 signed a petition against the archaic 1804 law that states that animals are just ‘movable goods’.



The bill describes animals as ‘living and feeling beings’.



It gives France’s 63 million pets more protection against cruelty.



Philosopher and former education minister Luc Ferry signed the petition and said that the Napoleonic legislation, which placed animals on the same level as furniture, was ‘absurd’.



He said: ‘No one has ever tortured a clock.



'Animals suffer, they have emotions and feelings. It is not a question of making animals subjects of the law… but simply of protecting them against certain forms of cruelty.’



The upgraded status will also mean that couples can fight for shared custody in divorce cases and owners whose pets are run over by a negligent driver will be able to claim compensation for the suffering caused.

Frédéric Lefebvre, the former trade minister, said that inheritance law would also change to allow owners to leave their fortune to their pets.

However, the move was denounced as a dangerous attack on the French way of life by critics who said that it could lead to the end of breeding, hunting, fishing, bull-fighting and the eating of red meat.



Critics also fear that animal rights activists would use the law to challenge slaughter practices on the ground that it is wrong to kill ‘beings with feelings’.

Frédéric Lefebvre, the former trade minister, said that inheritance law would also change to allow owners to leave their fortune to their pets

Philippe Gosselin, a centre-right MP, said: ‘Agriculture will be threatened, along with wolf culls and… hunting.



'And what about laboratories and abattoirs, which could find themselves in very complicated legal cases?’