Very early retirement. The famous cabaret of the Moulin Rouge, urged by animal protection associations to stop using snakes of protected species in an issue, announced to AFP the stop of it on Tuesday. On Friday, in an article in Le Parisien, she had indicated that "the presentation of animals on stage will be stopped from 2024".

But in a brief press release dated Tuesday, the management of the famous room of the Pigalle district "announces the definitive stop of the number with snakes as of today, Tuesday, May 9, 2023, and thus anticipates its commitment". Revived by AFP, the management did not want to provide details.

Animal rights groups have won

This decision comes as this Wednesday, a new demonstration was planned by Paris Animaux Zoopolis (PAZ) in front of the cabaret. This animal protection association intended to denounce a "business on the backs of animals" and planned "to file a complaint for animal abuse". "This is a historic advance, the Moulin Rouge is a cabaret very well known to Parisian evenings," Amandine Sanvisens, co-founder of PAZ, told AFP, for whom this announcement "goes in the right direction of the decline of animal captivity in France". "We are not going to congratulate the establishment for simply complying with the law after having flouted it for seventeen months," commented Christophe Marie, spokesman for the Brigitte Bardot Foundation, to AFP, assuring that the foundation "alerted the Ministry of Ecology more than a year ago".

In this daily cabaret show, a dancer dived into a transparent pool where she handled large pythons. However, the two species used were "protected species", which is more "terrestrial" and not aquatic, had deplored in early March the mayor of Paris, itself pressed by PAZ on this subject, asking the establishment to "no longer use wild animals" in its shows. In response, the Moulin Rouge promised to stop this number after "reasonable notice" for "the artists and service providers involved". But since then, "no timetable has been communicated," PAZ said in statements released Friday and Tuesday.

The establishment had claimed to have announced this decision before that to the two co-rapporteurs of the mission of application of the law of 30 November 2021 against animal abuse. The latter, which strengthens the supervision of shows featuring wild animals, concerns discotheques and television sets, but not cabarets.

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