Launched by an animal rights association, the petition wants the Decathlon store in Chasse-sur-Rhône to stop selling live fish as bait for live bait fishing. The activists had already won their case in the brand’s stores in Bron and Ecully.
The association Projet animaux zoopolis (PAZ) launched a petition on Thursday, August 29, to ask the Decathlon store in Chasse-sur-Rhône (Isère) to stop selling live fish for live bait fishing.
This type of fishing involves hooking a small fish onto a hook with the aim of catching large predatory fish such as pike or perch.
This Wednesday, the petition had already collected nearly 15,000 signatures. Speaking to BFM Lyon, co-founder Amandine Sanvisens explained the association’s approach, denouncing “cruelty to animals” with live bait fishing. She assures that “Decathlon fuels animal suffering”.
Several stores have already cancelled these sales.
Amandine Sanvisens recalls that this campaign against the sale of fish for live bait fishing in Decathlon stores “started in 2019”, and that to date “there are 60 ongoing petitions targeting the brand’s stores”, and “13 stores have stopped selling them following our petitions”.
The association notably won its case after petitions were launched on the same subject against the Decathlon stores in Bron and Ecully, in the Rhône.
Amandine Sanvisens “recalls that Decathlon is the leader in the sports market and that they can continue their business without making animals suffer and that torturing animals is not sport.”
“In 2024 it is no longer acceptable that we go to a store to buy a tent or sneakers and we end up with fish piled up in aquariums with corpses that mix with the living, and all that just for a hobby,” laments the co-founder of PAZ.
Live bait fishing is prohibited in several countries, as the Animal Law, Ethics and Science Foundation points out: Switzerland, Ireland, the United Kingdom (Scotland), Spain, Norway, Germany, the Netherlands and in certain American and Canadian states.
Hugo Francés and Glenn Gillet