Probably dead since, the roosters have obtained justice.
A 32-year-old man was found guilty of illicit transport of animals and acts of cruelty before the Versailles Criminal Court (Yvelines) on Wednesday.
He was sentenced to a suspended fine of 1,000 euros.
It was during a banal roadside check that the gendarmes discovered six roosters in the trunk of a car at the Saint-Arnoult (Yvelines) toll booth, on the A10 motorway, on January 27 in the middle of the afternoon.
Locked in bags under piles of rubble, the birds seem very weak.
"Thin, one no longer had feathers on his neck while two others could not stand on their feet," recalls the public prosecutor.
Above all, the gendarmes noted that their legs and their beaks were filed.
In court, the defendant denied having used these roosters for fights.
Living in Lagny-sur-Marne (Seine-et-Marne), the man, who belongs to the community of Travelers, explains that "it was only to eat them".
After claiming that he had bought them from a farm in the village of Epernon in the south of Yvelines, he then indicated that he had bought the animals in the parking lot of a restaurant in Artenay (Loiret), at 130 kilometers from home.
A hell of a trip just to buy chickens.
Chickens unfit for consumption
Above all, underlines the prosecutor, it is not a question of "plump chickens, when we see them in the photos, we do not want to eat them".
Considered unfit for consumption, these Sumatran roosters are used for fighting, especially in Asia.
In the dark, crushed under piles of rubble, without any ventilation, water or food, for the prosecutor, "this abuse should not be inflicted on any animal, even roosters have a sensitivity."
On the reasons for such a transport, the defendant tells that the gallinaceans were fighting and that he had to separate them in each bag.
The thirty-something, already convicted several times for theft and violence in meetings, will also have to pay 800 euros in damages to each of the two associations civil parties in the trial, the Brigitte-Bardot foundation and the Stéphane-Lamart association.
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The latter's lawyer, Maître Patrice Grillon, is satisfied with the judgment even if he "hoped for a slightly heavier sentence".
He regrets, however, that the gendarmes did not contact the association to recover the roosters.
“They tried with three other structures but no one was available to go and get them, which is why the defendant left with them.
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Stéphane Lamart, Ile-de-France animal advocate, specifies that cases of mistreatment of roosters are rare in the Paris region, "maybe once or twice a year in Ile-de-France".
And again, when it is called upon for gallinacea, it is mainly individuals who mistreat their hens.
Banned in France except in Nord-Pas-de-Calais and in several overseas territories, the practice of cockfighting remains marginal.