First Drafts - The Prospect magazine blog

147 Responses

1. El Tel says:

   October 30, 2008 at 1:55 pm

   Jordi

   You are developing an intellectual argument. As I have previously stated have a limited education so I cannot compete on that level.

   Your intent is clear to you, whereas mine is not. Pragmatism over poetry in this case surely.

   But…haven’t we come to the same conclusion from opposite directions? What is more important: the conclusion or the direction from which it was approached?

   Isn’t the road forward from the darkness into the light and are we not both traveling that road?

   I tend to appose banning anything as I can never decide on the correctness of the arbiter. I would though, advise you to take your clear intention from saving the bull from the man and focus that intent on saving the man from himself, which I regard as a higher cause.

   I must now withdraw from here to return to to my ordinary life but I thank all for an interesting look into my own psyche and inadequacies.
2. Jordi Casamitjana says:

   October 31, 2008 at 8:19 pm

   Mr. Fiske-Harrison

   Referring your last comment, how do you call the long loud high pitch sound dogs do when they are in severe acute pain? and, in case you come out with a convenient euphemism, how do you call the long loud high pitch sound humans do when they are in severe acute pain?
3. Alexander Fiske-Harrison says:

   November 1, 2008 at 1:57 pm

   I would call that, in keeping with standard lexicons of both common-usage English AND animal vocalisations in ethology, a howl. Or we can just make up words if you like…
4. Alexander Fiske-Harrison says:

   November 1, 2008 at 2:09 pm

   Females of ‘Vulpes vulpes’ (a canid) do indeed scream when in oestrus. They do not, however, when in pain.
5. Jordi Casamitjana says:

   November 2, 2008 at 3:40 pm

   Mr. Fiske-Harrison

   I cannot believe that you think that when a dog is hurt (and there have been reports of humans having lived with dogs, some of which may be reading your comments in astonishment, perhaps remembeering when they heard them being run over by a car) produce the same sound that, for example, wolves calling each other at night before a hunt (when they produce the ‘howling’ you are talking about).

   They are different sounds in form and function, the scream far more high pitch and the howl far more sustained and uniform, everyone knows that. Common definition of screaming: to utter a loud, sharp, piercing cry. Can you really describe a howl as a “piercing cry”?

   In any event, why do you insist so much in objectifying non-human animals that you cannot even tolerate the use of the same language when describing them and when describing humans?

   What are you afraid of, that suddenly we all will get confused and think that when we say ‘the dog screamed’ we meant ‘the human dressed as a dog screamed’, or that in fact people will realize that the bull is a sentient being and not an artistic prop, which is what you would prefer people think it is so they can agree with your unempathic ‘aestehtic’ view on bullfighting?
6. Alexander Fiske-Harrison says:

   November 2, 2008 at 6:21 pm

   I am afraid that I have never heard a dog scream, even when hit by a car. On that occassion I heard a piercing yelp; the sound is quite different - although I was also referring to the connotation. That said, in the English language, there is not a problem with the phrase a ‘howl of pain’, and it is often applied to humans as well as animals. As I said, I have heard a vixen scream with lust - there the word is applied because of the singular quality of the sound. Nor do I objectify animals, they are subjects of consciousness, even if most are not self-conscious.

   No, Mr. Casamijana, I am not ‘afraid’ people might confuse different species with one another, I simply dislike people deliberately eliding descriptive terms to achieve rhetorical points in their attempt to assert that the chain of being is morally horizontal and then claiming the rigours of science are ‘with them’. If you wish to claim dogs also curse the Gods for their woe-begotten fate and do differential calculus please feel free to keep posting.
7. Jeff Pledge says:

   November 2, 2008 at 10:06 pm

   One has to admire Jordi Casamitjana, heroically sacrificing himself to patrol that abyss where he is “facing constantly the darkest side of humanity”, but his clarity of mind might improve if only he could distance himself a little from this unfortunate concept of torture, to which he cannot help himself being dragged back over and over again.

   It might be useful if he could define it, but i suspect that, like other extreme animal welfarists, he is wary of doing this. They use the term as a battlecry rather than a normal word, characterised by semantic content. In spanish, tortura rimes with cultura and they can be chanted together.

   Even in the corrida, let alone in the other forms of taurine “game” (or whatever you call it), there is no torture in the sense of pain inflicted for the sadistic delectation of the spectators or participants. I know some hundreds of people in these two categories, and they are quite normal individuals, often highly sensitive, intelligent and educated ones. The liberal professions are well represented among aficionados. To think that hundreds of thousands, indeed millions, of ordinary people are a bunch of blood-crazed maniacs makes inherent nonsense, and those who cannot see this lack, uh, clarity of mind.

   Such cigars as may be smoked are irrelevant, but children should know what death is.

   Isnt it obvious that killing animals is not, in itself, an unreasonable or abnormal thing to do? It is only quite recently that it has become restricted, in our society, to a small band of professionals, and the activity taken out of the public view, so that the unclear of mind can imagine that it isnt happening.

   So please, Jordi, do not linger in my abyss. The spectacle of your suffering is too painful for me.

   Instead, you might like to read a book which came out last year, by Francis Wolff, a professor of philosophy at the Sorbonne. It is called “Philosophie de la Corrida” (ISBN 978-2-213-63374-9), and it deals rather well with a lot of the ideas involved in the spanish “bullfight”. In particular, Wolff floats the idea of treating different kinds of animal in different ways, in accordance with their nature. And ours, of course.

   Tackling this book will, however, involve getting out of the superficial english-speaking mindset which this discussion is mired in. We might then learn to spell Nietzsche and Heidegger (and abattoir).

   The bull/cow/ox is a herd animal, and herd herbivores have done very well out of domestication — so much so that the idea has been put about that it has all been an evolutionary ploy, on their part, and a phenomenally successful one at that. There are, after all, vastly more sheep in the world than tigers. The herd is the basic unit, and man and beast cooperate in maintaining it, to the benefit of both sides. In purely human terms, think of it as a kind of janissary levy.

   This is the kind of issue we should be discussing, if we want to understand what everyone but me here calls bullfighting, before we presume to judge it. I’m glad that El Tel seems to have gained some insight into himself from the discussion, but if he’d learned something about the outside world that might have been even better.

   Another such issue, worthy of serious thought, is precisely how much pain cattle really do suffer, in the bullring and elsewhere. This is a valid question, and research has been done into it lately. Cattle are mammals like us, but their hormonal and nervous sytems are similar to ours, not identical. To imagine people being put thru the same process as cattle is unhelpful — silly anthropomorphism.. Their reactions would be very different.

   And here is a valid question of morality for Zachary Bos to answer. Famous Camargue bulls are occasionally retired to the ranch — their careers tend to fade out when they are fifteen or so. They may then live for some time. Ourrias died a few years ago at twenty-eight, tho around twenty is more normal. But what happens to an ageing bull is that the younger and stronger ones push him off the feed, and he begins to weaken. You can put him in an enclosure on his own, where he will be unhappy, as a herd animal. Either way, the natural death for him is from malnutrition and hypothermia — and depression? — one starry winter’s night.

   To see Ourrias in action, click on http://www.ffcc.info/article80.html. Look at that for anticipation! Can Christian Chomel get by?

   Would it have been kinder to slaughter Ourrias earlier? This is a question we have to answer for humans too. My mother died recently, at ninety-five, having had no activity for several years. She could not get up, or do anything, or speak, or recognise any of her family or her carers. A few years ago, we had our dog given a lethal injection long before she reached that stage.

   Discussing points like these would give a far better insight into bull culture, which is to my mind one of the things that is preventing our civilisation of canned everything from dying of boredom.
8. Jordi Casamitjana says:

   November 3, 2008 at 5:26 pm

   Mr. Pledge

   I am happy to promptly define torture for you, no problem at all. Perhaps some extreme animal welfarists, as you say, may wary in doing so (although I doubt it, since they deal with this subject all the time), but since I am not one of them I guess it will be easier for me.

   You are wrong in your interpretation of torture, since it is not, as you say, only “pain inflicted for the sadistic delectation of the spectators or participants”, because then we could rule out the Spanish inquisition (archetypal torture organization who did it to clear Spain from ‘heretics’, as they would call them, not for pleasure), the many dictatorship police forces (doing it to obtain confessions or as a deterrent, not for pleasure), or the ‘war intelligence’ operatives (doing it to obtain information of their enemies, not for pleasure). Torture for sadism is really a minority compared with ‘institutionalized’ torture, as bullfighting currently is.

   If you really want a definition as such, here you go: “the deliberate, systematic, or wanton infliction of physical or mental suffering to a sentient being by one or more persons ”

   If it is done for sadistic pleasure, obtaining information, police deterrent, revenge, retribution, religious significance, sport or entertainment, does not really matter, since what defines is not the ‘motive’, but the method, and its effect on the victim.

   Of course you will then say that bulls are not sentient beings, or do not suffer, or that do not feel pain, or that their suffering is tolerable, or that their pain does not hurt, or that do not have a way to tell us how much they suffer and therefore they probably do not, or that the levels of beta-endorphines and cortisol found in bull’s cadavers suggest that they suffer less than other mammals (when in fact recent research with these hormones has shown that the level of suffering and pain in bullfights is far greater than one expected; you can see some of it in the veterinarian website http://www.blogveterinario.com/2007/03/por-qu-el-toro-s-sufre-he-conseguido.html, out of the superficial English-speaking mindset, that is), etc.

   And of course, you will also say that there is no such thing as ‘mental suffering’ (or that only human brains can produce ‘minds’, and therefore animal psychologists are like ‘ghost busters’).

   Or, perhaps that the pain in bullfights is not inflicted deliberately, but by accident…or that it is not systematic, but sporadic…

   Anyway, perhaps you could tell us whether you think that it is possible that a human inflicts torture to an animal (I kind of suspect that you may say that it is impossible), and if so, how such torture would look like if such animal is a bovid (I kind of suspect that it would not involve the stabbing of blades of any sort).
9. Alexander Fiske-Harrison says:

   November 3, 2008 at 7:33 pm

   I should have thought, Mr. Casamitjana, that another putative criteria for torture is that which the subject runs AWAY from, not headlong towards. This is why electric fences tend to work. Of course, I have read elsewhere your preposterous statement that bulls run away by running towards - which begs the question of what the hell those bulls are doing which actually run away. Perhaps, following another of your inversions of the English language by stipulative fiat, these are the REALLY aggressive ones?
10. Alexander Fiske-Harrison says:

    November 3, 2008 at 7:49 pm

    Lest you think I am alone in this view, I take this from the absolutely seminal work of ethology, “Interpretation and Explanation in the Study of Animal Behaviour,’ edited by Bekoff and Jamieson.

    “Animals avoid things that cause them pain, withdraw rapdily from painful stimuli and generally respond to pains in ways that are more or less analogous to human responses.”

    I am not, of course, claiming bulls are incapable of pain of differing levels in differing situations - I have been clear on that on many occasions.
11. Jordi Casamitjana says:

    November 4, 2008 at 11:02 am

    Mr. Fiske-Harrison

    I have already explained to you the concept of ‘bull at bay’. I also mentioned to you the ‘running of the bulls’, as a classic example of ‘bulls running away’, which you do not seem to acknowledge. Have you heard of the concept of stampede? Do you interpreted as a group of bulls (or buffalo, or bison) massively running to ‘attack’ someone?

    In the ‘bull at bay’, like it happens in stag hunting or in many other examples of herbivore predation, the prey/victim turns away towards its attackers ‘despite the pain’, as a last resource defensive behavior, to push them away. Bullfighting in the arena focuses on that event, by forcing the bulls both genetically and geographically to trigger this response sooner in the arena. However, when the ‘geography’ allows it (that is, when you give the bull a space to flee), then the bull does choose to run for it, as you can see in the ‘running of the bulls’, or in any many other ‘fiesta’ with bulls, where you see bulls that are still genetically selected to chose the ‘turning to the attacker’ sooner than normal, but yet they still chose running since the charging is not ‘the last resource’ any longer.

    Not to forget that what you see in the bullring is not the beginning of the ordeal for the bull, but the end. It has already been fleeing for a long time from the dehesa to the bullring. Traditionally, you could see it with the ‘running’ before the fight, which is how the bull was moved to the arena from the fields, and was part of the spectacle (as still is in Pamplona). These days you do not see it as often since between the initial running and the arena there is now transport with a lorry, but the transport itself (which is an stressor), and the way the bull is provoked ‘out of sight’(often with pain involved), does help to trigger the ‘last resource’ behavior in the arena.

    So, indeed “Animals avoid things that cause them pain, withdraw rapidly from painful stimuli and generally respond to pains in ways that are more or less analogous to human responses.”, unless you do not give to that animal or human any option to flee any longer, either because there is nowhere to go, or there is no energy left to run. Or are you saying that the already bitten buffalo you must have seen in doccumentaries turning towards the lion, or the already bitten deer towards the wolves, are not animals?
12. Alexander Fiske-Harrison says:

    November 4, 2008 at 2:23 pm

    What utter nonsense: some bulls run away within the ring, they try to leave and will not charge - and are often substituted as a result. Charging at an adjacent stationary horse when you are at the edge of a circle 70 yards in diameter is simply not running away - AND this is BEFORE it has been pic-ed and BEFORE the banderilleras placed. The bull charges onto the pic - and if it was so damned painful for the bull, why does it keep doing it again and again with no more provocation than the shouts of the man on the horse and his banging his foot on his stirrup?

    I take your point about stressors involved in travel, and discard it. Every animal is transported, not all charge men on horses.

    As for the buffalo, I was there at the time not watching a “documentary” and know for a fact that it was uninjured. Also, the lion had come across the savannah from the other direction. You seem to be totally unaware of the fact that buffalo kill lions on a regular basis and are held responsible for more human deaths than any other animal in Africa. In fact, in general you seem to be substituting empirical knowledge with the daydreams of someone determined to show the world that herbivores are cute and cuddly, or perhaps your motives are more cynical and proganda-based? You are, after all, paid to not to inform but to get the bullfight banned (and what else after, I wonder).
13. Alexander Fiske-Harrison says:

    November 4, 2008 at 3:17 pm

    A few examples from England:

    From The Times, June 9, 1998

    A WATER board official was gored to death yesterday by a bull that broke through a fence. Wilson Cowan, 56, was sampling water from a mains in a street in Pettinain, Strathclyde, when an Ayrshire bull in a nearby field grew agitated and began to bellow.
    The animal charged through the wire fence and pinned him against his van. It gored him in the head and body, and tossed him into the middle of the lane. Road builders working near by tried to distract the bull by throwing stones but by the time they reached Mr Cowan, an official with the West of Scotland Water Board, he was dead.

    From the BBC: 7 July, 2005

    Farmer is killed by charging bull

    A farmer has died after he was attacked by a bull in Greater Manchester.
    William John Pennington, 68, of Dunham Massey, near Altrincham, was apparently tossed in the air by the bull in a field near his home early on Thursday.

    NewsBriefs: Bull Kills Man - 24 December 2005

    A FARMER has died after he was attacked by a bull on his farm in Llantrissant, Usk, South Wales

    From The Shropshire Star, March 2, 2007

    Bull kills man at farm

    A man in his 60s died and two others were injured when a bull ran amok at a farm near Leominster.The bull attacked workers at the farm in Stoke Prior yesterday. It charged at farmer Graham Beaumont, 54, causing head and facial injuries requiring hospital treatment.
    Then two hours later, the bull went out of control again, this time killing a man and injuring another. The man who died was in his 60s.
14. Jordi Casamitjana says:

    November 4, 2008 at 6:13 pm

    Mr. Fiske-Harrison

    If my arguments are utter nonsense to you you seem to have difficulty in handling the truth. Indeed, some bulls run away within the ring, which reinforce my point about the running and destroys your arguments that bulls never run away from danger. That one was easy.

    Regarding charging the adjacent stationary horse, surely you know how that is done. You know that people on horses and big ’sticks’ are not alien to the bulls before they enter the arena. You surely know that the bad experiences the bulls had from humans before the bullfight come from people on horses with ’sticks’. You must have heard of ‘acoso and derribo’, have you not? How does the breeder select the best bull for a bullfight? What happens to the bull immediately before the arena’s door opens, in the place where it is waiting? How is the bull separated from the rest of the herd in the arena before going out?

    Yes, in the mind of the bull that human with the lance on a horse is the wolf that has already bitten it, and since the horse does not appear until the bull has been repeatedly provoked by the bullfighters with the ‘capote’, and the bull has already realised by then that the bullring has no way out, well, the ‘last resource’ is the only option then (which, incidentally, is the most ‘rational’ option too).

    As for the transport, indeed many animals that are transported may not chase men on horses when freed, but the ones that do are often untamed adult animals (often males) taken from the field/wild and forced to the lorry by “men on horses”.

    As for the documentaries I mention, are you saying that you have seen each and every documentary/footage where buffalo are shown to be hunted by lions, and in all of them the buffalo newer run away from the lion, and the buffalo never switched from running to charging, especially after the first ‘pain’ experience from the lion? Are you sure that this will be your position about this? Remember that it would be very easy for me to put many links here of video clips that contradict your opinion. Do I need to do it?

    As far as all the examples of bulls attacking humans you mention, are they bullfighting bulls, such ’special’ breed bullfighters say that are different from all other mammals in their attacking predisposition, or other types of bulls? I notice that you do not mention in any of them the circumstances that provoked the bull to attack. You know, I could also post you a series of articles of dogs having seriously attacked people. Should we then organize ritualized dog-fights with ‘killers’ (matadors) dressed in colors and lights stabbing dogs to death? Well, you may claim that I have gone too far with this, since a little basset could not possibly be compared with a bull. Should we do it with pit-bulls then? yes, those dogs which would be illegal to breed and keep in the UK because they have been artificially selected to be more aggressive than usual (as bullfighting bulls?).

    I noted that you did not comment anything again about the ‘running of the bulls’ or the stampede example. Not surprising.
15. Bullfighting » Bring Out Your Dead Launch night-21st of November 2008 - Thumped says:

    November 20, 2008 at 9:07 am

    [...] Comment on A noble death? by Bullfighting » Comment on A noble …Comment on A noble death? by Bullfighting » Category:Bullfighting …Comment on A noble death? by Alexander Fiske-HarrisonOnce again we are forced to confront the fact that certain variants of the anti-bullfighting position assume a moral … [...]
16. Julie says:

    November 24, 2008 at 7:20 pm

    I am 19 years old. I am French.
    I have to write an essay about “corrida”.
    I have just to say that it is an awful, crual act against the bull.
    In fact, it is a scene where there are several persons, who provoc the bull, agitate some red/pink things in order to make the bull run… to hurt it… to kill it…
    ok ok it is “just an animal” not a human… But I make as if I was in the position of the bull… Alone, in a crowded place, whith persons who have one wish which makes them feel impatient, gives them adrenaline : my death.
    The fact that the bull attacks is because he feels oppressed,threatened… And please, don’t tell that it is not the case (red colour, many people…)
    I cannot bear that people who feel adrenaline by seeing an animal suffering… I just think they are horrible…
    I just hope that one day they will be punished…
    Like in a corrida, there is a victim = the bull and somebody who have power because he has weapons, and are several = matador…
    I hope that somebody stonger than that awful persons can make them suffering… like they make suffering the bill…
    Sorry for my poor english, but I wanted to answer, to give my opinion…
    Don’t make at the other, what you would not like that he makes to you… Think about it…
17. Zachary Bos says:

    December 16, 2008 at 5:31 am

    To respond to Jeff Pledge, I shall say that I’m happy to consider any particular idea out of Prof. Wolff’s book. I’ll not rush out to buy it myself, though perhaps that is just my superficial English-speaking conditioning in action. Any philosophical propositions which have bearing on this discussion should be paraphrasable, at least.

    You asked — I believe this is your question — whether it is kinder to put to death the aged bull whic is being bullied by the other animals. The situation is artificial — it should be in no enclosure at all. Within the limits of this contigent situation, however, I’d say that we do whatever we can to maximize the resemblance between captivity and a free existence in which the animal’s telos is allowed free expression. When we can make a determination that the bull’s life is so full of anxiety and fear, and his physical condition so far deteriorated, that no freedom from these can be found, then perhaps euthansiac killing is in order. As it would be for your dog; as it would be for a human.

    I regret, for the sake of all those you influence, that you find bullfighting a desirable tonic to the boredom of culture. I’m not bored, but neither am I much preoccupied with commercial media. So how do I keep myself entertained? With many pursuits, none of them involving the spectacular death of a feeling creature.

    I would be interested in seeing, Mr. Pledge, your answer to the question which Mr. Fiske-Harrison has failed to far to address directly: whether bullfighting is one of those situations in which the aesthetic experience of the human spectators is of greater moral priority than whatever right the bull has to exist without suffering deliberately inflicted pain. Presuming you think there are any such situations in which aesthetics trumps ethics, of course.
18. Alexander Fiske-Harrison says:

    December 16, 2008 at 1:38 pm

    “The situation is artificial — it should be in no enclosure at all.”

    Domestic cattle, including fighting bulls, have never lived in the wild and are not equipped to live in the wild. The aurochs, from which they all descended did, but it is extinct. Left untended, and unenclosed, they would die an infinitely worse death, following an infinitely poorer life, than either cattle raised for meat or the bullfight.
19. Zachary Bos says:

    December 17, 2008 at 9:49 pm

    You might see a more subtle point in what I wrote: not that Bos taurus should roam free in search of telic fulfillment, but that it should not *be* — in an enclosure, or out. Being an animal whose tendencies are shaped not by environmental conditions but by the human appetite for milk, meat, labor, and leather, we can’t say either way whether the life in or out of enclosure is poorer. As I wrote, the situation is artificial.

    Despite this artificiality, we can to a certain degree peer through the veil of husbandy to detect a few natural tendencies (though what is “natural” can’t be said any longer to relate directly to survival). Is a bovine happier hobbled, or allowed to walk freely in an enclosure? Probably the latter. Is a bovine happier when its environment is free from the threat of predation, or when lions are roaming about? Probably the former. And so on. I actually dispute the claim you make, regarding the infinitude of the worseness of a cow ‘left in the wild’ — but not, I suspect, for the reasons you’d think. In any case, this is beside the point — I was responding to Mr. Pledge’s question, and I did so by observing that the question wasn’t properly formed.

    I continue to hope that you’ll find the time to consider the question I have given in several forms, but consistently to the same concern — whether (and if so, how) you think it is justifiable to inflict pain upon a feeling creature for the amusement of a crowd.
20. Bullfighting: The Sadness and the Splendour « Alexander Fiske-Harrison’s Blog says:

    January 23, 2009 at 1:38 pm

    [...] he explored in his much-noted essay for Prospect on bullfighting (a piece which sparked one of the most in-depth discussions ever to feature on this [...]
21. Tulio Hernandez says:

    January 26, 2009 at 4:55 am

    Your essay mentions the notion that death to the bull in the ring is more “noble” than death in the slaughter house. Clearly there is a difference between killing an animal for food and killing and animal for entertainment. It’s incomprehensible why the ceremonious slow painful death of a bull in the ring by thrusting, poking, stabbing, and jabbing the animal with lances, barbed darts, swords, and daggers for 20 minutes is more noble and honorable than a quick, sterile death in the slaughter house. In the end, how does this ritual honor the bull (a human term that obviously the animal can’t understand) when it is bitterly killed in the ring? This is a pretext to promote something that is logically wrong and morally corrupt.

    What you write in essay is informative, but none of it “disproves” that bullfighting is indeed a relic of Spain’s barbarism and a vehicle for sadism, acted out on the animals while corrupting the soul of the spectator.
22. Alexander Fiske-Harrison says:

    January 26, 2009 at 3:22 pm

    First, the word “noble” is never used in my essay. It is used in the title, but that is selected, following standard magazine publishing practice, by an editor or subeditor without consulting the writer.

    Second, if I was offered the choice between 4 years on the farms on which fighting bulls are reared (which I have visited), followed by death in the ring, or 18 months on the farms on which English meat cattle are reared (which I have also visited) followed by death in the abbatoir, I would choose the former over the latter every time, and this has nothing to do with nobility. Just as I would choose four years on free release followed by the coliseum over eighteen months in prison followed by the electric chair (and I know animals don’t choose - can’t choose - I indicate my choice only to indicate a preferable state of affairs).

    Third, you say: “there is a difference between killing an animal for food and killing and [sic] animal for entertainment.” Yes there is, but only when food is not an entertainment. Most food choices we make in the westerm world are for our gustatory pleasure NOT for reasons of health or nutrition.

    For more on bullfighting, click on my name above to go to ‘The Last Arena - The World of the Spanish Bullfight.’
23. The Lair of Winds « The Last Arena says:

    February 3, 2009 at 3:10 pm

    [...] The Lair of Winds By fiskeharrison Finally I am summoned back to Seville for my tentadero with the matador Juan José Padilla by my friend Don Adolfo Suárez-Illana, only to have the have it rained off. So I have been stuck in a rather nice little hotel on the Alameda de Hercules relearning the Spanish language and revisiting old bullfights I have seen. In particular I have been reading Jorge Luis Borges’ ‘La casa de Asterión’ in Spanish for the first time: much better than in Huxley’s - or even di Giovanni’s - translations. I was also reading La Divisa, the magazine of the Club Taurino of London (see above) when I came across their description of last Autumn’s epic fight at Las Ventas in Madrid which I attended. Here is the description I sent my literary agent the following month - a different perspective on a fight to my one in Prospect magazine: [...]
24. Death is Watching « Alexander Fiske-Harrison’s Bullfighting blog says:

    February 6, 2009 at 2:59 am

    [...] to ‘A Noble Death‘ in Prospect magazine for the essay which began this project.) Possibly related posts: [...]
25. Tulio Hernandez says:

    February 10, 2009 at 4:42 am

    As a thinking rational being you certainly have the option of choosing how to lead your own life in any way you’d like. But the fact that you are free to make these choices helps the bull in no way at all. In your comparison to gladiators, keep in mind that these men were not free men and technically, they were slaves. In many ways, they were just like the bull, force to participate in a death ritual where if they were exceptionally brave then they would be granted freedom and life. Not the kind of life I’d like to live; but then again that’s just me.

    In the bullfight that you saw and described in your article, you must understand that this kind of fight rarely happens. I grew up in Colombia and moved the US in my teens. As a teenager I saw many bullfights in Colombia. Back then, I had as much sympathy for the bull as I had for the ball in a football game; it was just an object – a means to an end. My last bullfight was in 1987 in Mexico City. The matadores where 4 Mexicans and 2 Spaniards all top rank. It was a bloody mess. None of them killed their bull cleanly. And for each bull, the picadores (horsemen with lances) over picked their bull, the banderilleros badly placed the banderillas (sticks with razor sharp hooks), and in the end, the matadores took 4 to 6 pinchazos (an unsuccessful sword thrust) to finish the bull. Nowdays, most bullfights follow this pattern.

    Is that entertainment?

    If you watch the video that you posted, you will see that the rear of the bull is stain with brown matter. The reason for this is that in order to weaken the bull, it is given sulfur in the waiting bull pin. Sulfur causes diarrhea and dehydration in the animal. At the very least, the bull emerges into the arena already weaken. Check this out on your next bullfight. All the bulls come into the ring with their rump stained.

    You also claimed that you have visited bull ranches. Therefore, you must be familiar with the way a bull fights in nature. When two males fight, they lock horns and push one another until one of them yields. The looser keeps moving forward while the winner turns around and waits for another confrontation. The interesting thing about this behavior is that the loosing bull flees by moving forward. On your next bullfight, watch how the bull attempts to “flee” forward from the attacking men. Inside a round enclosure the fleeing bull winds up right back confronting his attackers and the cycle begins over again.

    You remember Pajarito (little bird), the bull that jumped into the stands in a bull ring in Mexico City? He was unsuccessfully “fleeing” forward. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ReJ-0E4ArpA
26. The Idylls and the Ring « Alexander Fiske-Harrison’s Bullfighting blog says:

    February 11, 2009 at 3:00 am

    [...] can read the essay in Prospect magazine that led to all this via their blog at ‘First Drafts’ here.) « Death [...]
27. The Blood of the Duke of Veragua I « Alexander Fiske-Harrison’s Bullfighting blog ‘The Last Arena’ says:

    February 18, 2009 at 1:18 pm

    [...] can read the essay in Prospect magazine that led to all this via their blog at First Drafts here.) « The Idylls and [...]
28. The Blood of the Duke of Veragua - Part Two « Alexander Fiske-Harrison’s Bullfighting blog says:

    February 20, 2009 at 6:30 pm

    [...] (You can read the essay in Prospect magazine that led to all this via their blog at First Drafts here.) [...]
29. Zachary Bos says:

    February 24, 2009 at 11:31 pm

    I’m intrigued that this thread has moved increasingly closer to the subject of bullfighting, increasingly employing the increasingly technical language and knowledge of insiders, and the question implicit in the title of the original essay has yet to be engaged honestly: who is ennobled when a feeling creature is killed for sport?

    The Prospect editors noted that this article sparked one of the most in-depth discussions ever here in First Drafts. I observe, however, that all the depths being plumbed represent a digression from this question of whether questions of moral action can be answered by an evaluation of aesthetics. Mr. Fiske-Harrison’s single seeming response was to proffer a facile misunderstanding of Wittgenstein; I hope that he returns to make a good-faith effort to be, at last, philosophical about the topic, and not just a literary tourist of bloodsport.
30. Jeff Pledge says:

    February 28, 2009 at 1:52 am

    Oh, good grief. I had thought that this discussion had died a natural death. But no. On it rumbles, now because Zachary Bos wont let go of the bone he is trying to chew to pieces. He is as persistent as the insufferable Jordi Casamitjana was with his incessant harping on about torture, torture, torture.

    The discussion has not been a digression, Zachary. The digression is in the question put by Alexander and you. Basically, he asks whether it cannot be true that the esthetics can justify the cruelty (tho clearly he really believes that they can), while you say surely it cannot be true — can it? — that the esthetics justify the cruelty.

    I’ll let you into a secret. Alexander is a rank beginner of an aficionado, with all the exaggeration and naivety of the recently converted. He is going manfully about this task in his life. He leads with his chin, and it is almost as if he expects to be knocked sprawling. You take him on his terms, because they suit you. You want to knock him sprawling. You like the question, because of the terms in which it sets the debate.

    But the question is hypothetical. No one in their right mind would argue that the claims of what you call bullfighting are purely esthetic, and nothing else. The whole thing is much more than just an art form. It is reality not fiction, it is more moral than esthetic, it is a microcosm, an encapsulation of life and its challenges, etc. etc. I would say that it can contain art, that art can be a feature of it, but that it belongs to a higher realm of thing than tatty, boring old art. Without art, it still stands up.

    Precisely what realm this is is the subject of much debate among a minority of aficionados — in another forum, one of them has recently said precisely that “it is what it is”, which doesnt really take us very far — while perhaps the majority of aficionados arent bothered that much and just go along with the idea of it being an art because that has been, for the last couple of centuries, the fashionable thing for high-level things to pretend to be.

    So the short answer to your question is no. Will that satisfy you? But that doesnt matter because your question is off beam anyway. Please dont take the first sentence of this paragraph as meaning that i agree with you. I certainly dont. You belong to this vapid, frivolous civilisation that is as likely to die of boredom (look at the fuss about the oscars last weekend!) as from climate change.

    Jeff Pledge
31. Alexander Fiske-Harrison says:

    March 1, 2009 at 11:11 am

    I almost agree with Jeff: art is too narrow a term, but it always has been - from the taste of papardelle with hare ragu to Schubert’s ‘Moments Musicaux’, this is too broad a range for any single term to hold meaning over. However, I was merely trying to fit the argument into a standard form, and despite Zachary’s beliefs, it is indeed just that. Whether or not the Beautiful and the Good compete, are identical, can be valued one above other in some meta-ethical schema etc, is pretty old hat in philosophy - so old, some seem to have forgotten that it is not only there in the books, but in life as well. (See earlier arguments about distribution of government funds between healthcare and the arts)

    Having embarked on the journey I said I would to the heart of the bullfight, I shall be writing on my blog about what I find, ‘The Last Arena - In Search of the Spanish Bullfight.’ (link above - a book will follow)
32. Jeff Pledge says:

    March 2, 2009 at 2:23 am

    I seldom ask, Alexander, for more than being almost agreed with.

    Yes, it is the most basic terms in any field which are least well defined and most variably used. Think of “stock” in economics — livestock, deadstock, joint stock, feedstock. Seems to mean something like “stuff”.

    “Ar”t certainly needs some clarification before you use the word. Nowadays it often means just painting (and sculpture), as in “art gallery”.

    On your brave journey to the “heart of the bullfight”, remember that others have also set out on the same trip and ended up in its gallbladder, or its big toe. How will you know it’s the heart when you reach it?

    Jeff Pledge
33. Robert says:

    March 2, 2009 at 3:46 am

    “The fiesta of the bulls is a didactic rite, the most moral art that exists, in which all human values can be found, as well as all the elements that shape our nature: life, death, courage and fear. As today our society insists on concealing death and suffering, it is the bulls that serve as a reminder of the inexorable and a way to learn to live with it.”

    - Albert Boadella
    Catalan Dramaturg and Theater Director

    Saludos a todos,

    Robert Weldon
34. cristina says:

    March 9, 2009 at 1:45 pm

    Mr.Alexander Fiske-Harrison,

    I’ve been reading your article and would like to go further into some of your arguments because I’m really interested in ethics.

    When you say that animals can have no rights because they have no duties either, do you mean that human infants, people in coma or suffering from mental disorders should lose their rights too?

    When you consider hypocrisy to eat meat in front of the television watching a National Geographic documentary and at the same time condemn bullfights, do you consider that a society which is not perfect should not fight for cultural progress or compassion? Do you think the effect on a child is the same when watching animals’ behaviour in wilderness or when they see a real spectacle where an animal is mistreated for people’s amusement?

    When you justify the killing and mistreatment with aesthetics, do you defend that lapidation could be admitted in western societies if only the ones with the stones were beautifully dressed up and danced while stoning according to some pre-established rules?

    When you say that no shark would show the level of systematic aggression if in the same situation of a bull (caught in the wild, confined to a strange aquarium and repeatedly attacked) do you refer to any concrete study or is it just your opinion?

    When you say that you can tell when a bull is frightened because he wants to flee from the ring, do you believe that fear causes always the same reaction in different individuals even of the same species? Wouldn’t you agree that courage can be a way to deal with fear?

    With the level of species extinctions we are facing today - not even knowing their impact on the environmental balance - do you really consider ethical to protect bulls for amusement?

    When you say that the closest you have been to equality between humans and animals (this is a funny thing, where we have put the border: we call animals anything from oysters to apes, though apes are much more similar to us than to oysters…) was in a research laboratory while using apes, it seems to me that you cannot avoid the prejudice against other species.

    I do believe there is no moral or ethical justification for “corridas”, so the only arguments of the “aficcionados” I accept - till now of all I’ve studied - is their right to attend a spectacle which is legal for the time being.
35. Alexander Fiske-Harrison says:

    March 9, 2009 at 4:07 pm

    To answer Cristina point by point:

    “…do you mean that human infants, people in coma or suffering from mental disorders should lose their rights…”

    No. Humans are different. That’s why we don’t eat our dead. I addressed this slightly in a letter in the November ‘08 issue, but one cannot beat the vegetarian philosopher Cora Diamond’s ‘Eating Meat and Eating People’ on this.

    “…do you consider that a society which is not perfect should not fight for cultural progress or compassion…”

    I don’t view eating meat and watching nature documentaries as being indicative of a lack of compassion or cultural progress. I would regard the absence of either a cultural nihilism, a denial of the reality of life in all its sadness and splendour and a societal shift towards the end of Man as a species. Note the implication that carnivorous animals could be ‘progressed’ towards vegetarianism.

    “…do you think the effect on a child…”

    I don’t see what the effect on a child has to with anything, unless you think people are all children who should be taught. This may reflect your views on “cultural progress”.

    “…do you defend… lapidation…” (stoning)

    No.

    “…do you refer to any concrete study or is it just your opinion…”

    Pure opinion, based on some knowledge, stated for rhetorical effect to illustrate better the point.

    “…do you believe that fear causes always the same reaction in different individuals…”

    No, there are many different responses. There are also many different definitions of fear. If you want, for reasons political or otherwise, to claim that vast and berserk aggression on encountering a novel situation is a fear reaction, then please go ahead. I find that counterproductive, as it reduces the sum of knowledge imparted by statements. If someone says “that bull is afraid of you”, I’d like to be able to work out whether that means he will charge me or not. Your route renders that impossible. (Which is the standard effect of all propaganda.)

    “With the level of species extinctions …do you really consider ethical to protect bulls for amusement?”

    Abolutely. The condition of the countryside supported by the bullfight is infinitely better than that used by any form of agriculture I have ever witnessed. Even organic, free-range meat cattle farming is far worse because of the greater population density it requires. The banning of the bullfight would result in a tangible environmental degradation in Spain.

    “When you say that the closest you have been to equality between humans and animals …was in a research laboratory while using apes, it seems to me that you cannot avoid the prejudice against other species.”

    The research centre is not a laboratory, nor does it practice any form of vivisection. It does contain “language laboratories”, which resemble those you find in high schools around the world. The centre is 55 acres of woodland and buildings staffed by people who work in close, unprotected proximity to extremely powerful animals who can make their displeasure known by inflicting terrible injury without warning. In order to get meaningful data about sensitive psychological characteristics like linguistic proficiency, they must be negotiated with very delicately, hence my use of the phrase “closest I have witnessed to any notion of equality”. It is still not equality, nor should it be. We don’t let lions do whatever lions want - c.f. earlier statements about end of Man as a species.

    “…the only arguments of the “aficcionados” I accept…”
    I am not an aficionado.
36. cristina says:

    March 10, 2009 at 10:23 am

    Thank you for your answers but perhaps because English is not my native language, I still don’t understand a few things.

    You say that humans are different but don’t explain which are the characteristics that makes us different. I mean, until recently, as the power was with the caucasian man, he discriminated all those considered different: women, black people, those physically or mentally disabled, children, indians, chinese, etc. Nowadays this is considered discrimination because arguments were based on prejudice and could not stand ethical judgement. Ignoring other species’ ability to feel joy, pain and fear - which is undeniable for all those having a nervous system - isn’t that discrimination based on speciesism (overlooking relevant respect in which another class of entities are equal to us, only because acknowledging these respects is not in our own interest) as it was previously on sexism, racism, etc?

    I think that Cora Diamond’s issue is on the inefficiency of normative arguments when we already have cultural preconceptions, i.e., moral arguments are most unlikely to become widespread social practices due to the way we historically have considered other non-human animals. She says that the arguments against eating meat that invoke animals rights, based on neurophysiology are not going to be successful. Diamond claims that humans are just not edible even when found dead; this argument fails to consider the fact that we do not eat fallen humans as we do not eat fallen animals either; we have to slaughter them and there is no way we could do that to humans in western societies. Anyway, the last report on cannibalism I’ve heard of was dated 2003 in Northeastern Congo, near Beni, which proves its cultural nature.

    There is a complex set of social rules that predetermine what and how we can eat; if we want to question them and eat ethically we must go all the way through and analyse them thoroughly. Anyway, the discussion here is not so much about the legitimacy of meat-eating as it is about the legitimacy of killing animals for amusement.

    I don’t understand your point on fear and propaganda. If one is assaulted, the reaction to fear can be that of retrieval or fight back; you can call one coward and the other one brave, or you can call the first wise and the second crazy, but it doesn’t really say much about them. But please be kind enough to explain your point better.

    I don’t understand if you do not agree with social and cultural progress or otherwise you think that we have achieved it’s highest point and trying to go further would be harmful to our species. And then I would also like to know your position about the legitimate point of progress (world conformity by western standards or accept every cultural difference, including stoning, clitoris excision, death penalty, enslavement, etc).

    You are justifying the existence of bullfighting by comparing it with extensive agriculture and factory farming. You are dismissing the environmental impact of cattle - see UN’s report - either for food purposes or amusement ones. You could otherwise compare it with other forms of art that do not compromise the environment.

    I totally disagree with you when you say that we shouldn’t let lyons do what they want. Of course we should, that’s why they should be left alone and not live with humans either in circus or zoos. If man as a species is in danger it is only due to our own fault and not for lack of aggressiveness towards other species.

    Sorry for calling you an aficionado but I consider aficionados those who like “corridas”, attend them whenever they have the opportunity and publicly defend their existence. Perhaps aficionado means something else, anyway I referred to the right to attend a bullfight even if you go there for other reasons then the love for being a bullfighting watcher.
37. Alexander Fiske-Harrison says:

    March 10, 2009 at 2:36 pm

    Diamond’s view, and mine, is that enumerating in a pseudo-scientific manner the things which distinguish humans from other animals is a morally sterile and philosophically facetious pursuit. Our moral sentiments are not based on whether or not person X has a functioning nervous system, but have grown from a full human stream of life, using human in a sense here which is deeply un - or rather pre - scientific. Her particular point is that the standard arguments for and against the eating of meat - which either come down to analagous nervous systems or denial of interests by ending of life - cannot explain our injunction against cannibalism and in doing so miss the point, morally speaking.

    My point about fear is that when I say “that bull is afraid”, it can be inferred that I think he will run away. Some animals, because of their evolutionary history, become afraid and flee to avoid predators. Because of a combination of natural and human selection, some animals simply attack anything they don’t like the look of. That isn’t fear. Are there blurring lines between these? Yes. However, just because grey exists, it doesn’t mean black and white don’t. I have seen bulls with no trace of fear at all.

    Re: cultural progress - I don’t believe the following things are progress: a societal shift towards vegetarianism, a dishonesty about and lack of reverence for the ferocity of nature or a promotion of other species desires over our own. In your own words - you are happy to let lions do what they want, including toying with and eating live their prey - but humans must do what you say?

    I do not dismiss the environmental effects of cattle, as I said, the population density is so much lower as not to come under the auspicies of the UN report. As well claim we should kill all the herbivores in the African game parks. The land is also kept far closer to its natural state - e.g. with trees which are kept to shade the cattle - than it would be without the bullfight. Or are you implying that if the corrida was banned someone would buy up all that land and turn it into a nature reserve?

    Some of my friends are very much aficionados, some loathe the bullfight - I am neither. If you want to see what I am, then please go and read my blog, ‘The Last Arena: In Search of the Spanish Bullfight” the link is in my name above.
38. cristina says:

    March 11, 2009 at 7:57 am

    Thank you so much for your answers, now I know where you stand.

    I think it’s important for humans as species to keep our minds open to different points of view at any stage of our critical thinking. To label our convictions as science and other people’s convictions as pseudo-science only because we don’t agree with them or waving with catastrophic visions of the future doesn’t seem to me very interesting (whenever society changed in big issues like the vote for women or the end of slavery, for instance, we also had these catastrophic forecasts of the end of agriculture, the fields would be abandoned, the world would strive, the concept of family would disappear, etc, etc).

    What we know now is that factory farming is the most polluting industry in the world and if we keep increasing the levels of meat consumption at the present pace, soon we will get to an unsustainable point. As we cannot expect big corporations to reduce their activity - the logic of capitalist society is continuous growth - we’ll have to change many of our habits. The ability to change and to cope with external changing is what defines a species ability to survive, and not continuous growth under the same consuming model.

    Lyons do whatever they do in the wild and yes, I don’t have to impose them my moral standards, because they have evolved according to natural rules and balance. They don’t toy with preys, they kill them as they can with claws and teeth (as far as I know, human animals are the only ones to kill for other reasons than to eat or defend their family).

    Humans have chosen to create their own habitats and built up a series of moral, legal and social rules. We cannot claim jungle rules whenever they would be useful or try to impose our rules to the jungle.
39. Alexander Fiske-Harrison says:

    March 11, 2009 at 1:40 pm

    I didn’t label my convictions science, only the attempt to enumerate the qualities which distinguish human from other animals in any morally relevant sense as pseudo-science. There can be no science there - that was my point.

    Lions, especially the young, but adults too - and, in fact, ALL felidae - toy with their prey if they have the opportunity. That is science.
40. Jordi Casamitjana says:

    March 19, 2009 at 5:05 pm

    Dear Mr Alexander Fiske-Harrison.

    Fear is an important biological mechanism very useful for survival, and because of that it appears very early in evolution, at the very base of the animal kingdom evolutionary tree. Certainly all mammals have evolved with it, and if one individual has lost it, this is a ‘defect’ that most likely will lead to its early death. Certainly we, humans, have fear because we are mammals, and even the most ‘brave’ soldiers and people that risk their lives will tell you that they have not lost it, despite appearances.

    Although it is perfectly possible (although unlikely) that random mutations or similar genetic events may create a bull without fear as it can create a bull without eyes, certainly this is a characteristic that would quickly disappear, even if humans try to maintain such aberration with artificial selective breeding. Bullfighting bulls, as you know, tend to be ‘grown’ in the outside world, not in labs, and without fear they could not survive to reach the age bullfighters like to kill them. They would not avoid fights with others bulls, they would not avoid the electrical fence, they would not cooperate with the breeder when wants to move them, etc.

    Of course one can look at this from a different angle. Bullfighting bulls do die much younger than they should (being killed at 6 years old at the most when they can live double than that), so perhaps there is indeed a lack of fear that is causing their premature death (so, natural selection is ‘eliminating’ the genetic aberrations of fear-less bulls)…but unfortunately this does not work because the bulls that are more fearful will not be bred by the breeder (since they will not behave as they should in the bullring), so their supposed ‘fear’ genes would not be passed to the next generation either.

    …and yet, we still have ‘good’ bulls for bullfighting and ‘bad’ ones (fear-full?), according to the criteria of the bullfighting industry, being born in bullfighting bulls farms every year. How is that possible?

    Because artificial selection in breeding bullfighting bulls is not really affecting any of these fundamental biological treats such as fear, aggression, defence, and so on. It is only superficially making some behaviours linked to some of these moods or feeling more likely to appear than others, in particular circumstances.

    Despite what the bullfighting industry want us to believe (that bullfighting bulls are ‘different’ types of animals, which are more aggressive, which have no fear, which do not suffer pain, etc), even when they recruit veterinarians or other ’scientist’ to defend their doctrine (till the point of claiming bullfighting bulls are a different species!), the reality is that bullfighting bulls are just like any other bovine, and they react as any other ruminant would do in the same circumstances. And as I already said repeatedly, that reaction in a bullring is of ‘defence’, and both fear and suffering are behind it.

    The only thing that the breeder does is increasing the chance that this natural fear and defensive response is manifested by charging instead running more often that it would in a natural population.

    This may seem to some just a matter of semantics, but it is very important from a moral point of view. What it means is that we cannot use any excuse of the like of ‘we are different’, or ‘they have been born for this’, or ‘we can do to them what nobody should do to us’, as you often do. Fear and suffering are basic concepts in ‘human’ morality, and certainly are the base of policies that deal with ‘human welfare’. When we recognise them in other animals, such the bulls, immediately force us to apply the same moral frame, and in consequence the same political approach which this time deals with ‘animal welfare’. This approach, in the case of bullfighting, should only lead to condemn it a trying to abolish it.

    This is why those who defend the abuse and , yes Mr Pledge, the torture of others, and do not fall into the category of psycho-pathologically sadistic, tend to argue against the existence of fear and/or suffering of the victims, when they are force by society to seek a ‘philosophical’ justification.
41. Alexander Fiske-Harrison says:

    March 25, 2009 at 11:14 am

    Fear is an internal psychological state, required only by evolution to lead, in complex cognitive systems, to what is truly important: avoidance behaviour. Which is why it certainly does not exist in the majority of the animal kingdom, i.e. the invertebrates, and appeared late - NOT “very early” - in evolutionary history.

    However, I have never said it does not exist in bulls. They often do run away. It is when they don’t that I tend - following that basic principle of science, Occam’s Razor - to postulate a change in the internal psychological state. Your “fear and suffering are behind” everything principle is an a priori one, and much like your “fear appears very early in evolution” one, is propaganda couched in the language of science.

    Gross generalisation about “bovids” aside, I think a little time might be spent explaining the fact that the greatest killer of humans on the African continent - more than lions, crocodiles, hyenas or hippo - is the Cape buffalo. Not all “ruminants” were created equal.
42. Jordi Casamitjana says:

    March 27, 2009 at 11:07 am

    Mr. Fiske-Harrison

    Indeed not all ruminants are the same (but they are still all ‘ruminants’ not just by function but by genetic proximity, so they do share many treats), but now you yourself have just provided to us the contra-argument of bullfighting bulls being a different type of mammal characterised for its unusual aggressiveness, lack of fear, and which do not suffer pain when attacked, which is the main argument the bullfighting industry and most pro-bullfighting ‘intellectuals’ use to justify bullfighting in this century, and it is the point I was making. Indeed buffalo, hippos, and others are known to have produced many human deaths, and certainly bulls are not in the list of ‘greatest killers’, as you say, in any continent.

    This leads me to a couple of questions I would like to ask you:

    Would you equally accept and defend an spectacle like bullfighting where the bull is substituted by a buffalo or a hippo, even when we are talking about hypothetical domesticated versions of them?

    Do you subscribe also to the industry’s idea that bulls in bullfighting, while being stabbed by the lance, the banderillas, end the sword, and the dagger till death, suffer less pain than any other mammal in the same circumstances, therefore ‘justifying’ ignoring modern animal welfare considerations in the case of these animals?
43. Alexander Fiske-Harrison says:

    March 27, 2009 at 12:11 pm

    Mr Casamitjana,

    For a self-professed zoologist, you do not seem to do a great deal of research on your subject area.

    Bulls are indeed defined biologically as being part of the same species as all domestic cattle, although with an unusual amount of mitochondrial DNA from Africa (Professor Albano Beja Pereira, personal communication). However, relatively speaking, domestic cattle kill a large number people in the world.

    In the US, where animal handling techniques are as advanced and safety conscious as anywhere in the world, the authors of the study ‘Occupational fatalities due to animal related events’, found, from 1992-1997, that “cattle were responsible for 142 deaths [more than any other animal]… Most deaths from cattle were from attacks or mauling from the animal, especially bulls.” (It’s on PubMEd if you care to look at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11562015?dopt=Citation)

    The particular breed used for bullfighting are much more aggressive than, say, a Holstein-Fresian, a Herefordshire or kyloe. Just as a Rottweiler is more than a labrador, poodle or border collie. Which is not to say the latter do not attack. Large animals are dangerous.

    As for the issue of pain, I believe that adrenaline, endorphins, encephalin etc all have their role to play, and it varies from animal to animal. Hence some bulls will charge the man on the horse - receiving the lance in doing so - again and again, whilst others will flee after one. I assume internally - phenomenally as they say in philosophy - that it is analagous to humans in charged situations: as when one reads of wounded veterans standardly saying they felt no pain when they were shot, only the great ‘blow’ to the body of the impact. I suspect it is often thus in bulls. Not always, though. I do not deny there can be suffering in the ring.

    As for hippos and buffalos… I have no idea. The question is too hypothetical to make sense. As Garcia Lorca pointed out, an art form must grow from the soil, it must have roots, and what you suggest seems to me dabbling, but I would have to think about that more.
44. Alexander Fiske-Harrison says:

    March 27, 2009 at 3:44 pm

    On reflection it seems to me that Mr Casamitjana’s points are all from a series of stock arguments which are being thrown at me as though I am a member of the pro-bullfighting lobby, which is one reason why they miss their target entirely. I am not.

    I have still to make up my mind whether I can tolerate the cruelty of the ‘corrida’ to allow the beauty, and, further, whether it truly is pure hypocrisy to try to ban it but to continue to eat meat, ride horses and keep dogs and cats as pets. My ongoing research on this is contained in my blog ‘The Last Arena’ (which can be accessed by clicking my name above) and eventually a book.

    Unlike Mr Casamitjana I receive no payment from any pro- or anti-bullfight organisation. I spend a great deal of my current research time with people who abhor the bullfight for infinitely better and more cogent reasons than those given above. However, the stock arguments of the anti-bullfight lobby (and this often applies to the pro-bullfight lobby, although I don’t find anyone trotting them out so tritely on this blog) are founded on poor science and extrapolated with worse logic.

    Hence you have Mr Casamitjana calling himself variously a “zoologist” and “ethologist” (despite holding no academic position, and having never achieved a Masters degree, let alone a PhD) and writing articles of “scientific opinion” (whatever that means) about bulls begging for mercy, all the while displaying an overwhelming ignorance in the last three posts alone of either evolutionary history and phylogeny (the animal kingdom is mainly composed of invertebrates who certainly do not feel “fear”, whatever higher mammals may or may not have evolved later on) or animal behaviour and basic animal-caused human fatality rates (bovine animals from the African buffalo to the domestic cow in the US are, relatively speaking, great killers of humans as compared to sharks, lions, cougars, wolves or anything else you care to mention).

    The reason for this is because they wish to effect a change in legislation and it is quite clear that merely stating the facts as they are and putting up footage of bullfights for all to see on the web is inadequate to that task. However, in a democracy, a change of legislation caused by deceit - in no matter how honourable a cause - is an attempt at covert totalitarianism and one which anyone - conservative, liberal or socialist - should oppose with all means at their disposal.
45. Jordi Casamitjana says:

    March 31, 2009 at 5:02 pm

    Once again, Mr. Fiske-Harrison, I seem to have touched your intellectual wound, since instead of just answering the questions calmly you proceed in attacking who ask them, as if you cannot help it (you even needed to come back with a second post before waiting for my reply!), and in doing so you think you may be achieving some sort of victory, when in reality what you are showing is that you are running out or arguments and excuses.

    I can of course defend myself about all your cheap punches, if it is really worth to. You of course do not like the fact I am indeed a zoologist as any other zoologist is (I know that some Oxford graduates as yourself tend to look down to all other graduates in the world and consider that none of their degrees count for anything, especially if they are from other countries), and let alone that animal protectionist as myself have a salary for what we do, as fire-fighters or surgeons also have (because this means that we are professional experts on the issues we are discussing here, not just people with an opinion), because all this exposes you as someone who, despite all the name calling and over-citations, is quite likely to be wrong about the statements of ‘fact’ you so desperately seek to justify you appreciation of bullfighting.

    But let’s go into the facts then. Your mitochondrial DNA statement is irrelevant, and only shows that you are seeking the use of some technical terms to make you appear that you actually are some sort of scientist instead me (and the ‘personal communication’ comment is obviously to show that you are ‘connected’ to the scientific world). It does not address any of the issues relative to the ‘aggressive’ or otherwise nature of bulls, nor contradicts any of my statements.

    Regarding the US article you quote to prove that cattle are the most dangerous animal on earth, well, does certainly explain why it is so dangerous to walk through the British countryside with all those cows and bulls around, and why we can see so often in the news all these terrible deaths they cause. Wait a minute, were these bullfighting ‘cattle’, or just regular ‘meat’ cattle? Because if they are meat cattle (since I do not believe you will find many bullfighting cattle in the US) I fail to see how your point supports the idea that bullfighting bulls are a different breed of domestic bull characterised for being aggressive and dangerous, which justifies their terrible fate.

    However, your dog analogy is indeed interesting. It certainly some breeds of dogs are more aggressive than others, as some breeds of bulls could equally be. But are you aware that it is illegal in the UK to breed any animal in order to make it more aggressive? Are you aware that the breeding (and even the possession) of pit bulls is illegal in the UK for this very reason, as would be the breeding of ‘dangerous’ cattle. Do you think this is wrong? Or do you think that, if they are bread somewhere else, then all is OK?

    Regarding you answer to the pain issues, I am thanking you, since you are supporting my position. You are saying that, as in humans, it may be a matter of individuals, and therefore that the bullfighting industry’s claims that bulls are a different type of mammal that do not suffer pain is wrong, as it would be to claim the humans are a different type of mammal that do not suffer pain based on the account of perhaps an stoic endurance of torture of some individual in the past (perhaps a martyr?).

    I do not think my questions about the buffalo and hippo being ‘too’ hypothetical is truly so (it is certainly ‘hypothetical’, but it cannot be ‘too’ hypothetical, since I have only changed one factor in the equation, and I did it for animal, in the case of the buffalo, most people would not see it as different than a bull), but I accept you statement that you have no idea, which it is not a surprise to me.

    As far as you statement about ‘fear’ is concerned, saying that I am ‘ignorant’ in stating that it is common in most animals, that is a too long subject (and off the topic) to discuss here in detail, but I will shortly say that ‘fear’, as many other ‘emotions’, is one of the typical ‘feelings’ old fashion scientists used to claim that only humans could possess, but today they accept that such narrow view was clearly wrong. There have been many advances in understanding the neurophysiology and endocrinology of animals (including invertebrates) in recent years that suggest we can interpret such ‘feelings’ in a much more wider way we used to.

    Finally, your claim that you are not a member of the bullfighting lobby comes a bit late, after you have been recently parading the photos of yourself ‘fighting’ a small bull (well, cow) like a bullfighter, as well as photos and articles that show your close relationship with toreros and aficionados. You see, they do not give you an ‘id card’ when you join the ‘bullfighting lobby’. They only expect you to publicly defend bullfighting (as you so intensively are doing) and to spread their PR propaganda (as you are constantly trying to, although you may call it arguments). That is what ‘lobbying’ and ‘championing’ is all about.

    Mr. Fiske-Harrison, you are capable to participate in this debate without the need to try to appear being anybody else. You are entitled to be pro-bullfighting, to be an aficionado, and even to be a bullfighter, and as such you will be defending bullfighting when it is attacked, as thankfully often it is. I perfectly understand you do have some doubts about the role you are kind of putting yourself in, since it is an uncomfortable role for most people to be. But you can do much better than trying to become ‘personal’ and defending who criticise bullfighting as if you have been personally attacked, as the typical bullfighting aficionados often do to their demise. It is not you, is the practice that you refuse to condemn. If you want to get ‘personal’ with me, that does not give any credence to your position, since I am generally respected around the animal protection movement, even by the bullfighting industry itself. I am not anyone that falls into what possibly first trigged you to address this issue. I am not any of those you call ‘hypocrites’. I am originally from Spain, I grew up there and I have seen the issue up close; I have been to many bullfights; and no, I do not eat meat, I do not ride horses and I do not keep any sort of pet.

    I am a genuine interlocutor of the issue we are debating here, like it or not.
46. Alexander Fiske-Harrison says:

    April 6, 2009 at 11:24 am

    To answer the post above from Jordi Casamitjana of the International Anti-Bullfighting Campaign (CAS International):

    J.C. “I seem to have touched your intellectual wound.”

    I have no “wound” here, “intellectual” or otherwise. And you certainly haven’t “touched” me. High-school debating society rhetorical flourishes really do not serve your cause. I increasingly wonder why a lobby group like CAS International employs someone with so little grasp of facts, logic or how to promote a point of view which has a certain validity, but not when presented in this manner.

    J.C. “I know that some Oxford graduates as yourself tend to look down to all other graduates in the world…especially if they are from other countries”

    I did not mention Oxford. The word scientist – zoological or ethological – is simply not applied to people without doctoral degrees in the relevant field. You haven’t even done a graduate degree. Implicit accusations of xenophobia will not help you here. The only scientist I cited in the previous post is Portugese and has never attended Oxford. Again, it is you who short-change your cause, not where you went to university for three years.

    J.C. “Your mitochondrial DNA statement is irrelevant.”

    My point about mitochondrial DNA - like my earlier citation from ‘Animal Genetics’ - demonstrated that fighting bulls are of a different breed. Arguments about what qualifies as a subspecies aside, I was merely, in both cases, offering objective studies of identification not seeking to contradict you.

    J.C. “The ‘personal communication’ comment is obviously to show that you are ‘connected’ to the scientific world.”

    The standard use of the term “personal communication” in academia is to identify it as distinct from a published source. You should know this. Albano Beja-Pereira is a Research Fellow with the Portuguese Science Foundation at the Center for Investigation of Biodiversity and Genetic Resources and the University of Porto in Portugal. His research focuses on the conservation genetics and evolutionary history of wild and domestic ungulates. He has no links to the bullfight, and I would guess from his tone disapproves of it. I am not the one trying to claim I am not what I am in this exchange.

    J.C. “Regarding the US article you quote to prove that cattle are the most dangerous animal on earth.”

    I did not say that. I would rather be in a cage with a cow than a lion. I merely offered the figures which show how dangerous domestic cattle can be. Or are you disputing the findings of a US Government endorced study?

    J.C. “It is so dangerous to walk through the British countryside with all those cows and bulls around.”

    Again, your sarcasm betrays your ignorance. It would be dangerous indeed, were it not for state intervention: To quote the British Health & Safety Executive: ”Section 59 of the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 bans bulls of recognised dairy breeds (eg. Ayrshire, Friesian, Holstein, Dairy Shorthorn, Guernsey, Jersey and Kerry) in all circumstances from being at large in fields crossed by public rights of way. Bulls of all other breeds are also banned from such fields unless accompanied by cows or heifers, but there are no specific prohibitions on other cattle.”

    Despite the enforcement of this legislation, the HSE report on “Fatal injuries in farming, forestry, horticulture and associated industries” says: “In 2006/07 injuries from animals caused more deaths than any other category. Eleven people were killed by animals, five more than in the previous year (2005/06). Three involved bulls, seven cows or other cattle and one a horse. All the victims sustained trauma injuries consistent with them having been attacked, trampled to death or gored and trodden on by an individual animal or a herd of cattle.”

    J.C. “I fail to see how your point supports the idea that bullfighting bulls are a different breed of domestic bull characterised for being aggressive and dangerous, which justifies their terrible fate.”

    As I said, I am not a member of the pro-bullfighting lobby, thus I do not hold the position that either the genetic distinction, nor the greater aggression - both of which are measurable - can justify the bullfight.

    J.C. “Are you aware that it is illegal in the UK to breed any animal in order to make it more aggressive? Are you aware that the breeding (and even the possession) of pit bulls is illegal in the UK for this very reason, as would be the breeding of ‘dangerous’ cattle.“

    I am very aware of the UK Dangerous Dogs Act (1991). It has absolutely no bearing, as its name suggests, over the breeding or keeping of domestic cattle. Neither does the UK Dangerous Wild Animals Act (1976), as its name also suggests. The Animals Act (1971) equally places no restriction on the breeding of cattle, although it does make stipulations about responsibility for injuries caused by cattle which are improperly kept, espcially if they are known to be aggressive or of an “aggressive breed” - implying that such breeds are allowed, but due care must be maintained. Again, your facts are simply wrong. Fighting bulls are not bred in the UK because there would be no reason to.

    J.C. “You are saying that, as in humans, it may be a matter of individuals, and therefore that the bullfighting industry’s claims that bulls are a different type of mammal that do not suffer pain is wrong, as it would be to claim the humans are a different type of mammal that do not suffer pain based on the account of perhaps an stoic endurance of torture of some individual in the past (perhaps a martyr?).”

    Neither I nor anyone I have ever met has denied that bullfighting bulls feel pain. How do you think they herd them? I have heard it claimed – by the veterinarian at the Madrid bullring amongst others - that the sort of bull the aficion prefer, if fought properly, does not suffer pain during the 15-20 minutes of the fight. I am deeply dubious about even this claim, although undeniably high-stress environments reduce pain through distraction and altered endocrinology. I never mentioned martyrs.

    J.C. “I do not think my questions about the buffalo and hippo being ‘too’ hypothetical is truly so (it is certainly ‘hypothetical’, but it cannot be ‘too’ hypothetical, since I have only changed one factor in the equation).”

    You think that taking the “bull” out of the “bullfight” is only a minor change? How about we replace the air in the ring with water? That is only one factor. Ridiculous.

    Your poor logic aside, I have now made up my mind on this point: bullfights, if they are allowed to exist, should only be with a bullfighting bull. Anything else is mere gladiatorialism.

    J.C. “There have been many advances in understanding the neurophysiology and endocrinology of animals (including invertebrates) in recent years that suggest we can interpret such ‘feelings’ in a much more wider way we used to.”

    Pain is a ‘feeling’, fear is a much more complex entity. Fear is future-oriented, being about pain-avoidance (where pain exists to allow damage-avoidance). For starters, it makes no sense to talk about pain save when applied it is applied to higher-animals, the definition of which I take to be (following the International Society of Applied Ethology): all vertebrates and, of the invertebrates, some members of the phylum Mollusca (e.g. octopus, squid) and some members of the phylum Arthropoda (crab, lobster, crayfish). This is a tiny minority of the animal kingdom as defined by biomass or biodiversity. You have accused me, rather laughably, of over-citation. Please do cite me as many papers as you like about fear in Cnidarian worms and jellyfish. I should love to read them.

    J.C. “Finally, your claim that you are not a member of the bullfighting lobby comes a bit late, after you have been recently parading the photos of yourself ‘fighting’ a small bull (well, cow) like a bullfighter, as well as photos and articles that show your close relationship with toreros and aficionados.”

    I have been seen in Church and have a close-relationship with many Catholics, including some priests. Yet I remain an atheist. Do you see the parallel?

    No, Mr Casamitjana, I said I was going to research this further and so I am. I am going to look at the bull very closely, and if that means getting into the ring with it, then so be it. I can hardly rely on your for information, can I? You see I am not defending bullfighting Mr. Casamitjana, merely attacking you.

    “I do not eat meat, I do not ride horses and I do not keep any sort of pet.” Jordi Casamitjana, March 31, 2009 at 5:02 pm

    First he will take the bullfight, then he will take everything else.
47. Jordi Casamitjana says:

    April 7, 2009 at 10:32 pm

    To answer the post above from Alexander Fiske-Harrison, bullfighting champion.

    Wow, that wound really bleeds now, does it not? It must hurt a lot if you insist so much in making all this so personal. No worries, I am game. The more debate on the bullfighting issue there is, more people becomes anti-bullfighting, since it is the silence that maintains the status quo…and it personal attacks is what you choose to keep going, well, I will defend myself then.

    As far as why CAS International (which happens to be the biggest animal protection organization that deals exclusively on campaigning for the abolition of bullfighting everywhere in the world –thanks for giving us publicity) has contracted me, it is precisely because my expertise, qualifications and experience on the issue, which I apply in different fronts, among them, debates like this. I know, that must be difficult for you to understand since you do not have much knowledge about the world of animal protection, but that is OK; why should you know about it?

    As far as the Oxford comments, pay attention, otherwise you are loosing precious space for something too easy for me to reply. I did not say you mention anyone from Oxford. I said that you yourself are from Oxford (Eton College, is it not?), so my comment of ‘looking down to other degrees’ is applied to you in particular.

    I do not know what makes you think that you know anything of my academic background so you can make a guess and assume you will get it right. You naively assume that I have a degree of three years because you do not see many letters after my name and you only apply your own standards of what you think and ‘inferior’ degree is. You do not seem bothered at all in the fact that perhaps you should have checked first whether I have many scientific papers published, or perhaps I have worked as a zoologist for decades. But well, if you only value someone expertise on the number of years of their degree, it is not three in my case, my friend, but seven…and not, I did not do it part-time, and I never failed any topic…so you do the maths regarding whether perhaps I may actually have done a PhD, or at least my zoology degree is worth anything at all. Not all of us chose to advertise our qualifications, do you know? They may distract from the contents of our statements.

    Granted that it would be another story if I had done all my scientific studies and then abandon the subject and work on something completely different (for instance, becoming an actor as yourself), but this does not apply to me, does it? Do not worry, I am not going to write my C.V. here.

    I do know indeed that the standard use of the term “personal communication” in academia is to identify it as distinct from a published source. However, you seem to ignore the fact that this can only be used by authors that indeed have had direct access of the ‘facts’ and ‘data’ you are quoting, and it cannot really be used as a ‘third party reference’, because this would be, to use a legal term, equivalent to ‘hearsay’ (which very little ‘academic’ value). But in any event, my point here is that this is not an academic publication, but a non-academic internet debate, so I was just pointing out that you were attempting to make it sound as if you were talking with some sort of academic authority, and your reply about it confirms my point even more.

    No, I am not disputing the findings of a US Government endorsed study about how dangerous cattle could be, because it actually supports my point that bullfighting bulls as a group are not ‘especial’ mammals significantly more aggressive than their ‘meat’ companions. The same goes with you detailed WCA quote. This is the point I am trying to make all along. I keep saying that there is nothing that special in cattle in comparison with other ungulates, and in bullfighting bulls in comparison with any other cattle bulls, that could possibly justify bullfighting on the grounds of genetics or inherited aggressiveness. This is what the bullfighting industry claims, and this is what you have done often when you have not bee busy unwillingly finding quotes that support my own arguments. However, you do finally seem to accept my point by partially distancing yourself from the genetic claims of the industry (I say partially because you seem to accept that the bull’s aggression cannot justify bullfighting but you do not seem to accept that the bulls are not that different to other animals as far as genetic aggression is concerned).

    I am astonished to find that you seem to claim that the UK Dangerous Dogs Act (1991) does not ban any breed of dog because of they inheriting aggressiveness, because this is the only conclusion one can come to when you say that it has absolutely no bearing when we are discussing about dangerous breeds of animals, and whether they are banned. And since you are so keen in quotes, here comes one that contradicts your claim that bullfighting bull breeds would be allowed in the UK: Animal Welfare Act (2006): “8(1) A person commits an offence if he—(h) keeps or trains an animal for use in connection with an animal fight;”… and yes, in case that you may try to claim that ‘animal fights’ only means fights between non-human animals, here is the definition in the same Act: “’animal fight’ means an occasion on which a protected animal is placed with an animal, or with a human, for the purpose of fighting, wrestling or baiting;”…and yes, cattle are protected animals under this law. I am afraid my 2006 Act kind of smashes your 1971 one. Fighting bulls are not bred in the UK because there would be no reason to…and it would be illegal to do so, as in many other countries.

    You claim that neither you nor anyone you have ever met has denied that bullfighting bulls feel pain. That may of course be true, but that would mean you have not been paying much attention to all the talk about the ‘research’ of the bullfighting vet Dr. Illera, which is constantly quoted by the industry. He is the vet from Madrid you mention, and he does not really say anything about ‘fighting it properly’, as you seem to believe. Based on low values of cortisol found in the bulls carcases, he claims that bullfighting bulls suffer less stress during a bullfight that being transported around, and based on high levels of beta-endorphines and their supposed analgesic effect, he claims that bullfighting bulls are a different type of mammal which does not suffer much pain when stabbed, and because of that it is the ideal animal for bullfighting. Of course that all the veterinary community has discredit him (how can one compare the levels of cortisol of cadavers with the one in live animals? How can he have ignored the fact that to produce proper levels of cortisol the animal needs an intact nervous system? Since when beta-endorphines have an analgesic effect, since precise you find high values of them in women on labour that declare that suffer most pain? How can he make such claims without having published any of his studies in a scientific journal to allow replication?). I am glad you are dubious about Dr, Illera, but you should extend your doubts to those that spread his ‘fact’, namely the bullfighting aficionados that, during your ‘research’, may have also told you other things about ‘the reality’ of bullfighting.

    You say that it is ridiculous to imagine the hypothesis of substituting a bull for a buffalo in a bullfight. How so? Both a ruminants…both a bovids…both charge when provoked…both would go for the cape…both die when stabbed with a sward. Come on!, a bull and a buffalo. I am not talking about a bullfrog and a buffalo here. Are you really incapable to contemplate such hypothesis? I know you do not want to because the implications of doing so, but you simply could ignore the challenge, other than claiming that comparing a bull with a buffalo is like comparing air with water.

    But you do, you eventually contemplate the ‘ridiculous’ hypothesis, and arrive to a very firm statement that using any other animal other than a bull should not be allowed in a fight like bullfighting. This is good, because it bring us to the central point of all this latest arguments. What has the bull done that all another animals but him deserve to be protected from public fights and long executions? How different is the bull from all another animals that can possibly justify the difference between protecting him and torturing him? You already accepted that the genetics of the bull cannot possibly justify its fate in a bullfight. If it is not the genetics, if it is not ‘what the bull is’, then what is it?

    It cannot be art, since ‘artistic’ fights could also be developed with other animals. It cannot be tradition since defending bullfights only because they are a tradition would be like defending human executions or slavery because they were a tradition too. What is it, then?

    And now let’s go to the issue of ‘fear’. You are talking about pain and fear, and how different they are. They are indeed different, but you are missing a third element, the most important of all: suffering. In the scale from simple to complex, certainly suffering is in the middle, between pain and fear. If pain is a biological mechanism to inform the animal that there is a stimulus that needs avoiding, suffering is a biological mechanism to inform it that there is a situation that needs avoiding, and fear is a biological mechanism that informs it that most likely there will be soon a situation that needs avoiding. When looking at the issue in this way, we can see that it become almost quantitative, rather than qualitative. We are not talking about completely unrelated phenomena, one very different that the other, and with completely different evolutionary purposes. We are talking about different dimensions the same issue (the avoidance of adverse situations) manifested differently depending of the complexity of the physiology of the animal experiencing it. A very simple organism may indeed only feel pain, a more complex one may suffer from it, and that suffering produces fear to an even more complex one. My point, though, is that the evolutionary ‘genes’ responsible for avoidance of adverse situations are indeed already there at the very base of the animal kingdom evolutionary tree (certainly already with the Cnidaria), suffering does appear as soon there are enough neurons and senses so the animal can perceive ‘situations’ and remember them (certainly most animals would have that, including most invertebrates, not only cephalopods), and fear as soon as there is an endocrine system that produces ‘moods’ and enough cognitive power to be able to predict situations, and all vertebrates and several invertebrates would have all that there already. This, compared with the old fashion view that only humans ‘have feeling’, is what I meant by my comment stated as ‘its appears very early in evolution’. Perhaps saying ‘at the very base of the animal kingdom evolutionary tree’ was an exaggeration. I should have omitted the ‘very’.

    I see you point about the parallel between being an atheist and have been seen in Church, and ‘not really been a bullfighting aficionado’ and have been seen in their company…however, surely nobody has seen you giving mass in a Church, but you have photos of yourself fighting a cow…see the parallel?
    If you are serious in looking into the subject in fairness (which is in fact a poor justification of ‘trying it out’, in the same way someone that researches the custom of cutting someone’s clitoris practiced in some cultures could not possibly justify trying it out on their children so he can then write it on the internet), you would be attempting to be really neutral, instead of holding animal protectionism with such contempt. What you are doing is, in fact, accumulating as many arguments as you can to defend bullfighting from its attackers. But I cannot blame you. I also have been seen in bullfights and talking to aficionados often (although never till the point of getting close to fighting anyone of any specie), precisely for the opposite reason.

    And finally, you comment “first he will take the bullfight, then he will take everything else”. Can I really? Well, if it only was that simple, eh?
    I bet this is what the slave plantation owners said about abolitionists