..when the bulls have an even chance.

This stupid shit should stop.

I like to think of it as the bulls doing our gene pool a service - pool service, if you will!

I think the stupid shit of running the bulls should stop. It is animal cruelty plain and simple.

Oh, they didn't mean to die? Then WTF were they doing in front of charging bulls? They weren't in a cartoon or action movie. It was real.

IMO, this ranks near the top. What happens to the bulls? Are they "euthanized" in the name of human folly?

hey human idiots, don't do stupid shit and torture animals for fun.

they brought it on themselves.

I agree with posts 1-7.

I don't see a material difference between dog fighting, cock fighting, etc. and bull fighting, bull running. It is all animal cruelty.

My question to you is do you eat meat. If not that is one thing, but if you eat burgers while decrying the injustice of bull fighting I got no time for you.

If you are a vegetarian as a member of your cohort I would suggest that we have far bigger fish to fry at home. Lets talk to the spaniards about the speck of dirt in their eye after we remove our boulder as it were. When a spaniards says their bulls have better lives and deaths then ours I have to agree. If given the choice between going into a sword fight only armed with a set of horns, or going to the factory to be chopped apart, I know what I would choose.

In bull fighting the death of the animal is a drawn out affair. Not really comparable to animal slaughter where the killing is quick and certain. Sorry that doesn't ring true to me. I get the point that a bull fighter is at least putting his own life on the line. But I am not sure that there is more virtue to it - for one thing the bull fighter is the only one in danger, not the spectators. So it is more akin to cock fighting and dog fighting, imo. And the bull fighter still overwhelmingly has the upper hand - plus he is doing it voluntarily for money, thrills, and glory. Not so with the bull. His only "glory" is to put up a good fight and he did not volunteer.

Cultural traditions that involve tossing meat away don't last 12k years. These ceremonies have traditionally been a way for the poor to get free/cheap protein boost. Unfortunately for the poor bullfight meat is starting to be considered far superior beef product (because of how they are raised I assume) so now rich people are getting into the action and driving up the prices.


edit to add "Not really comparable to animal slaughter where the killing is quick and certain." Are you sure about that? I have watched the videos that have to smuggle out of our farms in america (because they make the filming illegal) and it is not cut and dry quick and clean from what I have seen. When you have one farmer slaughtering the livestock he raised on at a time then I agree with you slaughter is quick and and be painless and basically stress free for the animal if done with care and compassion. That is not how your big mac burger is made.

Of course they eat the bulls. Where did I say they didn't?

When in fact they are exactly that, animals slaughter for meat, just with dude dancing around in fancy clothes doing the killing by hand.

The ceremony of the bull and the blood has always ended in a feast. From an anthropological standpoint eating the bull is the point.



I added this after your last post, but not before you responded to mine. Here now also for your consideration. -

edit to add: "Not really comparable to animal slaughter where the killing is quick and certain." Are you sure about that? I have watched the videos that have to smuggle out of our farms in america (because they make the filming illegal) and it is not cut and dry quick and clean from what I have seen. When you have one farmer slaughtering the livestock he raised on at a time then I agree with you slaughter is quick and and be painless and basically stress free for the animal if done with care and compassion. That is not how your big mac burger is made.

Most Big Mac burgers are likely old dairy cows who are killed the same way other meat animals are killed, with a penetrating captive bolt. A gun fires a metal bolt into the brain of the animal causing the animal to lose consciousness immediately. Actually most jurisdictions do not permit on farm slaughter of commercial meat animals in the U.S. Small producers truck their animals to a slaughter plant for processing. In fact, one of the big challenges of raising livestock for small producers in many areas is the shortage of nearby slaughter plants.

And, yes, I am sure about that. I work with small farmers in an area which is not a traditional livestock region. I can assure you that they do not slaughter their animals on the farm. Not if they are going to sell the meat anyway. And none of them would take their animals to a facility which stresses the animals unnecessarily. It affects the quality of the meat. I can't imagine what the meat from a bull fighting animal must be like. Also no one raises adult bulls for meat. Outside of veal production, meat animals are almost universally steers or cull cows/heifers.

If one rationalizes the fallacy that merely eating is the ethical equivalent of receiving entertainment via the death of a sentient being, I begin to question whether that person thinks rationally and instead place them in the same vein as that of a televangelist.

It may be time to begin looking inward to criticize rather than outward to imagine the sins of others... I know what I would choose.

Other than for pleasure. These people get pleasure from watching a bullfight.
If you eat meat, you are receiving pleasure from the death of a sentient being.

I would argue that the ritualization and the historic context as a community building experience makes it slightly less banal than munching down on a burger.

Similar but not the same way I give a person who hunts and eats what they kill a lot more latitude than the soccer parent shoveling fast food into their children.

When you look at the quality of life for the animal, the staggeringly smaller amount of environmental damage that bull fighting meat cost us all on a pound for pound basis, and a number of the other positive and negative externalities associated with each practice, bull fighting seems to be far less disturbing. I know what life I would want if I was the bull and real compassion comes from empathy not ethnocentric outrage.

If you are going to snuff out a sentient life to eat you had better make a production of it and make sure there is no doubt to everyone involved what exactly is going on.

The first building block to compassion is empathy. There is no doubt that a bull who runs in Pamplona and dies in the ring had a better life than all but his most blessed american counterparts.

I think killing anything to eat it is unnecessary and barbaric, but these guys covered in blood have a lot less to answer for than the average american omnivore. The ethnocentric outrage that is consistently demonstrated on the board when it comes to a number of traditional culling practices that some communities use to bind themselves together is in part well meaning, but a lot of it is hypocrisy at its worst when voiced by an american omnivore.

I have never eaten meat nor will I ever eat meat or kill anything to eat meat,in part because I wouldn't want to be eaten. If I was going to be eaten than I know I would rather be the dope who brought a set of horns to a sword fight after a relatively long good life, than the dope chopped up in the factory after a life of abject torture.

I wonder if these guys go into it with the mentality that they could die.

I'm not a fan of bullfighting (and by extension bull running), I also appreciate that they are a final vestige of an ancient indo-european pagan tradition that have all but disappeared. The ritual of the bull and the blood most assuredly predates written history, we just found some 12k old artifacts that support this. That being a given I have an issue with the ethnocentrism to which most Americans respond to the ritual.

For those vegans and vegetarians with deep seated beliefs that they live the truth of, you all get a pass. However if your chomping down on your big macs or eating any meat that came from a factory farm, you need to shut your shit down and reevaluate your hypocrisy.

There isn't even a comparison to which death would be preferable. Life in a cage never being allowed to even turn around before being shipped in another box to the factory where you will be disassembled without ever seeing the sky. Or being raised with your mother for the first year of your life while you eat from the grass of the land, only to eventually face your end in ring of combat and a chance to die with the blood of your enemy on your horns.

Both suck but I know what I would choose.

Just because people did something twelve thousand years ago doesn't make it noble or heroic.

There's a reason why blood sacrifice has mostly died out: humanity grew up.
(Most of us, anyway).

If you have a clear moral line that you hold in your own life that is one thing. But the banal evil of the american meat industries far outstrips the evils of bull fighting. Being 12 thousand years old doesn't make something noble, but it should give everyone pause to examine to totality of the externalities associated with the practice.

All meat is murder, this is meat that people eat without pretending it is not murder. For 12k years or more the ceremony of the bull and blood has functioned to bring communities together, the urban with the rural and the rich (who effectively subsidies free or cheap meat for the masses)and the poor. This cheap meat also turns out to have enjoyed a quality of life that our cattle would envy and are not poisoned with all the shit we pump into them.

In the US we also subsidies cheap met for the masses, but we do it with taxpayer money that flows up enriching factory farmers and the meat that results is almost as bad news for the people eating it as for the animals who live in our factory farms.

Bull fighting is terrible, no doubt about it. Factory farming however is an order of a magnitude worse.

But, putting that aside, I think slaughter as spectacle is even more loathsome.

It makes a game out of pain and torture, as the bull weakens from its accumulating wounds.

It also is a sickening show of a warped masculinity, that inflicting pain and inviting danger is somehow attractive and virile.

I think the later is less terrible exactly because of the spectacle. My guess is more omnivores come out of the bull fighting arena as vegetarians than come out of burger king and swear off meat.

If something is going to be murdered far better in the open than hidden in a factory farm. That and the clear difference in the quality of life is a good portion of the reason I think one is better and one is worse.

I can not help but think of what life I would want if I was a bull and no doubt it would be one of the bulls in this story that had a chance to kill one of those seven guys than some poor beast that never even got to turn around or see the sun.

Which bull would you rather be the one with the chance to run and gore your oppressor or the lump of meat farmed like a mushroom in a tiny box?

Take into account you spend about a year and a half in the box being pumped with hormones and antibiotics, where a fighting bull must be by law at least 4 years old to take part in these particular fights after the runs if I am correct (And most have to be 5 years old.) They spend the first year of their lives with their mother and spend the next 2 two 4 years on the open range.

Factory farming is horrible, I certainly agree with you on that.

My problem with bullfighting is the glorification of violence, which, to me, is an added level of depravity.

And I think you make a very fair and logical case.

However I would suggest my question to you. About which life and death would you prefer if you were a bull is not an unfair hypothetical and deserves some real consideration.

I wish most everyone was like me and never ate meat, but until the soon collapse of the ecosystem brings that day I'm going to focus my fury on the stuff that is killing the planet the fastest and giving the animals the worst life. Not the blood and guts of ritualized murder held over from a day when we were slightly more in balance with the forces of nature in part because of rituals like the ones this is derived from.

And that is human arrogance and selfishness.

We think we can do whatever we want, to the environment, to our fellow creatures, etc. without consequences.

If we weren't arrogant, 7 people killed by bulls wouldn't be news or even worthy of comment.

I suppose if I had to choose, I'd choose the life of the bull destined for the ring.
But that's merely a choice of which execution I'd rather have.
Not really a valid choice, when it comes down to it.

If we truly valued life, either choice would be unthinkable.

With as hard as the universe is on life it would be nice if we treated every life with a little more care and a lot more reverence.

i am sick of this perverted masculine chest thumping shit at the expense of animals' lives.

if they want to showcase their bravado, they can go base jumping, cave diving, or parachuting.

leave the animals the cripe alone assholes.

Factory farms are so depraved that they result in the corruption of the lands that they are built near.

No infant clusters die young because of a bull fighting ring poisining the ground water (I think they call it blue baby syndrome)

A protein chain that results in a level of massive ecological devastation that not only kills the cow but the earth itself must be seen as the greater evil. There isn't even an argument that if humans only ate bull fighting meat that the reduction in methane emission from the vastly different way they are raised would make a big difference in our battle against climate change.

Also not being farmed like a mushroom in a box is no doubt a better life.

i'm vegan and i think that besides the wretched treatment of animals, animal agriculture is going to have to be dealt with as one of the premier issues to try and slow down climate change. it is the elephant in the room that no one wants to talk about, meanwhile, rome keeps burning.

of course, by then the damage will be greater too.

No politicians want to be instantly unpopular. But the media... Especially the more balanced media... I don't quite see why they're not drawing more attention to it.

its a tough issue because what we eat has so many family, cultural, and habitual factors. but it won't be able to be ignored much longer imo

Smells like my great grandmas house around here.

I imagine many irrational people pine for a world lacking criticism, regardless of what that world may or may not smell like...

against stupid humans. Can't they just stick to throwing tomatos.

I'm waiting for a 'steroid raged' 'electric shocked', rodeo or bull fighting bull to leap into the crowd one day.

Good for the bulls.

(n/t)

Thanks for improving the gene pool for the rest of us...

Way. To. Go.!

forget the beach and the shops....lets get ourselves killed

Can we start Running the Bulls in Washington DC,
and require everyone who draws a paycheck from Uncle Sam to participate?

Go Bulls

Intentional cruelty to animals is depraved.

seriously, what the F*** is wrong with people who find this stuff entertaining?

This is a "sport"? Reprehensible.

Of the goring of the bulls on Wall Street? I guess we'll have wait until the end of the movie.

I would never visit a country that condoned this inhumane sport.