Beneath a photograph of dozens of pigs crammed so closely together that some didn’t even have room to stand — they were held aloft by being wedged between the bodies of others — I read the news that a move to have pigs chemically castrated (“it makes their balls shrivel up”) to prevent the release of hormones that give pork a taste that is disliked by consumers is causing concern about the drug’s possible effect on humans. Advocates of the drug, i.e. big agri-business, claim that it’s better than the pertaining method of physical castration without anaesthetic, meaning presumably that it’s less messy and time-consuming, i.e. labour-intensive.
Bill Crandfield
All other arguments aside, I couldn’t even begin to discuss the “morality” of the corrida with anyone who is not a committed vegetarian because any expression of horror in the name of animal welfare is pure hypocrisy coming from a meat-eater. And please don’t give me that old guff that meat is something we need to consume to survive — it isn’t. I happen to like the taste of meat and would find it hard to deprive myself of it, but I would actively support any organisation seriously dedicated to ending the abuses of today’s mass-production “farming” methods — so long as it wasn’t led by fanatics ready to kill and maim other humans to achieve their ends.
Assuming that some of you at least broadly share my convictions that gratuitous cruelty is always reprehensible, and that we should actively encourage the survival of the widest range of Earth’s species (personally, I don’t give much of a toss about snakes and sharks, or flies and cockroaches, but I suppose that diversity is in itself a virtue, both in terms of Nature’s food-chain and the enrichment of our imaginations), where might we part company?
If it is okay to kill an animal — hopefully, as humanely as possible — to please our palates, or to keep a particular genus from over-running its natural environment or contaminating us with disease, why not to heighten our intellectual consciousness and collaborate in the creation of a thing of beauty? I cannot condone shooting a defenceless creature such as a deer or a pheasant for the fun of it (though I don’t get terribly het up about those who do), but we’re talking about something rather more elevated than “fun” here.
After its four or five years of having the best of both worlds — all the liberty of an animal in the wild without the endless threat of predators — a bull enters the arena where it will spend an average of 20 minutes before being put to death. As a one-time schoolboy boxer, I know that an almighty punch in the face that if received in the street, out of the blue, would have you reeling, is dismissed when landed in the “hot blood” of a bout with a mental “Ouch! I’ll get him for that”. The swelling and the pain come later, in the cold comfort of the dressing-room. So it is, I suggest, with the bull. A lance administered by the picador, that opens a gaping hole in the “morillo”, and the fish-hook-like barbs of the banderillas, will certainly be painful — but they serve as an irritant rather than an unforgiveable act of what the “antis” describe as torture. And the pain is largely offset, according to experts, by the sudden flooding of its system by endorphins (the old “heat of battle” syndrome).
A “toro bravo” is probably the only animal in the world that when faced with such corrective measures, instead of turning tail and fleeing, will stand its ground and push on, against the picador’s horse for instance, in the mistaken belief that its brute strength can overcome the hurt that is being inflicted. This is an instinct it is born with, and that has been nurtured by selective breeding. It is very impressive to behold.
Finally, after some 10 minutes of attempting to dispose of its tormentor, who has consistently tricked it into charging at a piece of cloth that happens to be red (it could be any colour), that same cloth will entice it to make one last lunge — onto the point of a sword that if wielded correctly will pierce its vital organs so comprehensively that it will expire literally within seconds. Might I submit that such a death — without even taking into account the possibility that its instinctive following of the muleta rather than the man is of such an extraordinary order that its life is deemed worth preserving so that these “brave” genes may be passed on — is infinitely more dignified and acceptable than that of a bewildered, maltreated creature at the barrel of a stun-gun or strung from a pulley with a blade at the end (that often leaves it still conscious when dismemberment takes place) in a slaughterhouse?
Scientific tests have shown that the stress levels of a bull are considerably heightened not, as you might imagine, by the infliction of pain, but by the unfamiliarity of its surroundings and the proximity of so many hitherto remote beings, that is humans, both making lots of unaccustomed noise in the “tendidos” and darting around in the ring. Which only strengthens my certainty that the ages-old peasant custom of having bulls run a gauntlet of testosterone-charged villagers in the popular entertainment known as “bous al carrer” is far more cruel than anything they may encounter in a formal bullring. And it gives the lie to the Catalans’ professed concern for the animals’ wellbeing in banning the corrida while leaving this genuinely medieval relic untouched, knowing that to attempt to tamper with it would incur the wrath of millions of voters.
