Bullfighting is barbaric (From Oxford Mail)

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Bullfighting is barbaric

10:00am Friday 10th February 2012 in Letters

R LEWIS rightly denounces Alexander Fiske-Harrison for portraying bullfighting as “an ego-based exercise” (Oxford Mail ViewPoints, January 31).

Fiske-Harrison glamourises and calls “a noble death” what is, in fact, a throw-back to the Roman games. I wonder if he mentions in his book how the bull is tormented before it enters the arena?

The bull’s eyes are smeared with lubricant to distort its vision, its horns are shaved to unbalance the animal.

It is fed Epsom salts in huge quantities (four or five kilos per bull), thereby purging and dehydrating it.

It then drinks copious amounts of water, thus bloating and slowing it down. Sedatives are also injected to slow the animal down.

Heavy weights are hung around its neck for weeks before the fight, and it is confined in darkness for hours before being released into the bright arena.

Often, during transit from breeding farm to bullring, the animal is crushed into small transit vehicles without food, water or space and this has resulted, in many cases, in bulls being dead on arrival at the bullring.

The horses that are used in the ring have their vocal chords cut, so they are unable to scream out in agony as a bull, crazed with pain, charges into the horse.

An average of 200 horses a year are killed in the bullrings.

Does Mr Fiske-Harrison mention in his book the blood fiestas, which also take place in villages in Spain throughout the year, where calves, donkeys and small animals are tortured in the most horrendous way, all in the name of some long-dead saint?

The Roman Catholic church is complicit in these atrocities. Goats are flung from the top of churches, chickens decapitated, geese torn apart, bulls’ horns are set on fire.

The list of sick and obscene barbarities is endless and even children are allowed to participate.

Bullfighting and the blood fiestas should all be consigned to the dustbin of history.

The fact that Mr Fiske-Harrison is a graduate of Oxford University reflects badly on that institution.

SHARON HOPKINS, Templar Road, Oxford

Comments(11)

Alexander Fiske-Harrison says...
11:21am Fri 10 Feb 12

It is hard to know where to begin with this letter other than to say that the Oxford Mail has failed in its editorial duty in publishing it. There is barely a single claim in it that is true. If they were then the entire bullfighting industry would close down due to bulls enterring the ring unable to charge, and those that did goring matador after matador as the lubricant in their eyes blinded them and rendered them unable to distinguish cape from man. Bulls arriving dead would mean, by Spanish law, that the bullring which had contracted the breeding farm would bill them for replacement bulls at tens of thousand of Euros per bull, or they would have to cancel the bullfight at a cost of millions of Euros in refunds to ticket-holders. These assertions are fictions, and their dissemination not only irresponsible, but mendacious. (And yes, my book Into The Arena, goes into great detail about what happens on the twenty breeding farms I visited and the sixty odd bullfights I attended. I suggest in future that people *read* the book before they write the letter. They might learn something. Like the truth.)