Bull Fighting

Animals kept as pets or for farming, including all mammals, birds and fish, have pain systems and their welfare can be poor because of pain or fear. The extent of pain can be measured using physiological and behavioural measures such as thermography or grimace scales in sheep, horses and mice. It is important to evaluate the magnitude of poor welfare, a function of severity and duration.
In general, our laws prohibit treatment of animals that causes pain or other poor welfare. However, there are exceptions in laws for reasons of tradition, financial cost, gastronomic preference, convenience in management or breeding, or avoidance of other problems. Some activities that harm animals are considered to be “sport”. For example the bull pierced by numerous lances in the corrida, the deer chased by dogs and by humans on horseback, or the dog or cock forced to fight. These “sports” have entirely negative effects for the animal. Another example is the animal killed during shechita or halal slaughter without prior stunning. The justifications for this are: tradition, edict from an interpretation of a holy book, and the mistaken belief that blood in a carcass is in some way unclean.
Evidence from welfare assessment studies shows that: cutting the throat without prior stunning causes up to two minutes of extreme pain. Castration, disbudding, or beak-trimming, without anaesthetic or analgesic causes pain for many hours, and often leads to more prolonged pain because of neuroma formation. Tail removal prevents normal defence against flies in cattle and social signalling in pigs and dogs. Tail-biting by pigs and injurious behaviour by hens can be prevented by giving the animals manipulable materials and more space. This costs more but the painful procedures can be avoided. Foie-gras production necessitates confined rearing conditions, aversive force-feeding and failure of the detoxifying function of the liver so that death would result soon after the normal killing time. Caponising is a major operation that is painful and the wounds take some days to cease to cause pain. In all these cases, the main beneficiary is human and the cost is borne by the animal.