Auring the recent bullfighting media battle, bullfighting has been a subject defended by some aficionados, trying to combine the two activities. Unlike bullfighting, bouvine is a tradition in the South of France and corresponds to a set of bullfighting games and shows, without the killing of the animal.
The actors of the bullfight are preparing a request for inclusion in the inventory of intangible cultural heritage of Unesco, in partnership with practitioners of bullfighting activities in southern Catalonia and Tuscany.
This recognition would sanctify both the races, but above all the gestures and the know-how associated with them. If the games themselves are far from being threatened as bullfighting can be, it is in fact above all a question of preserving practices, some of which are archaic and far from being unanimous.
Torture of the clamp
In the herds, young bulls are castrated in order to make them less dangerous during races. Practiced by testicular torsion and blocking blood flow, bistournage is the oldest method. Also called locally “the torture of the pliers”, it consists of crushing each spermatic cord through the scrotum. Forcibly laid down and legs bound, the animal often undergoes this mutilation alive. Done poorly, it leaves a functional testicle.
Thus, some herds prefer total removal of the testicles to avoid it. The operation consists of incising the scrotum in order to release the testicles to turn them until they fall. This practice generates extreme pain. Some farms also practice these ablations without putting the animal to sleep.
A final method used on farms boils down to sterilizing the bulls by placing a rubber band above the testicles for three to seven weeks, which also causes them a lot of pain. These intense pains, denounced for decades by animal welfare associations are not acceptable. The anesthesia of animals during sterilization must be made compulsory, with controls carried out by actors with no link of interest with the world of breeding.
Another ritual: the ferrade, the staging of which brings together tourists and cattle enthusiasts. To distinguish them, the bulls are branded with a hot iron. Pushed to the ground with the help of a trident, they are held by the guests while the iron deeply burns their skin.
In order to show which manade they come from, they are also inflicted with the escousure by cutting open their ears with a knife, to create shapes specific to each manade. Shoeing and sniffing must be prohibited. They are all the more useless as some herds have already abandoned them. in favor of ear tags as the only means of identification.
You have 49.46% of this article left to read. The following is for subscribers only.