One Voice at the centre of the bullfights at the grape harvest bullfighting street festival in Nîmes
In September 2022, One Voice investigators infiltrated the Nîmes grape harvest festival. They revealed discourse that promotes bullfighting and bulls being put to their deaths in front of children.
During the grape harvest bullfighting street festival in Nîmes, which took place from 15 to 18 September 2022, One Voice investigators filmed part of the bullfighting and the discourse of fans. On site, glamorisation of the cruelty and torture of animals did not spare the children, of which there were many in the audience.
The images and remarks collected by One Voice investigators at the grape harvest bullfighting street festival in Nîmes are clear. Among fans, preservation of bullfighting is a true ‘fight’ for which killing enthusiasts are willing to deny the evident animal mistreatment perpetrated in arenas. “The bull is not stupidly sacrificed, it is not mistreated[…] it is respected under its animal identity”, protests Simon Casas, the director of the Nîmes arena. A statement that is violently contradicted by our videos where bulls, their bloody backs stabbed with pikes, weak and distressed, are provoked endlessly by their executioners until they are killed. Here where the director of the Nîmes arena claims that there is respect, and not “violence”, the French National Order of Veterinarians stated in 2016 that “bloody bullfighting shows[…] are in no way compatible with respect for animal welfare”. Here where fans state that bullfighting culture is “one of our freedoms of expression” and teach their young children to applaud when animals are killed, punishable by five years imprisonment and a 75,000 Euro fine under the penal code for serious mistreatment and acts of cruelty leading to the death of an animal. Departments such as Gard, the Pyrénées-Atlantiques, or even Bouches-du-Rhône cannot continue to contravene the law to torture animals in the name of tradition.
An abolitionist bill
In agreement with the opposition of the general public to bullfighting, since 87% of French people are favourable to punishing any intentional act of cruelty leading to the death of an animal according to a study sponsored by the Brigitte Bardot Foundation and led by Ifop in February 2022,we are continuing our fight to, at the least, ban access to bullfighting for minors and for the closure of bullfighting schools.
We support MEP Aymeric Caron’s bill for the abolition of bullfighting in the entirety of France. After a weekend of rallying several thousand people, a rally is planned in front of the National Assembly on 24 November, the day when the bill will be debated in session.
One of our activists from the Nantes branch, Killian Leroux, has developed an interrogation tool for your MEPs. Do not hesitate to use it before Thursday!
Together we can abolish bullfighting!
Translated from the French by Joely Justice