While in the birthplace of bullfighting, Spain, the regional government of Catalonia has banned the sport, bullfighting flourishes in France. Yes, France - in the south, in Arles, as was recently published in the Spanish newspaper El País. In this blog, I do not presume to speak of the mistreatment of animals or animal welfare, but of strategy.
The French thatched the roof before the rain began on their Spanish neighbors. I will briefly explain: Spain always considered bullfighting to be eternal and very much its own, and it seems that little was done to defend it. France, which imported the tradition, took a step further after Catalonia banned bullfighting in 2010. In 2011, they declared bullfighting an Intangible Cultural Heritage; then in 2013 the bulls were declared Cultural Historical Heritage. In this way, the French provided legal protection to bullfighting.
This movement of the French seemed to me a very skillful strategy. They used good marketing, which, as the above-mentioned El País article said, is "one of the weapons that animal rights advocates best use." In this strategy, they claimed, among other things, the ecological value.
Let's leave the bulls aside and let’s talk about chickens. With the siege of the poultry industry by animal rights activists’ demands for no fast-growing, antibiotic-free, no caged animals, no rendered ingredients and many other limitations, why not applying a strategy like this? I do not mean to declare the chicken or the egg as historical or immaterial heritage, but to turn it around and take advantage of this momentum in our favor. There are several aspects that can be claimed: ecology, nutrition, people's right to affordable food.
These, and certainly others, are our rallying calls to leave passivity behind. Paraphrasing the article, I first mentioned, "a model must be created" and we must "attract the consumer", "know how to exhibit the qualities of the poultry industry in this complex, globalized world." What do you think?
